Apple's fourth-generation iPod touch finally gets a camera for HD video recording, and still-photo capture. Plus a second, front-facing camera brings FaceTime video chat to the touch. On the new high-res Retina display, everything looks crisp and colorful, and the screen remains highly responsive to touch. Apple eliminated video playback from its sixth-generation iPod nano($149, 
), making the touch the least-expensive video-playing iPod. Starting at $229 (direct, 8GB), however, it's not cheap, and that isn't much storage for an HD video device. The $299 32GB player seems like the best deal, while the 64GB model offers twice the storage, but remains exorbitantly priced at $399. Despite the cost, the iPod touch remains, by far, the best portable media player you can buy—and it retains our Editors' Choice crown.
More), making the touch the least-expensive video-playing iPod. Starting at $229 (direct, 8GB), however, it's not cheap, and that isn't much storage for an HD video device. The $299 32GB player seems like the best deal, while the 64GB model offers twice the storage, but remains exorbitantly priced at $399. Despite the cost, the iPod touch remains, by far, the best portable media player you can buy—and it retains our Editors' Choice crown.Design
Apple put the iPod touch on a diet, yet again—at 3.6 ounces, it w
Apple put the iPod touch on a diet, yet again—at 3.6 ounces, it w
In the box, you'll find a Quick Start Guide, a proprietary USB cable for connecting the touch to your computer, and a pair of Apple signature earbuds. It's a good idea to upgrade those bass-deprived, ill-fitting earbuds to earphones, and our Ultimate Guide to Headphones is a good place to start your search for the right pair.
User Interface
iOS 4 is a joy to behold. Things move quickly and smoothly, and they look great. Navigating almost all of the player's menus requires only icon tapping, but when text- or password-entry are required the on-screen keyboard swiftly appears and is, after some practice, a piece of cake to use. The horizontal keyboard is wider and easier to use for most people. Just as it is on the iPhone, it automatically switches orientation depending upon how you hold the player. And there's an accelerometer lock—scroll far left under the active apps menu to find its icon—press it to enable the feature. Moving and organizing icons is a snap, and multitasking is as simple as double-clicking on the Home button to see what other apps you currently have running and tapping an icon to return to an app, which will appear in the state you last left it. If you are familiar with the iPhone, you already know this.
iOS 4 is a joy to behold. Things move quickly and smoothly, and they look great. Navigating almost all of the player's menus requires only icon tapping, but when text- or password-entry are required the on-screen keyboard swiftly appears and is, after some practice, a piece of cake to use. The horizontal keyboard is wider and easier to use for most people. Just as it is on the iPhone, it automatically switches orientation depending upon how you hold the player. And there's an accelerometer lock—scroll far left under the active apps menu to find its icon—press it to enable the feature. Moving and organizing icons is a snap, and multitasking is as simple as double-clicking on the Home button to see what other apps you currently have running and tapping an icon to return to an app, which will appear in the state you last left it. If you are familiar with the iPhone, you already know this.
Camera
Equipping the iPod touch with two cameras takes it to a new level. The rear-facing camera records video in HD (720p), up to 30fps, capturing audio through the rear panel mic. Still photos max out at 960 by 720 pixels. The front-facing camera, intended for FaceTime video chat, offers lower resolutions: VGA-quality for photos and videos, again, up to 30fps.
Equipping the iPod touch with two cameras takes it to a new level. The rear-facing camera records video in HD (720p), up to 30fps, capturing audio through the rear panel mic. Still photos max out at 960 by 720 pixels. The front-facing camera, intended for FaceTime video chat, offers lower resolutions: VGA-quality for photos and videos, again, up to 30fps.
Camera operation couldn't be more intuitive. An onscreen slide control toggles between still and video camera modes, and an icon in the lower left takes you to your gallery, where you can peruse your photos and videos. Video footage plays back onscreen with a scroll tool that shows a thumbnail timeline of your footage, making skipping to a certain spot easy. You can trim your footage on the player by dragging your finder over the thumbnail timeline of the footage and selecting segments to cut, but we were only able to do very basic editing because the iMovie app was not available for iPod touch prior to publishing this review. (Apple expects it to be available soon.)
Capturing video is achieved by pressing the red record button onscreen when in video camera mode, and tapping it again to end recording. The screen acts as your viewfinder and everything moves along in real time without stuttering. Low-light situations will make for some noisy footage, but in well-lit scenarios, the touch's video looks colorful and crisp. Uploading your video to YouTube or sending it as an e-mail attachment, provided you have a Wi-Fi connection, is made easy with a button in the lower left-hand corner of the screen that walks you through a streamlined process to do either.
