Apple iPod Video 5th Generation 60GB Black MP3 Player

Pricey, but a great device

Strengths: iTunes, Interface, Toyota compatibility, Video and Photo support

Weaknesses: iTunes, lack of flexibility, cost a bit higher than competition

Summary: Let me first start of by stating that I never wanted an iPod and adamently refused to get one. The only reason I gave in is because I provide IT support and for many clients, this extends to their home setup. Ipods included. So I wanted to get a new MP3 player (my 512MB zen died) and figured the ipod was my best bet.

Now that I have it, I love it. I've got music, photos and even a few movies on it. (Converted movies using cucosoft software).

I listed iTunes as both a strength and weakness. The strength is that it's really easy to use and has some nice features for creating playlists. It's also a breeze to use with the ipod. I actually setup a playlist for my mom and sync'd hers with it without issue. iTunes is also a weakness however, because the ipod is really only user friendly when used with itunes (I'm not even sure you can get it to work with others). This is a drawback in my opinion as most other players out there can sync to anything (EXCEPT itunes). Still, it wouldn't keep me from getting another.

The Toyota compatibility I mention is a bonus I wasn't expecting. There are a number of devices that allow you to use your ipod in a Toyota or Lexus vehicle. I have a prius and have my ipod tied into it, so I can see the songs and control things via the steering wheel controls. It's very cool!

Overall, I'd definetely recommend an iPod. Just know that you will have to use iTunes and all syncing will be done with it.

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if you can stomach iTunes...

Strengths: lots of storage, GREAT resolution screen, handles video and pictures fairly well, great EQ settings, fun games included

Weaknesses: iTUNES, click wheel sometimes hard to go a lot of artists at once, or one single click... , scratches easily, NO INCLUDED POWER/ACCESSORY CORDS. Apple is a control freak.

Summary: Get ready for a long one…

I bought this ipod thinking it would be the greatest thing ever... play video, pictures, and best of all, ALL of my music! It does all of these functions fairly well, and the battery life is very good (for music; for videos, you might as well bring the power cord... that you have to BUY seperately~~).

Sound on the ipod is very good too, with many different EQ settings enhancing the sound. I don't use the included classic earbuds becasue they never stay in my ears, but any headphones i plug up work well. I like how it automaticly pauses when you unplug the headphones, and it turns on (if hold is off) when you plug them in. The bass could be a little more pronounced, perhaps by a three-level megabass such as those on many Sony CD players. Overall, though, it sounds great.

Photo and video capability on the ipod is also great. The screen, i must say, is fantastic for such a small size. Videos play smoothely, although i have encountered slight hanging and sometimes, on full length movies (which are a TRICK to get on there~~), the lipsync becomes messed-up. Also, as i said, you can't watch many videos and/or pictures without the ipod drying up.

Playback on the ipod is fairly reliable. I have had the player lock up on me a few times, but it is a HD-based player, so this can almost be expected. Shuffle is extremely handy, although i wish the firmware would allow you to select what artists and/or genres were shuffled; sometimes i am not in the mood to hear rap, yet shuffle does not discriminate.

An improvement that is direly needed on the ipod (aside from itunes... we'll get to that in a moment~) is the way you find music. Especially on a 60gb model, where virtually zillions of songs under zillions of different artists are likely, it is very difficult to find the needed song in any moderate time frame (especially when looking for a specific song under "Songs" view). If you play the click wheel just right, it will zoom incredibly fast through the ABC-ordered songs, but it is VERY hard to get it to stop on the desired letter, much less song. Apple needs to update its firmware so that users can go directly to a letter in the alphabet, so that they don't have to scroll through ALL of the songs.

Some other things the ipod lacks is FM tuner/recorder and voice recorder. this is probably possible through some accessories, but i believe these should be givens for such a "great player". This brings me to my soapbox for ipod. My first erk is the lack of included power adapter. That is just sad. Apple is truly ripping-off America. Another turner-offer is the video-out capability. A great idea in theroy, but you can't easily do this. You have to BUY yet another accessory from Apple, a SEEMINGLY standard RCA cable. Regular RCA cables won't work. That really irritated me.

This brings me to the reasons for which i am selling the ipod. The lack of accessories i may have dealt with grudgingly. However, the hastle you have to go through to put songs ON The ipod and actually FIND them is rediculous. My first problem with itunes was the library itself. I made an attempt to delete all duplicate songs, which itunes has a handy feature which finds them. The only problem is, any songs that are remotely the same show up, and if you delete them (which i thought to be a good idea), i lost both the original copy and the duplicate song. There goes another few thousand songs from the ipod. AutoUpdate was promptly turned off.... Also, my music is organized via folders, and not all of the id3 tags are correct. To find them on the ipod, i have over 10,000 songs to go through and correct. Quite a pain.

