It's been a while since the new iPods and iTunes came out, and now that we've got all of them with us, we decided to take a very honest look at the new features they bring.

One of the most impressive things that the new iPods bring—according to me—is the new pair of earphones. The older ones were a little too big and like most other earphones, didn't fit my ears too well. The new ones are smaller and are much more comfortable than the previous ones. I haven't heard my entire music collection using these new earphones, but I didn't notice much of a sound difference. The new earphones sound great and along with the more comfortable size, I think they'll appeal to everyone who's had problems with the older iPod earphones. I would still ditch them and use my pair of Sony Fontopia in-ears, but you won't have to.

On the other hand, all the new iPods lack an AC charger being a part of the standard package. They all have smaller, streamlined packings because they skipped the charger in favor of a USB cable that can be used to transfer as well as charge the iPod. While you would agree that anyone who has an iPod has a PC or a Mac, there is an alarming number of users in our city who have an iPod but no computer, and some of those who have a computer have no idea how to transfer stuff to the iPod. They'd like a regular plug they can charge their iPod with (which was filled with music from a friend's computer), so this can be a small negative.

iPod
The new iPod isn't called Photo or Video anymore—it's just called the iPod. It comes with a bunch of new features, but the most interesting are the new search and gapless playback features. Instant search is useful for iPods with larger capacities like 30gb and upwards which can store a lot of music. It let's you search by letters instead of just scrolling through the never-ending list of music on your iPod. This is similar to entering your name in games on the PlayStation or the Xbox without using the keyboard. While still being no match for a full keypad or even a T9-enabled numeric keypad, the search is still a good step forward.

Gapless playback is probably the next most innovative feature in a digital audio player, after the dawn of the player itself. I listen to a ton of—actually just about all of house, trance and other electronica out there, and with most live sets and continuous mix CDs making up for most of my collection, the gap between sequential tracks is as annoying as having a Pimp My Ride-style car blare out some trash music next to you when waiting at a signal. I hate gaps between my mixes. That's why I'd usually prefer to rip the entire CD as a single track, but that makes searching for individual tracks as bad as playing cassettes. With the new iTunes, sequential tracks of a set can be tagged so they continue seamlessly into the next track. This is a little rough right now; it didn't entirely eliminate the pop and click when the track changes, but it's better than having a full 100mb MP3 file.

The new iPod also lets you play new arcade games which you can buy and install. It has improved battery life that claims to be up to 75% longer, or up to 14 hours for music or 6.5 hours of video. It all depends on how much you use the iPod during playback, and most users do use a few of the features other than just playback (i.e. search), so you probably won't get the full rated batter life.

The new iPod is available in 30GB (Rs. 13,000) and 80GB (Rs. 18,000) capacities.

Rating: 4/5