Apple iPod Mini review

After all the fuss, Apple's iPod Mini has finally arrived in the UK.

First impressions of the Mini are extremely favourable. It's immediately recognisable as an iPod, but it's so small that you could be forgiven for thinking it's a toy rather than the real thing. The futuristic tobacco tin styling of the old iPod has gone and instead, the Mini is sheathed in a sturdy aluminium sleeve that comes in five trendy colours.

Despite its diminutive dimensions, the Mini retains all of the features that made its bigger sibling such a success. The backlit LCD screen is smaller, but the menu system is just as easy to use and the scroll wheel just as responsive. The wheel has undergone a minor redesign too (it's called a Click Wheel now) and the playback buttons now form part of its surface rather than sitting elsewhere.

The Mini has a socket for the iPod wired remote control, but you don't get one as standard any more, you'll have to buy it as an extra. You don't get an iPod Dock either, but there is a small snap-on case that clips to a belt, and both FireWire and USB 2 cables are supplied. Better still, both of these connections can recharge the Mini when connected, so there's less chance of it running flat on you. This will only work on a 'powered' port, though - some laptops and add-in cards can't supply electricity to devices in this way.

Getting music on to the Mini is simply a matter of plugging it into a computer and starting the iTunes program (supplied on CD). You can synchronise songs automatically or manually, and the 4GB hard disk inside the Mini can hold around 1000 songs ripped at 128Kbit/s (near-CD quality) - that's about three days of solid listening. The lithium ion battery is only good for eight hours, though, so you'll still need to take a book with you on long-haul flights.

The Mini's sound quality is on a par with that of the standard iPod: excellent but not the best we've heard from an MP3 player. We found the supplied earphones rather sterile-sounding, which is a shame when the player itself produces such good quality audio.

At £179, the 4GB Mini is only £40 less than the new 20Gb iPod. If it seems like a bit of a rip-off, bear in mind that 512MB Flash memory MP3 players, which only hold about 120 songs, cost about the same, which makes the iPod mini seem very good value. As fantastic as the iPod Mini is, though, we can't help feeling it should be £20 cheaper.