I got this amazing little music player as a gift from my friend. It was a Apple refurbished one. But it works like new only. Never faced any sort of problem with the player. Details of Pros and Cons of the Shuffle are given below.
Total Use: 20 Months of use till date(10.Jul.2008)
Pros:
Small size and the Clip: Shuffle’s small size makes it very handy to carry. The clip feature of the device really helps in clipping it to any part of your cloth. It is so light weighted that you will never feel any problem in cliping the player to your cloth. Grab of the clip is also very good and tight and hence you dont have to be afraid of loosing it anywhere unknowningly.
Ease of use: It is very easy to use this player. You can move through your songs i.e. Rewind\Forward\Next\Previous\Stop\Pause songs, increase\decrease volume very easily. It is so easy to handle that you don’t even have to look at the device to use the functions.
Shuffle Mode: You can use the toggle switch given at the side of the device to play all your songs either sequentially or in shuffled manner.
Battery Indicator: Shuffle provides aBattery indicator which changes color depending on your players battery level. So, you can always recharge your battery when you see a low battery level. Battery is not replaceable but till now I have never faced any issue with the battery of the player. It gives a consistent almost 12-14 hrs of continous play back without any hickup.
Data\Music Space: You can devide the memory of the shuffle to store your personal data separately from your music store.
6.Sound Quality: Undoubtedly, shuffle gives one of the best sound quality output available from any mp3 player today in the market. Sound is very clear and quality is just awesome. I recently bought a BOSS earphone to use with my apple shuffle, and I just started loving all my shuffle musics more than ever before. Even the earphone provided by the apple with the player is good enough till the rubbers are worn out.
- Price: Now in the market it comes around 2000 INR which is a very reasonable price for such a beautifully designed little wonder.
*Cons:
1. Earphone Rubber: **After using for one and half year, the rubber in the earphone came out gradually. Once the rubber is out you will find it difficult to adjust the earphone in your ear and it will be painful to use the earphone for a long time. Even a new piece of earphone from apple costs 29$ i.e. a little less than 1200 INR.:(
Battery is not replaceable: As usual Apple ipods dont have a replaceable battery. If damaged, you have to throw your device.(But, my experience says, the inbuilt battery provided is very good and you can buy the player without bothering about this particular disadvantage).
Uploading Music: You can only upload music to your shuffle using the Apple’s iTune software which is available free from Apple site. You cannot just copy paste your songs from your system to iPod shuffle. Initially you will find it tricky to use the iTune to upload your songs to iPod. Once familiar, you can use it very easily and will face no problem after that.
No Video: Dont have the option to store and play video files.
No Folder Option: You cannot keep your songs, in the shuffle, in separate folders according to the Genre or your choice. All songs will be stored in a single place and will be played in a contigous manner or shuffled manner according to your choice.
Synching to the Computer: Apple shuffle, as other apple devices, can only synch to a single system at a time. Once synched to your system, you can copy your songs to your player through iTune. All this songs will not be visible when you connect your player to any other system than to which it is synched. If you want to copy songs from any other sytem to your shuffle you have to synch the shuffle with the new system which will erase all your previous songs and data stored in the shuffle. But you can obviously recharge your apple shuffle from any system without synching the iPod to that system. So, bottom line is, you can copy songs from only one system(might be your personal computer to which it is synched) to your shuffle. You can recharge your Apple shuffle from any system you want without having to synch.
Having said all this, I will say that you can just go and buy a shuffle without any second thought. I am personally very satisfied with the device and still continue to enjoy the excellent quality output of the player. 1 GB shuffle can store appx upto 500 songs depending on the size of your songs.
Hope this will help you in deciding to go for the little wonder in mp3 player.
For review on the 3rd Gen(latest) iPod shuffle, please check out the below link: https://mouthshut.com/review/Apple_iPod-174701-1.html