FINALLY, when songs go onto the ipod, it renames the filename to a random 4-letter/number combination and sticks the songs into one of 50 random folders. VERY painful if you want to give a friend a few songs from the ipod, or want to put them on another computer (itunes won't let you bring songs from the ipod to your library. big surprise~). This heavily irritates me.

SOOO, even with the moderate plusses the player has to offer, i don't think it's worth the trouble of fighting Apple every time you want to put a song on, or take one off. The lack of features other players possess, such as the iAudio x5, also is a con. Finally, the extremely irritating software (itunes), lack of "drag-and-drop" capability, and no included accessories is just a simple turn-off. This is why the ipod got a 2-star rating from me; the benefits don’t even closely outweigh the hasles that you have to go through. If you’re not obsessive about being in control over your music, and how to actually FIND it, you may enjoy the very simplistic, limited-access ipod. However, for anyone else, I do not recommend.

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Music and Video!

Strengths: -60 GB is hard to fill, even when putting in movies -Nice, clear, crips video and pictures

Weaknesses: -Price -Video can only be stored and viewed at low resolutions -Battery life for movies is short -No inclusive Video conversion tool

Summary: This has been a great gadget for trips. While you can probably only watch one full length movie without recharging, the battery life is surprisingly good for music. Setup was quick as well as interface. There are plenty of video converters for the iPod, but it does NOT come with one. It also does not have any quick DVD to iPod feature.

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60GB iPod

Strengths: NA

Weaknesses: NA

Summary: Very good. Had problems with Win XP identifying the iPod, but this seems to be a problem with the recent XP upadates breaking the working system. The updates for XP also trashed the rest of the usb identifications.

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I Love It

Strengths: Great sound. Great video. Easy to Use

Weaknesses: Wished it had a wall charger with it.

Summary: I purchased this just 3 days ago, it is my first MP3 player. I love all the neat functions. I have had no problems with the ITunes software and the battery life is excellent. I would highly recommend that you use PQ DVD program for conversion of your Video. I researched several converter programs and found this one was the only one that you did not have to be a engineer to figure out. So far I have put 400 songs and 8 movies on my IPOD. Three tumbs up.

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Running with the big dogs?

Strengths: Good battery life, crisp screen, huge capacity, small size.

Weaknesses: None of the old accessories fit, Apple does not provide a way to import your own viedos :(

Summary: I got this one to replace my 3gen 20GB.

I love the fact that it has 3X the capacity that my old one had and it's slimmer than the 3gen was.

I miss the buttons from the 3Gen but that might be just be a "getting used to" problem.

All the accessories that are out there are almost excusivly white.. I want more Black stuff to match my pod.

About transterring video:

There are third party software tht does it well... even very well but Apple should have provided a way to do it.

A good case/shield is must for this one.. on the older models it was an annoyance if the screen got scuffed up on this one it is a disaster since you might watch videos on it.

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As the saying goes, you can never be too thin

Strengths: New larger screen with video capability, yet thiner and lighter than ever.

Weaknesses: Most of your old iPod accessories and cases will be useless.

Summary: The iPod now plays video. But that isn't what is so amazing about this newest version. The real story here is how thin the new players are. The 60GB version is thinner and lighter than the previous 30GB player. And the new 30GB player is nearly as thin a the new nano. Once you put one of these in your hand you realize what a brick the original iPod was.

If that wasn't enough, Apple bumped up the screen size to 2.5". That makes a big difference in the little things like reading song titles and viewing album art. Oddly though the bigness of the screen gives you the illusion that this iPod is wider than previous generations. It's not. But since the screen is bigger and the case smaller it means your old iPod cases are now useless. If you sell your old iPod include the case.

Other than the new larger screen and thinner case, this iPod works just like all other iPods with a few exceptions. The remote control connector is gone. This means that not only will the wired remote not work on this model, but neither will any accessory, like the Griffin iTrip. New compatible accessories are on the way, but it's kind of annoying to have to buy them all over again when they still work.

Another highly visible iPod standard missing is FireWire syncing capability. This model can still charge via firewire but charging is now a USB 2.0 affair only. (You can sync via USB 1.1 but it will be slooooow). Apparently Apple made this change to slim down the case.

I really had no interest in the video functionality, but I did try it out out of curiousity. Video looks great. However, I'm not sure how practical it is to watch video on an iPod. My eyes got tired after a few minutes and it was awkward holding the iPod for five minutes. I could see how short news video Podcasts would be nice while waiting for the train, but I won't be watching video on my iPod while flying. Besides, it only has enough juice to last a couple hours playing video. You could barely get through a movie and then no more power for songs for the rest of the day.

Bottom line: The 5G iPods are the best yet. The larger new screen make navigation so much easier and readable, and the slimmed down size makes them even more transparent and portable. A big improvement over the previous generation, which was a nice player itself.

