Digital Trends

Apple iPod Classic (80GB)

September 12th, 2007 | by Brandon King

Setup and Use

Firing up our silver beauty, we’re greeted with the language selection screen. Voila – that’s it, nice and simple, no demo music, videos, pictures or other PMP bloatware installed, which is a welcome change from other players on the market. Of course, there’s no software CD included either, which is a first for us, meaning you’ll either need to have iTunes preinstalled or Internet access to download it. An open suggestion to Apple: Bundle a cheapo 64MB flash drive with iTunes preloaded if you want to keep packaging size down and not alienate people who pick up a new iPod when net access might not be easy. Plus, it would add a little extra class to the whole package.

Physically, the 160GB version of the Classic (which is just slightly thicker than the 80GB version) is about the same size as the 5th generation iPod, which is pretty amazing, considering that the player’s capacity nearly tripled. The screen is easily the best iPod screen we’ve seen so far, with good resolution and brightness. The matte finish metallic body further feels solid and creates a sharp edge where it meets the chrome backing. Like previous iPods, the top edge sports the headphone jack and hold button, while the bottom edge is home to the proprietary connector.

Comparing the Apple iPod Classic to a 3rd Gen iPod

Connecting the iPod to a PC for the first time is as easy as in previous generations. We would like to see an advanced customization setting for the initial setup though, which consists of two questions before starting the longest sync of your life. Loading up close to 130GB of music and other content took approximately 3 hours, which really isn’t bad. PC users will be accustomed to the nonresponsive iTunes interface, especially during syncing. The Classic seems to take longer to eject, however, and during the final stages of syncing, required a good 30 seconds to full minute of “thinking” before completing the operation.

The most immediately apparent change from previous generations is the interface. Taking advantage of the widescreen aspect, the top-level menus are divided into two columns: One for menu options, and one for icons or background images. Once loaded up with songs, videos, and album art, album covers slowly fade and drift across the right half of the display. After we noticed the spiffy new interface tweaks, we encountered our first pet peeve with it. Scrolling through menu items in this split-screen setup is noticeably balky, making selecting items noticeably difficult.

Menu Comparison

The sequence generally goes as follows: Try to scroll through a few menu items with the wheel; grimace as the scrolling action starts half a second after it should; watch it stop one short of or one past the desired selection; observe as the selected icon appears; attempt to scroll onward; see no movement; try to scroll again as the first attempt to scroll kicks in; repeat back and forth until you learn the timing. This is undoubtedly a significant issue, but not a difficult one to fix, and we expect it to be addressed in a future firmware update. The correct way we’d like to see things work: All menu icons should be preloaded when the screen appears, rather than forcing the player to access the hard drive for each menu option change.