Home > Consumer Reviews > Apple iPod mini 6 GB M9801LL/A (Silver) OLD MODEL

If you, like me, have tons of music in your iTunes, you may be wondering: "Is this iPod going to be enough to help me carry all the music I want?" The answer is "it depends". If you want to carry literally ALL your music, bear in mind this unit will hold on average about 1,500 tunes. So you may run out of space well before you get half your collection into it.

However, if you are objective about it, and look into how often you actually listen to ALL your music, you will realize (like I did), that this iPod Mini (Silver or not) will more than serve your purposes. With this said, everything about it is perfectly balanced. The sound is fine (not studio quality, but it's very good, anyway). The interface is impeccable: incredibly easy to learn and use. The design is... well, Apple at its best! And it's light and highly portable.

The only downside are the covers for the earbuds, which I lost within a couple of days of starting to use it, but in all honesty the plain earbuds with no cover don't bother me. I may get myself a new pair of earbuds in the future, but for now, not even this I find to be a problem with the unit. So, if you are still wondering what do I recommend you to do: get yourself one of these, and you will be able to take your music with you all day long wherever you go, and be happy with your investment.

I began looking into an iPod purchase over a year ago, and was almost sold on the 4th generation iPod. I liked the colors of the mini and was okay with 4 GB of storage (though that was a tad on the small side), but the main thing that deterred me from the mini was the less-than-desirable 8-10 hour battery life.

Then the 2nd generation mini was released. Apple seemed to fix and improve every little thing I had held against the original. They made the colors brighter, increased the hard drive space to 6 gigs, and most importantly, at least to me, increased the battery life two-fold.

The 18 hours that Apple advertises is EXTREMELY conservative. If you're content listening to music and don't need the backlight for more than a minute or two every hour, the battery can run for about 24-25 hours. I can go a week and not have to worry about recharging my battery. I could listen every waking moment of my day and never have to stop and recharge before I went to bed. It's a wonderful thing.

The blue is very bright and pleasing to the eye--I've seen the pink and silver versions and they too are visually appeasing. 6 gigs is nothing to shake a stick at--on the contrary, I've found that 6 gigs is just about the perfect size for someone who has a vast number of interests musically but doesn't have thousands upon thousands of CD's to rip and upload. Unless you have literally hundreds of CD's in your collection that you plan on putting on your iPod, I'd recommend the mini, since you'd more than likely end up with half the space on your regular iPod sitting unused.

Despite the fact that the iPod scratches easily, there are several cases which work extremely well...I'm partial to the ones made by Power Support, though you have to import them from Japan. Uploading your songs is quick and easy. Navigating the menus takes about 15 minutes to master. There's really nothing more I can say that can do the iPod mini justice.

I will make a quick note and add that I'm not an Apple fanatic. I think that Apples are good computers, but I'm still attached to my PCs. However, when it comes to MP3 players, there's really no comparison; it's going to take many many years before Microsoft or any other competing company can put out any MP3 player nearly as nice as the 2nd generation iPod mini.

Also, if you have a friend that's a teacher in a school, look into the education discount on the Apple website. It ends up being 20 or 30 dollars off.

iPod mini was the hottest gadget last year & the best mp3 player around. Looks like this will be true even in 2005. There is absolutely no competition for the iPod's, no other player is even half as good as iPod.

Pro's,
1. Very good audio quality. Support for normal mp3's (unlike Sony).
2. Small size (smaller than most cell phones like much-talked-about-Motorola-Razr)
3. Extremely well desgined (let's hope Apple makes a cell phone and PDA in near future)
4. Very intuitive interface (award winning touch wheel and minimal buttons)
5. 6GB hard drive (enough space for about 1200 mp3 songs)
6. Available in many colors (hopefully Apple will come up with Nokia style faceplates for future Mini's)
7. iTunes is one of the best music software around (rate songs, keep playcount, easy-sync with the iPod)
8. Excellent screen for such small size
9. Recharges from a standard USB port with the same cable as used for the upload of songs. No need to carry around a charger now.
10. Tons of innovative accessories in the market (from Bose speakers to colorful socks!)
11. Good battery life, about 10-14 hrs depneding on how much you surf around on it. ofcourse we all want more and there is no end to that demand :)
12. Everything about the iPod Mini is designed to perfection (no other company has put this much time & effort into their mp3 players even in 4 yrs since iPod hit the streets)

Con's,
1. The battery is internal with no easy replacement chances
2. Colors on the new Mini, except Silver, IMHO, are all gaudy. Last generation of Mini's had much pleasing colors. Check out for yourself at a local store before buying.
3. Gold version has been dropped now, its become a collector's item? Instead of adding more colors they have dropped one!
4. Doesn't come with a wall charger any more and takes longer to charge from USB port. You always need to be around a computer or pay extra for the charger.

Its simply fabulous and I am running out of superlatives to describe it. Thanks Apple for the new iPod Mini!

I must say that I am thoroughly impressed with the iPod mini. This is coming from a person who owned a 3rd gen iPod (The regular-sized one). One of the bad points of the 3rd gen iPods was its short battery life (only about 3-4 hours max). I thought it would be the same case with the iPod mini, I was proven wrong. I was able to get 20+ hours of continous play before having to recharge which totally amazed me since it was more than the advertised 18 hours. All of my mp3s are 192k bitrate encoded! I don't even have to worry about it running out of power if I'm taking a long international flight! Not to mention it sounds great and has 6GB of storage which is more than enough for me. Installing iTunes and transferring mp3s with it was a breeze. There are other choices such as Xplay, EphPOD, and iPod Agent if you don't want to use iTunes. I also love the fact that it's recognized as a usb mass storage device in Windows XP. That means you can use it as an external hard drive if you wanted to. Apple's dominance in the mp3 player market is not surprising with a quality product like this. Who cares if it doesn't have a radio tuner or color screen? At least it can perform without a ton of bugs or hassles.

OK....so I bought the 6gb ipod mini 3 months ago from best buy. The nano had just been introduced, but too me, they seemed too small and chinzy...so I passed on the Nano. I have a ton of music but have no plans to put every single album i have in the ipod....so I went with the 6gb. It seemed to work fine, but the sound was kinda muddy...i thought this was just due to the fact it was mp3....and then it did crash on me 2 times in the first 2 months. I was able to troubleshoot the problem each time and get it back up and running within about 10 minutes. Then it crashed a 3rd time and I spent the better part of one night trying to get it to work....no luck. So i took it to the apple store in Downtown San Francisco.....I took it to their help desk which they call the "Genius bar." Anyway, they ran a few tests and the guy said the hard drive was "toast" and gave me a new one at no cost. No problems with this one so far and the sound does seem to be better then the last one.

Contrary to what others have said, you can jog with the mini...

Do get a protective case as soon as you buy it. It will get scuffed if you don't....get one of the covers that also covers the display screen.....

I'm giving it 4 stars because apple was quick to replace my defective one....so we'll see what happens with this one. Dollar for dollar, and despite the problems I had with my first one, I still think Ipod is the way to go....I know tons of people that have never had a problem with their ipods....