iPod mini review

The iPod mini may not be set to ship in the UK until July but if its reception in the US is anything to go by, it will be more of an object of desire than many people predicted, even with the questions over price and capacity.

We bought our own model (green, by special request) in the US to find out just how well it handles in real life.

Our first impression is that the anodised aluminium case's colour options are all more strikingly metallic than they appear in Apple's photos. The size of the device is also significantly smaller than previous iPods; half an inch shorter, almost half an inch narrower and thinner as well. There is a knock-on effect, however, as the screen is also smaller, both physically and in the amount of text it shows at a time. When playing tracks it shows the track title and artist name, but not the album name. This didn't prove to be a problem, but it does mean you get slightly less information on what you're playing.

The headphones are the standard white earbuds that shipped with previous iPods; good if you like in-ear designs, otherwise use your own. The headphone socket is over at one side rather than in the middle, but the biggest difference in the way you use the iPod mini lies in the way the buttons have been placed around the touch wheel rather than being arranged horizontally below the screen. This is reminiscent of the first iPod designs, but now the buttons are triggered by pressing the appropriate part of the touch wheel rather than being separate items. As we expected, this worked well. Battery life is quoted as being the same eight-hour span as the current iPods, and this is borne out in real-world use.

The iPod mini is definitely something to be bought as much for its looks as for its technical specifications. Not that those aren't excellent but, as has been pointed out many times, in pure price-per-gigabyte terms, the traditional white iPods offer much better value for money. For not that much more you can get a standard iPod with more than three times the storage capacity.

Of course, this does ignore a few important points. First of all, this is the lowest-cost iPod available; it makes the entry point for iPod owner wannabes easier to reach. In addition, many people don't need more than the estimated 1000-song capacity, especially now that iTunes makes synching with larger music collections much simpler than before. Finally, the higher per-gigabyte cost of the mini is down to what makes it 'mini'; namely, the 4GB microdrive used in place of the physically larger drives in the standard iPods. (This mechanism is a Hitachi CompactFlash microdrive, which typically sells for more than the whole iPod mini. But note that the unit in the iPod mini does not work in other devices.)

What might be more of a problem is the iPod mini's inability to work with current iPod accessories such as Belkin's Media Reader or Voice Recorder, despite having the same socket configuration as the larger iPods. This may be rectified further down the line, but for now some accessories are incompatible.

The iPod mini will all but destroy the market for flash-memory MP3 players, many of which have similar price tags yet can't begin to approach its capacity. True, it isn't without competition: the Creative Labs Nomad Muvo2 also uses a 4GB microdrive and sells for slightly less. However, it is USB 2 rather than FireWire, and it doesn't work with iTunes or handle Address Book and iCal data, which makes it a poor choice for Mac users.