Digital Trends

Apple iPod photo 60GB

January 31st, 2005 | by Brandon King

Introduction

It was the next logical step in the evolution of the iPod: a color screen. While this was an expected step, most rumor sites were predicting the latest incarnation of Apple's market leading music player to bridge into video. Instead, Apple opted for a simple addition to take advantage of the color screen and its capabilities. You can also display images on an external monitor should you decide you want to go that route.

Features and Design

Out of the box, you get the iPod, the docking station, 1394 (FireWire) and USB 2.0 cables, A/V adapter cable, ear buds, carrying sack, and a case with belt clip and power adapter. We would have liked slightly longer connection cables, since the 3.5 ft. cables are stretched to their limits if your tower is placed under a desk. Also, the power adapter has to be used with the FireWire cable. We would have liked both USB and FireWire ports for charging on the road (not all laptops have FireWire ports). The carrying sack is largely useless. The material feels low quality, and the functionality is the same as the case with belt clip. While it may provide slightly better scratch protection, we recommend that users buy a third party case.

One of the unique features, and a major selling point for the iPod photo, is the availability of a 60GB version. Even if you don't want to take advantage of the photo capabilities, there are simply no other players as small as the iPod photo and with this amount of storage capacity.  We were able to fill the full 60GB in close to 4 hours using the FireWire connection; not bad at all. Battery life is advertised at 15 hours however we were able to get close to 10 with the volume cranked up 3/4 of the way.

The photo functionality adds a new level of flexibility. Users can display slideshows to music, browse thumbnails and with the purchase of a third party add on, plug their camera's flash memory in to the iPod photo to offload pictures. In addition, color album art images appear in the Now Playing screen. We can see some die hard shutterbugs really taking advantage of the photo storage features, but curiously missing is support for the RAW picture format. While this won't be a concern to most people, we expect to see it in a future update with Apple's recent inclusion of the format in their iPhoto software. Photo synchronization is handled by Adobe Photoshop Album. Rather than add a slew of ports to the industrial design marvel, video output is handled by a single adapter cord, consisting of composite video out and stereo RCA leads. The dock also sports a s-video output and a stereo headphone jack.