Here’s my situation. I’ve had a 30GB iPod for a little more than three years. It functions just fine – I primarily use it when I’m in my car (plugged into my stereo system), in my office at work plugged into my computer, or when I travel out of town. In other words, my iPod is generally being used in one form or another every day.
Although it works mostly fine, I’ve been bumping up against the 30GB limit for well over a year. I’ve got about 45GB of music on my computer, and although I don’t add new music very often, when I do, I’ve got to shuffle things around on my iPod to make it fit. It’s just kind of annoying.
I worked some fairly heavy overtime during my last pay period, and while most of that money is earmarked for savings or other needs, I’ve decided to probably treat myself to a new iPod. But, the question is which one to get? My options seem to be either the 64GB iPod Touch, or the 160GB iPod Classic.
Now, the Touch seems like a really neat toy, and the 64GB should be more than enough to keep me busy for a while. However, it goes for nearly $130 more than the Classic on Amazon, and I’m not sure the bonuses that the Touch offers (games, email, etc.) are worthwhile for me since I also have a Motorola Android as my phone. From my brief glimpses, the 'Droid already gives me every advantage that the Touch would have over the Classic.
So I’m looking for your opinions. Am I missing something about the Touch that would make it worth spending the extra money? Or should I just save a little cash and take the Classic option with more storage than I should ever need? What else am I not considering?
If you’re going to use your new iPod mainly as a music player, then you may as well stick to the iPod Classic. The Touch is not as easy to control in iPod mode as a Classic. On a Touch, if you want to skip a track, you have to touch the screen once to wake it up, then touch the skip ahead icon on the screen. On a Classic, you can do this with one touch, without having to look at the device.
I currently have three iPods - Nano, Classic and Touch. (And an Android phone.)
The Nano gets used most often, primarily for listening to podcasts and audiobooks. It’s light, compact and easy to use. It also has some of my favorite music, but not a lot because there isn’t much storage left after I sync all my audiobooks and podcats.
The Classic is my music player, primarily for use at the office. It has my entire music library (currently about 60GB). I take it home about once a week to sync any new music I may have ripped or purchased.
I rarely use my Touch. I carry it when traveling out of town, to watch video files when traveling by air and also to serve as my backup/spare iPod. But that’s about it, I could easily do without it. It’s neat to be able to use iPhone apps, but I too have an Android phone so I hardly ever use those functionalities on the iPod Touch.
I’m kind of an idiot about charging my phone sometimes. If the music dies on the iPod because I run it out, no big deal. I don’t want to give myself a reason to unexpectedly drain the battery on my phone, though.
I haven’t actually tried using the Droid’s player while driving, to be honest. I don’t know how easy or difficult that would be. But as mentioned above, the Classic has one-click navigation with tactile feedback. My Droid has the auto-lock turned on, so at the very least, I’d have to slide to unlock the screen first, and then I’d have only the touch screen to work with, which makes it harder to negotiate without looking at it.
I also am wondering about a new i-pod. I have an three year old 80 GB classic that is 80% full.
I have already exceeded the touch’s capacity but I would love the larger screen for videos. Some of the Apps look cool but I can’t uses those on my classic.
If your phone can give you the benefits of a touch, then yeah I would go with a classic. I picked a touch but I picked that because I do not have a smartphone and the games, wifi capacity and other features of the touch gave me a smartphone w/o the phone.
I would wait until the 4th generation of ipod touch comes out soon. The biggest one is supposed to have 128GB of flash memory as opposed to the 64GB the current generation has. However that model will likely cost $300-400 or so.
I have an iPhone and an iPod Classic. I pretty much only listen to music on the iPod, despite the fact that I have my phone with me all the time. As others have mentioned, the controls are much easier to deal with. I’m really not a fan of touch screens for that application. The screen is bigger and the graphics are prettier, but that really isn’t any benefit when listening to music. Also, the iPhone isn’t nearly big enough to hold all of my music, and it seems that no matter how carefully I curate the collection on the iPhone (a chore I don’t find particularly enjoyable), I always end up wanting to listen to something that didn’t make it. IMHO, the iPhone isn’t a particularly good iPod.
ETA: I just realized, I misspoke slightly. I do listen to music on the phone, but it’s with SiriusXM or Pandora, not my own music files. So, if you’re interested in those options, the Touch might be better, but you can stream music on the Droid anyway (not sure about SiriusXM, but at least Pandora).
