Home > Consumer Reviews > Apple iPod classic 160GB silver

I purchased this to replace my 3rd Gen? 40gb iPod and boy what a difference. The screen on the new 160gb iPod is MUCH bigger than my old iPod and also the screen is in colour. The 160gb iPod's screen shows a lot more info than my old iPod such has Cover Flow (I will mention this later in the review) and album covers. The quality of the screen is absolutely amazing; it remains bright in direct sunlight and is ALWAYS very easy to read. The excellent click wheel is still here as well; for people who are not familiar with this, the white circle on the front of the iPod has 4 functions on it, MENU (TO GO INTO MENUS, TRACK LISTS, VARIOUS OTHER FUNCTIONS) SKIP FORWARD, SKIP BACK, PLAY/PAUSE. Also with the click wheel, if you move your finger round it in a clockwise direction this will increase the volume level, moving your finger anti clockwise has the opposite affect.

Another criticism of the older iPod's was their battery life, but the 160gb iPod has a quoted battery life of 40 hours (I have found this to be around 25 hours in real life use) but this can vary depending on how the iPod is used, I.E. skipping tracks, listening at high volume, I have found the battery on the 160gb iPod to be light years ahead of the old iPod which had a habit of been on half power then not long after it would have dropped significantly, but the 160gb iPod does not suffer from this problem. When I purchased the 160gb iPod I chose the silver option, the finish is in metal with a frosted finish, so this should be very durable and also the build quality and finish are excellent.

Now on to the sound quality, and its all good, the sound quality is amazing, I would make a few recommendations here, one been, when you rip music off of a CD, I have found it best to RIP using the "APPLE LOSSLESS FORMAT" with this the music is ripped at a very high bit rate and as such provides the best sound quality. Secondly, in my opinion the supplied earphones are not really up to the job, so I would recommend purchasing some after market earphones; I use the Shure EC4 earphones and the sound quality is fantastic once you have found the correct sized ear pads, but be warned these earphones are not cheap, but I dare say that you could get some cheaper earphones and these would still be better than the supplied Apple earphones. Thirdly, to charge the iPod up you use the supplied USB cable (which also serves to connect the iPod into the PC when transferring music) but your PC has got to remain switched on during the charging process, which sometimes isn't convenient, so I would recommend purchasing the USB power adapter which sells for around £19, with this you can charge the iPod up using a mains electric socket. Personally though I think the iPod should come supplied with the USB power adapter.

The software that is supplied with the iPod is Itunes (which has always been the case with the iPod's) this software is used to import songs from CD and then on to the iPod, when you are importing songs from the CD, (providing you have an internet connection) iTunes will detect what the name of the CD is and also show all the track listings, so basically when you import the songs over on to the iPod, all the tracks then have names. With the 160gb iPod the previous procedure tries to get the album cover as well and if it does detect this it is then transferred over to the iPod as well; admittedly iTunes sometimes doesn't find the the album cover but if this happens I usually go on to one of the CD covers websites on the net and save the cover from there and them point iTunes in the direction of where I have saved it to; so your never in a position where you cannot view the album cover. Also another new feature to the 160gb iPod is the "COVER FLOW" feature, the easiest way I can describe this feature is that its like having a shelf full of CD's, and then flicking through them to find the CD that you want, I find the cover flow feature very useful.

Other features on the 160gb iPod are, Calendar which also has a "TO DO LIST" on it, with this you can also set the alarm to sound at the date/time of the TO DO item. There is also 3 games on the iPod (but more can be downloaded at an extra cost from the iTunes music store). Last but not least is the stopwatch (self explanatory)

I forgot to mention earlier that you can also purchase music from the iTunes music store.

Most people will not need the extra size of the 160gb and I was one of them, I was initially interested in the 80gb version (which is the same albeit a obviously smaller capacity and a thinner case to the 160gb version) but I had no alternative and I had to purchase the 160gb version as I could not find anywhere when I purchased mine that had the 80gb version in stock.

