iPod Shuffle 3rd Generation Review

The 3rd Generation of iPod is here! And while its jaw droppingly small it’s making a big impact. The new Shuffle is half the size of the previous generation and is now the world’s smallest music player. To give you a little bit of an idea just how small it actually is, it measures just a bit larger than an average door key. I guess size doesn’t really matter after all!

So what has it got to offer? Well, it now comes with 4GB of storage which can hold up to 1000 songs and has a remarkable new feature, VoiceOver, which enables the Shuffle to talk to you! Yes you heard it right, with the press of a button VoiceOver turns your ID3 tags in your iTunes library into sound snippets to be read out to you while you’re listening to all your favourite songs without being obtrusive. The VoiceOver function also comes in 14 different languages and can even recognise what language your songs are in!

You can now have multiple playlists on your iPod which is a first with the Shuffles. This makes it ten times easier to find the right mix of songs for you without stopping you doing whatever you’re doing. A useful little feature if you use your shuffle in different settings during your day to day life; like if you’re at the gym, in the library or on a train and what’s more there is no loading time, choosing a playlist kicks it off instantly.
As always with Apple iPods the sound quality and volume are excellent. As for the battery life Apple says that you can get a good ten hours worth of play out of one charge, but without a screen it’s hard to indicate how much battery life you have left. The VoiceOver function gets around this little problem by alerting you once the battery level hits the 25% mark and you also get a status update every time you switch it on which is helpful.

Ok, so let’s not get carried away, the new Shuffle is the first MP3 player that talks, which is really cool, but it is the first MP3 player with no buttons. In order to make the Shuffle smaller, they decided to make all the controls attached to the head phones. Because of the lack of controls the iPod can seem more difficult to use, more clumsy. Navigation is not so easy to get to grips with as with previous modals – but this is something you can get adjusted to and mentioned new features more than make up for this.

Unlike the 2G Shuffle which came in a magnitude of different colours the third generation shuffle comes only in two, black and silver – much to the disappointment of colour crazy fans, but to be honest, it’s never too long before we see more colours added to the shuffle line.
Overall a definite good buy!

The new Apple iPod Third Generation Shuffle is out now at a RRP of £59.00