For the most part, still images are impressive for a non-dedicated, low-resolution camera, but the biggest shortcoming is the absence of a flash, which makes low-light—particularly back-lit—scenarios rather challenging. You get 5x digital zoom for photos, which is activated by moving the slider on the screen above the on-screen shutter button, but zooming in creates noticeable artifacts. Landscape shots in adequate lighting look amazingly sharp, and well-lit portraits look fantastic provided, again, that you don't zoom in too far. Like videos, photos can be sent out immediately via e-mail, or you can assign a photo to be your new wallpaper or a friend's contact photo, all by pressing the lower left-hand button when viewing your image.
FaceTime
Since the iPod touch is not a phone, it can't use phone numbers for FaceTime video chats, instead, it uses e-mail addresses. iOS 4.1, which enables e-mail address use in FaceTime, wasn't publicly available before we published this review, so I was only able to test the feature with reps from Apple. That said, I was using my home Wi-Fi network in New York City while video chatting with them in their Cupertino offices, and was blown away by the results. Images were crisp and clear, and I could understand everything my chat partner was saying, and never was a call dropped.
Since the iPod touch is not a phone, it can't use phone numbers for FaceTime video chats, instead, it uses e-mail addresses. iOS 4.1, which enables e-mail address use in FaceTime, wasn't publicly available before we published this review, so I was only able to test the feature with reps from Apple. That said, I was using my home Wi-Fi network in New York City while video chatting with them in their Cupertino offices, and was blown away by the results. Images were crisp and clear, and I could understand everything my chat partner was saying, and never was a call dropped.
Audio and Video
Navigating the music menus on the iPod touch is completely intuitive. First off, there are so many ways to do it—using CoverFlow, searching Artist or Song, or perusing playlists. Apple has made everything fast and easy—scroll song or artist lists by dragging a finger or skip ahead to a letter on the scrollable alphabet on the right side of the screen. The Now Playing view is a showcase for album art, and you can play music while you surf the Web, view photos, or even play games.
Navigating the music menus on the iPod touch is completely intuitive. First off, there are so many ways to do it—using CoverFlow, searching Artist or Song, or perusing playlists. Apple has made everything fast and easy—scroll song or artist lists by dragging a finger or skip ahead to a letter on the scrollable alphabet on the right side of the screen. The Now Playing view is a showcase for album art, and you can play music while you surf the Web, view photos, or even play games.
By itself, the iPod touch is a fine audio device—plug in a pair of good-quality headphones and you won't be disappointed with the frequency range and overall audio quality. To my continuing disappointment, Apple still offers its stock, subpar earbuds, while rival manufacturers like Samsung and Sony instead bundle decent-quality earphones. Audiophiles listening to Lossless tracks on the touch will be best served by leaving the EQ off. The settings Apple provides are presets, there's still no user-customizable EQ. Extra features like Shake to Shuffle, Volume Limit, and Sound Check can all be enabled or disabled easily.
The iTunes Store can be accessed via Wi-Fi for on-the-spot music and video purchases, and with new 99-cent TV show rentals, watching television content, albeit from limited partners, is now more affordable, as well. Video looks amazing on the new display. YouTube and Netflix will not look as sharp as video purchased from the iTunes Store, of course, but the speed with which video can be cued up without stuttering is impressive. Obviously, this is dependent, like many things on the iPod touch, on the strength of your Wi-Fi signal.
File support remains similar to past models. For audio, supported codecs include AAC (protected and unprotected), HE-AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF and WAV. Still no FLAC, which is still a bummer for audiophiles. For video, the player can handle H.264 up to 720p30, MPEG-4 up to 640 by 480 at 30fps, and motion JPEG. Also, if you use the Dock Connector to VGA Adapter (not included), you can play 1024 by 268 H.264 files. JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSD (Mac only) and PNG photo files are supported.
The touch integrates Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, though 802.11n only operates on the 2.4GHz band. Nike+ iPod support is also included for those who want to use the touch to help keep in shape.
Gaming and Apps
With the addition of FaceTime as well as Ping, the music-focused, social-networking feature for iTunes 10, it's clear that Apple wants the iPod experience to be a social one. And now there's Game Center, a new feature that encourages you to find a friend—either someone you know or a stranger with an iPod touch or an iPhone—to play real-time games. Your success (or failure) earns you a ranking you can use for bragging rights or to seek out opponents with similar skill levels. Unfortunately, during our review period, Game Center wasn't yet populated with games, but we'll test it as soon as it's up and running.
