Sift and Sort

There are only three kinds of iPods available at the moment, and there's not much to choose between them. In the 'Shortlist' section below, we cover how you might choose between them given your own requirements. Meanwhile, we've plumped for the Apple iPod nano - 8GB - Black because:

• Likely to have a longer life than the iPod Video, which has an HDD
• We can have more than one playlist
• More control over the music downloaded from iTunes than with an iPod Shuffle
• Biggest memory available for a non-HDD iPod

Here are some snippets from Amazon reviews:

'Such a cool little thing and so light!'
'You won't be dissapointed with this player, best on the market'
'It's amazingly tiny, it's light, it looks great and 8gb really is more than enough for most people.'
'I have no problems with volume level options ... I like music LOUD'
'The material is lovely, the interface is as usual intuitive and simple, works perfectly'

Shortlist

There are only three iPod models available at the moment (iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano and iPod Video), albeit in a range of colours and song capacities. So, we've put all of them into the shortlist.

Press

to go to the product page on Amazon.co.uk.

	Sales Rank	Reviews	Price(£)
Apple iPod shuffle 1GB Silver	123		25.99
Apple iPod shuffle - 1GB Blue	10736		59.97
Apple iPod shuffle 1GB Green	13940		65.40

We update these details from Amazon.co.uk every hour.

The iPod Shuffle is the baby of the iPod family. It is physically tiny, at less than 2" x 1" x ½", and almost weightless at 16g. It's a good job that the iPod Shuffle comes in bright colours, so that it stands out when you're looking for it! The iPod Shuffle has no moving parts, and has a rugged aluminium case. So although it is the baby of the iPod family, it's also the strongest, and is ideal for anybody who moves around a lot. Runners should buy an iPod Shuffle. All iPod Shuffle models come with 1Gb of Flash memory, which holds up to 240 songs - or about 12 hours of music. The battery lasts for 12 hours too, when fully charged.

The main drawback is that if your music library has more than 240 songs(more than about 20 albums), you won't be able to fit it onto the iPod Shuffle. As it has no screen, there's no way for you to choose from several playlists when you're on the move, so it only lets you have one. Then it can get a bit boring, ploughing through the 240 in the same sequence, hence the iPod can choose from the 240 songs at random (hence the 'shuffle'). If you have more than 240 songs in your iTunes, you can either let the iPod Shuffle choose the 240 songs at random, or you can manually load the device. The iPod Shuffle doesn't have an Equalizer, so you have to put up with the sound that it serves up

The iPod Nano is the next model up, about three times bigger than the iPod Shuffle - although, interestingly, it's only 70% of the thickness of the iPod Shuffle. Like the iPod Shuffle, the iPod Nano has Flash memory. The iPod Nano comes with a 1½" LCD colour screen, so you can easily select what the iPod Nano plays for you. This LCD screen is probably the physically weakest part of the iPod Nano, so we'd say that it isn't quite so robust as the iPod Shuffle. However, it doesn't have any moving parts either, so it's still pretty robust. We'd choose this to enliven our commuting experience.

The iPod Nano comes in three memory sizes: the 2Gb Silver iPod Nano; the 4Gb Silver, Pink, Green or Blue iPod Nano; and the 8Gb Black iPod Nano. Apple seem to be pitching black as the cool colour, with silver being naff. The iPod Nano stores 250 songs per Gb, so you get:

• 500 songs on the 2Gb iPod Nano
• 1000 songs on the 4Gb iPod Nano
• 2000 songs on the 8Gb iPod Nano

You get an Equalizer and four games with the iPod Nano. The iPod Nano gives you 24 hours' battery life, easily the best of the iPod models.

The iPod Video is the fifth generation HDD iPod. It comes in black or white. The Apple marketing pitch on 'black is cool' is obviously working, because the black iPod Video models are outselling the white ones. The 30Gb HDD is expensive on battery life, you only getting 14 hours from a full charge, whereas you get 20 for the 80Gb model. The main benefit of the iPod Video over the other models is the memory size:

• 7,500 songs on the 30Gb iPod Nano
• 20,000 songs on the 80Gb iPod Nano

The iPod Video comes with a 2½" LCD screen, so if you're slightly mad you can watch videos on it. Frankly, we say go for the iPod Nano or iPod Shuffle unless you have a gigantic music collection.