Four Stars For The iPod Classic: Tested and reliable

Christopher Breen of MacWorld UK takes a look at the Second generation iPod classic and gives it a four-star rating. It’s got lots great storage capacity, terrific battery performance, Genius playlist support, browse album and artist features, a bright display, and it charges with a FireWire connection. So, although it might be missing some of the features like spoken menus or the accelerometer, it is still a great piece of equipment.

Breen says, “The iPod classic has the best gigabyte-to-dollar ratio of any display-bearing iPod at just £1.49 per gigabyte of storage, compared to the worst ratio being the 8GB iPod touch, which demands £21.12 per gigabyte. It has the largest storage capacity at 120GB (approximately 30,000 4-minute tracks encoded at 128Kbps AAC). It also offers impressive continuous audio playtime at 42 hours and 17 minutes; video playback also exceeded Apple’s six-hour estimate.”

So what is new about it? It supports the Genius playlist feature. “Select a song you want to build a related playlist around, press and hold the Center button, and a screen appears that offers these choices: Start Genius, Add to On-The-Go, Browse Album, Browse Artist, and Cancel. Choose Start Genius, press the Center button and the iPod creates a playlist of 25 related tracks. You can save the Genius playlist by selecting Save Playlist and a new playlist is created with the name of the selected track. To populate the playlist with other tracks related to your originally selected track, select the Refresh command in the Genius playlist screen and press the Center button.The Add to On-The-Go command indicates how On-The-Go playlist creation has changed on the latest iPod classic. Select the item you want to add to the On-The-Go playlist and press and hold the Center button. In the resulting screen, select that Add to On-The-Go command, and press Center again.”

Other additions are the Browse Album and Browse Artist commands. “Just as with these commands on the 4G iPod nano, they make it easy for those shuffling through their music collection to quickly move to the album or artist from which the currently playing track comes. I’ve longed for this feature during those “I love this song, I wish I could listen to the rest of the album in the press of a button!” moments.”

Other small improvements include a rougher surface to the clickwheel, which helps your finger to grip a little better. Its display is also a little brighter and “cooler”, meaning that the light is more blue in tone. Breen also points out that the 2G iPod classic is the only current iPod which charges with a FireWire connection. “If you have a lot invested in older iPod accessories that charge an iPod over FireWire, keep this in mind.”

In general, the classic remains the classic. Those who already have one may not find reason to trade it in for the second generation model. But those who have only the smaller iPods might find that it is a worthy purchase. It’s a fabulous way to hold a LOT of music and other media, and the improvements made to it add to its stature in the iPod line. It’s sort of the Cary Grant of iPods, you might say. Or, if that’s reaching too far back into the old Hollywood references, let’s say the George Clooney of iPods? Elegant, ageless and eternally cool.