I’m thinking of getting a 4gig Nano. The adds say it can hold 1000 songs. I assume that’s an estimate, but…
My entire CD collection comes in at around 3.8 gig according to iTunes. But that’s more than 1000 songs. Will it all fit on the Nano, or is there a “cutoff” at 1000 songs regardless of memory space?
There’s no set limit on the number of songs that I know of. Even if there was, it’d certainly a lot higher than 1000. So, if your collection isn’t bigger than the Nano’s capacity, it’ll work.
However, it looks like the 4GB nano’s actual capacity is 3.7GB, so it looks like your music won’t quite fit. link
The estimate seems to be common to most MP3 players that I’ve seen, and I think they work it like this: 128kbps = 960kB / minute, which is about 1MB per minute. Assume around 4 minutes for most songs, and voila! 1000 songs in your 4GB.
Of course, it is just as estimate, but it’s roughly right, from what I’ve seen.
The above answers are all correct; I just wanted to chime in as the new owner of a 2 GB Nano. The thing will hold any quantity of songs up to the memory limit, but of course the formatted capacity is less; my 2GB model shows a capacity of 1.8 GB. As mentioned, the AAC format will take up less than MP3 (I believe iTunes can convert). No idea what happens when iTunes tries to sync and the iPod runs out of memory (I’ve put 286 songs on mine so far, and still have only used a bit more than half its capacity).