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Product: MP3/video player

Developer: Apple

Minimum Requirements: Macintosh with USB port (USB 2.0 recommended) and Mac OS X v10.3.9, or PC with USB port (USB 2.0 recommended) and Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2

Retail Price: $299.00 (30GB); $399.00 (60GB)

Availability: Out now

Let's just get right to it. I love the new iPods not only for how they look and how they play, but for the potential they have, as well. Here's a device with the ability to blow up the music video and television industries, and I think that's just fantastic. The pickings are slim at the moment, but as the number of available TV shows and music videos grows, of course I'm going to download them. For the amount of TV I watch, paying to download only what I want would save quite a bit of money over my $60 a month cable bill.

But, I won't let this review turn into yet another tirade against the entertainment industry. I'll focus on what matters, here, and what matters is that Apple has released the most useful, most powerful and most glamorous iPod yet. Well, maybe "glamorous" isn't the right word, but dictionary.com is telling me that "showoffable" isn't a word, and "presentable" is selling the iPod short. Also, I absolutely refuse to use the word "sexy" when describing computer equipment. That's just weird.

So, glamorous. Of all the iPods I've owned or reviewed, this is the first that people actually want to look at. Sure, the 1G iPod drew attention, but only because it was something new. My 3G gets reaction from its name only (as in, "Oh, you have one of those iPods? Let me take a look at that."), while the iPod shuffle gets a few seconds of attention only because it's so small. In fact, its tiny size hurts the appeal of the iPod because most people to whom I show it don't take it seriously as an MP3 player...and they shouldn't. I still say the Shuffle is fairly useless.

But the new 5G iPods, now there's an MP3 player of wonder. As I mentioned in my initial thoughts on the device, my coworkers were amazed at the quality of the video. As the iPod displays a slide show of my daughter, relatives pass the iPod around as it were Sophie herself. And why not? The video quality is amazing. The 2.5-inch (diagonal) 65,000-color QVGA transflective LCD screen is quite sharp, and can display H.264 video (up to 768 Kbps, 320x240 resolution) and MPEG-4 video (up to 2.5 Mbps, 480x480 resolution) at 30 frames per second. Not sure what all of that means? Don't worry about it, I won't bore you with the details (some of which I don't understand, myself). What you should do is take your cell phone with video capabilities down to the local iPod retailer and compare the screens. You'll see what I mean.

Although the 60GB is a tad larger than the 30GB, both are no larger than you've come to expect. In fact, the 30GB is no wider than my 3G iPod, but it is thinner. Even the 60GB is 10 percent thinner than the 4G 20GB iPod. Quite impressive. Battery life is longer, too, depending upon how you use it. Apple claims up to 14 hours of music on the 30GB and 20 hours on the 60GB before recharging, but I'm guessing that this is assuming the backlit LED screen is dimmed that whole time. When it brightens so you can clearly read everything, the battery drains much more quickly. You only get three hours of slideshow playback on the 30GB, after all, as Apple claims (four hours on the 60GB), and a mere two hours of video playback (three on the 60GB). So, although you can squeeze a full cross-county's flight worth of music of it, you'd better hope one of the in-flight movies is good, because you won't get to watch much on your iPod.

You can set how long the screen stays lit after you're done issuing commands, and I recommend keeping that period very low. As long as you're in a well lit room, you'll still be able to read the screen well enough to see what's playing. When the battery is empty, you'll need four hours to recharge it to capacity, two hours to get it back up to about 80%. Remember that it's recommended you completely drain the battery about once a month and let it fully recharge, as this will apparently improve the life of the battery.

Unfortunately, it's not as easy to recharge as in the past. Although the 5G iPod does ship with a USB 2.0 cable, it's not nearly as useful as the Dock that shipped with my 3G iPod. Apple's Universal Dock is compatible, but it's also an additional $39.00. If you're able to hang on a bit, certainly there'll be cheaper alternatives that will probably offer greater functionality. As they arrive, we'll certainly be posting reviews.

The same goes for cases. Right now, there aren't a lot of options, although quite a few will hit the stores before the Christmas shopping season. Some are available now (or for pre-order) from the Think Different Store. Check out what's available and see if it's better than the little case Apple includes...which I'm pretty sure is the kind of thing my daughter will be making at Brownies Camp in a few years.

And how about the videos? How do they look? On the iPod screen, they look just fine. Small, but fine. If you're watching music videos where detail isn't really important, no trouble. If you you're watching a TV show, however, where you may want to see facial expressions and where scenery makes a difference, you'll probably want to hook your iPod up to the TV (courtesy of the Universal Dock or third-party device, sold separately). The image isn't nearly as sharp, there, however. I believe it was David Pogue who compared the quality to that of watching a VHS tape versus a DVD. I'd check David's review, but I'm not willing to register with the New York Times to do it. Sorry, David. Still, whether it came from him or someone else, it's an apt comparison. Perhaps with future firmware updates, the quality will improve. We'll see, but I think it's more important that the selection of videos improves.

I lament the loss of FireWire, if only because I have more FireWire ports open than I do USB ports, and I'm not sure I get why the 5G iPods don't have plastic covers for the Dock port on the bottom of the device. Apple sure does make some weird decisions sometimes, but no matter. The new iPods with video are exciting. They're useful. They've got tremendous potential as the downloadable video market continues to grow, and they're fun to show off. It'll be fun to watch what's made available for these new iPods in the coming year or two. In the meantime, while you're waiting for Family Guy to be added to iTunes Video, the capacity for 7,500 to 15,000 songs should keep you entertained.