I have had this new ipod since Christmas and am pretty dissappointed with it. It seems to have a habit of freezing mid song and then continuing a few seconds later. It also seems to have the inability to find the correct letter on the album search, the click wheel search always seems to bring up albums starting with the letter next to the one actually displayed on the screen.

I queried these faults with apple and actually sent the ipod away only to get it returned and told there was nothing wrong with it (they actually said the ipod passed all their tests).

It seems that apple will only fix ipods that have a fault that fits into their 5 specific categories of faults (none of which my fault fitted into). I now appear to be stuck with a glitchy ipod which apple aftercare will not do anything about...great.

Everything about Apple's products oozes effortless beauty and quality throughout and the new iPod continue this tradition. From the moment the iPod is placed in your hands you know you are handling something special. The packaging is a pleasure to use and open and this continues as you use the product. The simplicity and beauty do not diminish but rather aid the use and function of the iPod.

This is my third iPod and I have never been let down or had cause to look at any alternative.

If there is one thing lacking (and it's the only thing I have come across after 2 months of use) it is the cloth sleeve of previous models. This never did anything other than protect against light scratches so is not a great loss but my advice is order a protective case at the same time to keep those looks that you spend your hard on money on.

160 gigabytes sounds a lot better than 80 gigabytes but hold on there a minute, unless you intend to use this great piece of kit for storing large numbers of videos or as a portable hard-disk back up for your PC is there any real point to all that extra memory. 80 gigabytes will take a huge music collection (well over 10,000 tracks even at higher 256 or 320 kbps recording levels) plus an equally huge photograph collection. And, of course, the new 80 gigabyte version is much thinner and cheaper. Time for a bit of thought before shelling out the extra dosh...

i have had my ipod classic for 7 months now but because i bought an i touch soon afterwards i have barely used it. The ipod screen all of a sudden developped a massive white line, probably a row of dead pixels that cannot be fixed by resetting or upgrading its software. I have looked at forums and loads of other people have had this problem too. I am sending mine back. Unfortunately they send you a refurbished one, not a new one or your original one repaired.

Their support sucks, I went to the apple store today and they made me wait an hour and a half before they sent me home saying they couldnt deal with my repair today. It is their faulty product, THEY SHOULD be apologising to their customers and do the best they can to accomodate them rather than have you chase them around and waste your money and time to go into central london to repair a bad product they have sold you. Really unhelpful and rude customer service and not even an apology for the break down of my product even tho it's almost as fresh as just out of the box They asked me to book an appointment for another day but i'll be damned if i spend my time or money to travel back into central london AGAIN for a process that will literally take them 2 seconds. Cause basically all they do is take a look at it and give you another one, problem solved in 5 secs. A member of the staff when i dared complain told me "are you aware sir that we are the busiest store in the world ?" Make your own minds up about apple's care for its customers


UPDATE

I got me refurbished ipod back from the repair centre today. I plugged it in and a red cross appears on the screen. The ipod is frozen, can't reset it or charge it or plug it in or anything.
Apple are surely taking the piss

UPDATE

So it seems i was sent a faulty product as a repair to my original faulty product. It has a faulty hard drive and needs to be taken back again!!!!
I am leaving in 1 week for a 2 month holiday, does Apple think its customers have nothing better to do than play this sending back and forth game simply because they aren't resposible enough to provide a reliable service/product?


UPDATE

apple just sent me back my ipod saying it passed all its tests and found no faults with it
i took my ipod to a friends computer and tried uploading mp3s from his collection. Again the same problem!!! As soon as it hits 33Gb it freezes and doesnt upload anymore. It cant be that both computers and both music collections are faulty, clearly this must be a hard drive problem. What am i supposed to do now that apple refuses to repair it?
I have paid a heap amount of money for a 160GB ipod which as soon as it hits 33Gb it freezes.
What am i supposed to do??????????????

If you go on apple's support page you will finf 557 pages (!!!!!) of probelms with the ipod classic