They’re horrible. The Droid’s music player sucks to begin with. You can’t easily synchronize playlists, it’s hard to scroll to a particular artist or song, etc. The touchpad buttons are tiny even in portrait mode and they’re too close together, making accidental pushes too easy. The wake-up button is a tiny thing recessed into one corner of the phone that’s hard to push.
All of that makes it a very poor music player. Trying to operate it while the car is stopped at a light is hard enough, much less when you’re driving and the phone is shaking from the road. The lack of physical buttons means that you have to keep your eyes on the phone, not the road, to do any sort of interaction. I’ve taken to this sort of cross-eyed phone-above-steering-wheel peripheral-vision mode of operation that probably isn’t very safe.
I tried getting a car mount, and while that increased visibility for GPS purposes, it made the music functions that much harder to use (because now I have to reach across and fingertip-poke at the tiny buttons instead of being able to grip the phone).
There would be a very easy solution: A music player app just for driving with much bigger, always-on buttons. I couldn’t find one the last time I checked.
I’ve got an iPod Touch and love it… but I don’t own a Droid or other smartphone.
Our iPod Touch is a 64gig model. We got our entire music library on it, a good chunk of the videos, and quite a few apps, and it’s perhaps half full.
Given that you do own a Droid, you really don’t need the pocket-computer aspects of it. In your situation, I’d go with the Classic. The advice from someone else, to wait a month, is good though - chances are good they’ll announce a new one fairly soon.
I’ve had an iPod Touch for about 2.4 years, and I used it every chance I got, almost exclusively for listening to podcasts.
Then about six months ago I thought I’d give my son’s old Shuffle a try - it’s the second generation one that’s about the size of a small book of matches, and has the built-in clip. Since I started with the Shuffle, I’ve hardly touched the Touch. The big reason is the one you mentioned - lack of controls on the Touch without turning on the screen. With my older Touch, you can’t do anything without turning on the screen. I understand the newer models will let you adjust the volume with external buttons, but that’s not enough. You also need to have an easy way to play/pause. Plus, the shuffle is so small that I can clip it on my shirt or pants while I’m doing any other activity, while the Touch is too bulky and heavy to use while running for example.
I still use the Touch occasionally, mainly for the iBird app, the 42s RPN calculator, or a quick way to check the web or email. But it’s the shuffle that I use 95% of the time. And my kids play some games on it.
Thanks for all the comments. And if you have more, please share them.
In the meanwhile, I think I’ve decided to wait. I’m having a hard time pulling the trigger on a $200-$300 purchase, even when I have the money, to replace a device that is still fully functional, even if it’s occasionally annoying – particularly when a bigger and better one may be on the way. I’m not in any hurry, it seems.
I guess I’ve had my Touch for a bit over a year, since my old iPod died. Skipping songs was a pain since, as mentioned, you have to wake it up. Then I found how to make it not go to sleep. It draws more power, leaving it on, but the way I use it it doesn’t matter. It’s about a seven minute walk from the bus stop to the office (or the other way), and maybe 15 or 20 minutes waiting on/riding the bus. At the office I pop it into my mini-boom box. Once I made a 400-mile round-trip, and played the Touch through the car’s stereo (with a cassette adapter) the entire way. I did put the display to sleep for long stretches, though. Since I bought a USB power adapter, I can listen to the Touch without putting it to sleep for as long as I want.
What I like about the touch (aside from the display – my old iPod was black & white text) is the wireless Internet connectivity. If I had a headset, I could use it as a telephone with Skype and a hotspot.
Johnny, there are headphones that have a button on the cord that allow you to skip forward a song, jump back a song and pause it, all while the iPhone/Touch is asleep, just in case you hadn’t seen them available.
Forgot to add earlier: I still use my regular iPod (a 4th generation Nano) sometimes. Mostly at night - I’ve found that if I have a nighttime wakeup, I sometimes start thinking about stressful stuff and that makes me wake up fully. So I’ll plug in one earbud, start a podcast - and go right back to sleep. The Nano works better for that in that it stops after the podcast episode ends (the Touch will play that episode, and every other episode in the same series). It’s also good as a backup for long driving trips in case the Touch’s battery runs down.