Reviews : Apple iPod touch, A Sleeker, Speedier touch

Reviews : Apple iPod touch, A Sleeker, Speedier touch

It’s cheerful, colorful and versatile, and though it technically has competition, Apple’s iPod touch still stands alone. More like a smartphone without the phone than an MP3 player, it brings more than 700,000 iOS apps along with iTunes, iBooks, and the rest of the Apple ecosystem to folks who don’t want to pay full iPhone freight. This year’s touch is faster, with a much better screen, a new camera, better earphones, and a new body design to die for—but this five-star product comes at a three-star price. There’s nothing like it that’s quite as good, but the entry-level $299 price (for 32GR of storage space) is much more costly for all the people who want to use it for light gaming, Web browsing, and music.

PHYSICAL DESIGN AND WI-FI

The new iPod touch is one of the most elegant devices I’ve ever handled. Measuring an amazing 0.24 inch thick and weighing only 3.1 ounces, it’s almost two-dimensional and weightless. Its increased 4.86-inch length lets it accommodate a super-sharp 4-inch, i,i36-by-640 screen, but its width is the same as that of previous touches (2.31 inches). The new display is just like the iPhone 5’s, and noticeably brighter than the previous touch’s screen. Even the aluminum casing, available in blue, pink, red, yellow, gray, or black, looks better. On the bottom you’ll find an extremely tinny-sounding speaker, the 3.5mm headphone jack, and Apple’s new Lightning connector, which isn’t natively compatible with existing accessories without a $29 adapter.

In the box you get a pair of Apple’s vastly improved EarPods, and a color-coordinated wrist strap that attaches to a pop-out button on the card slot for expansion here: Built-in storage is all you get.)

Battery life was a bit disappointing: The touch lasted 4 hours, 55 minutes of video playback with the screen at full brightness and Wi-Fi on.

CAMERA AND MULTIMEDIA

The 5-megapixel rear camera is one of the touch’s flagship features, but I’m lukewarm on the entire concept. Yes, it’s much better than the previous iPod touch camera, but it’s still just a decent smartphone camera. The 5-megapixel main camera and 1.2-megapixel front camera take sharp shots outdoors with plenty of light, but sharpness and focus suffer in low light. I also saw some serious problems with the autofocus locking in when the flash was needed.

In terms of video recording, we captured io8op video with the main camera and 720P with the front camera, each at 30 frames per second (fps) outdoors. But in moderate indoor lighting, that dropped to 27fps on the main camera and 24fps on the front camera with focus problems.

Remember that you can get a good, basic 14.1-megapixel camera with optical zoom for about $100 nowadays; if the touch cost $199 rather than $299,1 wouldn’t be complaining. The rear camera here is a “nice-to-have” feature, but I don’t see it as a core part of the iPod touch experience. The front camera, on the other hand, works with FaceTime, turning the iPod touch into a terrific video phone when you’re connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Music and video playback are as high quality as always; sound is still quite bright, if a little weak on bass. The touch still syncs with iTunes (although now it can do so wirelessly) and still plays any MP3 or AAC music or MPEG-4 video file, whether purchased from Apple or downloaded from elsewhere. The touch also plays Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV, but not FLAC or OGG, files; and the array of streaming video apps on iOS is unmatched.

CONCLUSION

There are a few Android-based music players out there, but none of them can touch the touch. The device’s true competition might be $200 7-inch tablets like the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Google Nexus 7, which offer top-notch Web browsing, e-reading, and gaming experiences on a larger screen for $100 less than the touch— although neither will slip into a pocket.

As a music player, the $299 touch is overkill. Teens who want to play Talking Tomcat, Fruit Ninja, and Temple Run can stick with the $199 entry-level iPod touch—and if you already have that, there’s no reason to jump on this one. If you need a good camera, buy an entry-level point-and-shoot and save some cash. But if you were intending to use your touch to store and play a lot of music or videos, spring for the new model. Once you’re looking at 32GB of storage the difference between the two devices drops to $50, and the bigger screen, lighter body, and even the camera make a real difference in the experience.