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iPod Video 5th Generation 60GB MP3 Player - Black (60GB Internal Hard Drive)

Strengths: great design, great display screen, and provides multifunctions

Weaknesses: putting your own videos into a format that will work with the ipod video

Summary: Ive had this now for 2 weeks and I love it! It's awesome doesn't have any problems and it comes with a full 1 year warranty, which i got the 2 year protection plan. The only sad part is that you have to buy Quicktime Pro 7.0.3 to put your own videos on the player, and even that is difficult yo do. You can put files that you buy from iTunes on there in a second. I truly love this product and recommend that all of you get it.

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Cool Gadget...

Strengths: Color Screen.. Watch TV shows.. Huge Capacity.. Nice Sleek Black Casing

Weaknesses: none really.. other than iTunes!!

Summary: I bought this as an upgrade form the 20GB 4th generation ipod i have had for 2 years now.. This is an amazing product..

I have put movies, tv shows, music videos and of course, MUSIC into this baby... I still have over 20GB available!!

The screen is a nice size and is extremely clear... videos are a pleasure to watch...

I can't wait till more accessories are available...

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must buy

Strengths: highest capacity mp3 ever extremely thin

Weaknesses: target for muggers

Summary: great value for money, the ultimate christmas or birthday present, buy this for someone and they will forget any wrongs that you have done to them. how do i know you ask, i recently recieved one of these for my birthday and i haven't put it down.. in fact im listening to it right now

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60 gb ipod

Strengths: Vivid color screen, small, lots of space, love the USB cable (don't miss the dock), click wheel easy to use,

Weaknesses: Screen is prone to sratching, get a screen protector

Summary: My favorite X-mas present, make sure to take a look at Anapod for backing up the ipod and PQ DVD to Ipod to put movies on it. Best Ipod yet

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I really wanted this to be the one.

Strengths: Beautiful design, easy to use controls, great screen, nice addtitonal features.

Weaknesses: Weak, high distortion amplifier

Summary: I really wanted this to become by mp3 player of choice, I love the design, I love the features set. Sadly the bottom line for me is sound quality and on that note this player falls flat on it's face. I have been using Iriver players for the last two years mainly because of the audio quality, my latest an H10. Yes these players are quirky although with the latest firmware revision they seem to have gotten it right. I compared the machines side by side, same Shure E3C ear buds also a pair of reference Sennheisers and the same exact mp3 tracks. I even enlisted my Ipod devotee friends to listen and they agreed, not even close. Where the sound on the Ipod was coarse and had barely enough power to drive the Shures to reasonable volume the H10 was sweet, powerful and had an open spacious quality. Not close. Maybe there is something wrong with my unit don't know for sure but it is going back to Apple store tomorrow, I have had it for a little over a week and tried everything. I do remain open and will listen to other units when they become available, this is not an ipod bashing, truthfully.

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• Excellent review. I haven't purchased an iPod yet and was just a...

Great Product!

Strengths: I aboloutley love the ipod and the latest one has even more features. Not only is it smaller, thinner, but it plays videos!

Weaknesses: not sure yet, The battery life it my biggest worry, but it supposidly has a longer life as well.

Summary: I defiantly recomend this product to anyone who was a top of the line mp3 player that has many features, such as music, video and photo's. It has an easy interpase with the compute, it is easy to use and it is both pc and mac compatible.

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I love the new ipod

Strengths: Ease of use; sound is great; very sleak and modern looking.

Weaknesses: Wished it came with a charger.

Summary: This new ipod was purchased after a month of research. I wanted to have something portable to store my music, picture, and videos. This ipod does it all and it has lots of memory to store any of my back up computer files. Everyone should own one if they want it for extra computer storage and great entertainment on the road.

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Once an Apple, always an Apple

Strengths: Nice looking, that is about it.

Weaknesses: Short battery life. Poor quality display. Mid-range sound quality, no manual EQ settings. Lousy software.

Summary: Received my IPOD today. The unit has a very attractive look. That is until unwrap the plastic covers and hold it in my hand. Top surface can not stand anything. Rubbing it with my fingers left scratch marks. The back cover is made of polished stainless steel. After 2 minutes, it is full of finger prints. But those are the minor issues.

Most disappointing is the 64K display. It is just not enough color shade to watch any high quality videos. The sound quality is really in the middle range. My old Iriver has far more better sound. The battery runs out really quick unless you only play music. The poor software and lack of minimum accessories had been mentioned in many other reviews. So I am not going to repeat them again.

Over all, this is more or less what I expected. Just like the Apple computers, it has the good look. Still, it is just a TOY. Not for professionals or serious users.

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• As a professional, I use PCs and Macs with the latest software an...