With the addition of FaceTime as well as Ping, the music-focused, social-networking feature for iTunes 10, it's clear that Apple wants the iPod experience to be a social one. And now there's Game Center, a new feature that encourages you to find a friend—either someone you know or a stranger with an iPod touch or an iPhone—to play real-time games. Your success (or failure) earns you a ranking you can use for bragging rights or to seek out opponents with similar skill levels. Unfortunately, during our review period, Game Center wasn't yet populated with games, but we'll test it as soon as it's up and running.
Meanwhile, the App Store, which is accessed via Wi-Fi, is loaded with single-player, accelerometer-driven games like Zombie Highway, for example, that look fantastic on the Retina display. There are more than 250,000 apps with a range far too wide to detail here. If you're familiar with the iPhone or iPod touches past, you know the possibilities are endless.
Web and E-Mail
Surfing in Safari on the iPod touch remains the best Internet experience on any portable media player out there. Last year's Zune HD ($219.99,
) came closest, but it still didn't quite match up. Some competitors, like Archos with its Archos 7 Home Tablet ($199.99, 
), have started testing the tablet markets, but even those browsers, with their larger screens, are no match for the simplicity and speed of the Safari multi-touch experience on the touch. Given Apple's stance on Flash support, you shouldn't expect it on any iPod or iPhone anytime soon, and that's the single advantage competing mobile browsers can offer.
Surfing in Safari on the iPod touch remains the best Internet experience on any portable media player out there. Last year's Zune HD ($219.99,
) came closest, but it still didn't quite match up. Some competitors, like Archos with its Archos 7 Home Tablet ($199.99, ), have started testing the tablet markets, but even those browsers, with their larger screens, are no match for the simplicity and speed of the Safari multi-touch experience on the touch. Given Apple's stance on Flash support, you shouldn't expect it on any iPod or iPhone anytime soon, and that's the single advantage competing mobile browsers can offer.E-mail remains easy to customize and use—AOL, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Exchange, and mobileMe remain options in the mail section. iOS 4 allows for multiple accounts to be synced via Exchange—a new development. So while Gmail won't push mail independently, you can set it up—along with other accounts—via Exchange to push notifications to the iPod's home screen. (AOL, MobileMe, and Yahoo push messaged without the aid of Exchange.) Currently, there's no iWork app for the iPod touch so you can't download attached documents, though you can view them. But that's likely to change.
Battery Life and Conclusions
Apple rates the battery life for the iPod touch at an impressive 40 hours for audio and seven hours for video. We ran three different battery rundown tests. With Wi-Fi on, and the screen constantly on (meaning Auto-Lock is disabled) and audio playing, we got a reasonable four hours and 25 minutes. With Wi-Fi off and the screen going dark (Auto-Lock set to one minute), we got a great result: 47 hours and 25 minutes. For video playback with the screen brightness at maximum and with no Wi-Fi on, we got one hour and 41 minutes--not enough time to watch a full movie, in most cases. Using lower brightness levels would seem to be necessary for extended video playback.
Apple rates the battery life for the iPod touch at an impressive 40 hours for audio and seven hours for video. We ran three different battery rundown tests. With Wi-Fi on, and the screen constantly on (meaning Auto-Lock is disabled) and audio playing, we got a reasonable four hours and 25 minutes. With Wi-Fi off and the screen going dark (Auto-Lock set to one minute), we got a great result: 47 hours and 25 minutes. For video playback with the screen brightness at maximum and with no Wi-Fi on, we got one hour and 41 minutes--not enough time to watch a full movie, in most cases. Using lower brightness levels would seem to be necessary for extended video playback.
There are very few devices left that you can actually compare directly with the iPod touch. Many manufacturers have thrown in the towel and are taking on slightly less daunting targets, like the nano or the shuffle ($49, 
), or are instead focusing on tablets. The only real problem with the touch is its high price—especially if you want a decent amount of storage. But with an entry point of $229, you do get a camera, HD video recorder, music and video player, portable gaming console, Web browser, e-mail, and app device in one slick, pocket-size package. There's just no other portable media player that can do what the iPod touch can do.
), or are instead focusing on tablets. The only real problem with the touch is its high price—especially if you want a decent amount of storage. But with an entry point of $229, you do get a camera, HD video recorder, music and video player, portable gaming console, Web browser, e-mail, and app device in one slick, pocket-size package. There's just no other portable media player that can do what the iPod touch can do.
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