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iPod shuffle (second-generation)

Leader:

Apple announced the second incarnation of its lowest-end iPod at its widely-anticipated "It's Showtime" event in September. The new shuffle was notably smaller, thinner, and lighter than the original, with the addition of an aluminum case and a built-in clip. The second-generation iPod shuffle was set to ship in October sometime, and after rumors of delays, customers finally started receiving their tiny flash players at the beginning of November with it hitting stores just a few days later.

The 2G shuffle is now only available in 1GB, whereas the previous version came in 512MB and 1GB flavors. It's also cheaper than its first-generation predecessor at $79, while the old shuffle was priced at $99 for the 512MB and $149 for the 1GB versions, making this not only the most affordable shuffle yet, but the most affordable iPod ever.

What's in the package?

The new shuffle's new packaging reflects the new packaging of the iPod nano: it comes in a small, plastic case that suspends the iPod in the middle with all of the extras tucked underneath. The iPod shuffle comes with a USB 2.0 dock with cable, a little packet of instructions with two small Apple stickers, a set of headphones, and foam pads for the earbuds.

Yes, you read that right. Pads for the earbuds. You may remember that the new headphones that Steve Jobs announced at the "It's Showtime" event no longer come with pads, and we confirmed that when we did our review of the second-generation iPod nano. All of that is irrelevant for the shuffle, because the shuffle comes with the old earbuds. Why? We're not entirely sure. Some users have speculated that the old earbuds have a better bass response than the new earbuds, which is easily compensated for by the EQ settings on the iPod nano or full-size iPod, but not on the shuffle since there are no EQ settings. I personally don't find the old earbud style to be as comfortable in my ears as the new style.

Size

The 2G shuffle is pretty darn small. It's 1.07 inches high, 1.62 inches wide, and 0.41 inches deep including the clip. For comparison, the old shuffle was 3.3 inches high, 0.98 inches wide, and 0.33 inches deep, no clip. The old shuffle weighed approximately 0.78 ounces while the new shuffle weighs 0.55 ounces. Since I don't have an original shuffle to compare to and I seem to have misplaced the dismantled casing of the 2G nano, I compared the shuffle to the 1G nano:

The shuffle is just about the size of the iPod nano's screen, or slightly larger.

Dock

The old shuffle moonlighted on the side as a USB thumbdrive that you could plug directly into your computer, so the need for a dock or even a cable was unnecessary. However, Apple has sadly removed this wonderful feature from the iPod shuffle (boo), no longer making it handy as a thumbdrive by itself—it can still be used as an external USB disk (just like all other iPods) when connected to the computer via cable. The new shuffle, because of its lack of thumbdrive-abilities, comes with its very own dock. The dock is nearly as tiny as the shuffle itself and comes with a rubberized bottom to prevent slipping, which is probably necessary due to its size and (lack of) weight to hold it down.

Notice anything interesting about this dock? The 2G iPod shuffle uses the 3.5mm stereo headphone minijack for everything—audio, power, and syncing. It doesn't have the usual iPod connector that we're used to for all other iPods. This could become an annoyance to people who go on the road a lot and will be forced to take a dock while traveling instead of just a cord, or to those crazy iPod fanatics (*ahem*) who own more than one iPod and would like to use just one cable or dock with them all. That "Universal" iPod Connector/Dock? No longer universal.

Usage

The new shuffle has all of the main controls on the wide face of the device, opposite the clip: play/pause, forward, back, and volume up/down. Never having used a shuffle before and being so used to regular iPods or iPod nanos, it took me a second to figure out how to adjust the volume on the shuffle because I wasn't paying attention to the markings on the buttons—this stuff is supposed to be intuitive, you know! The top of the shuffle has an on/off switch, a little LED, and a switch that goes between shuffle mode and regular playing mode. The bottom has nothing but the 3.5mm audio jack.

There is no hold button or switch on this thing, something that baffled me at first. I thought perhaps Apple just wanted me to clip it to the outside of my clothing instead of slipping it in my pocket and be extra careful not to bump the buttons, but after reading up in the instruction booklet, I discovered that I can "hold" the buttons by pressing and holding the play/pause button for three seconds, at which time the LED on the top will flash at me. From then on, all other button presses will be ignored until I repeat the process. This is something I wouldn't have known had I not read the booklet, but whatever, it works.

When docking with the computer, iTunes gives you the option of populating your shuffle with randomly chosen songs from your music library, you can specify a playlist to randomly populate from, or you can manually update songs on the shuffle yourself. Since there is no screen on the shuffle, you can't transfer multiple playlists, and if you choose the auto-populating option, the computer will just fill up the whole 1GB with randomly chosen songs. I had mine repopulate with randomly chosen songs every time I docked it, for variety's sake.

Durability

Well, our readers just won't let us not test the durability of new iPods anymore, it seems. One reader wrote to us and pled, "Come on, you know you want to prove me right and show that the iPod Shuffle Gen 2 is the most resilient and resistant iPod ever made!" All I can say here is: You guys asked for it.

I walked, sat, stood, and rolled for a couple of days with the shuffle, sometimes clipped to my jeans and sometimes in my pocket. Almost needless to say, this produced zero undesirable results and the shuffle lasted just fine—despite some reports that the clip is flimsy and would not be able to withstand this kind of use, I, personally, did not find this to be true.

I then took the shuffle out running with me. Clipped securely to my Ars hoodie, there was basically no danger that the shuffle might fall:

...so I removed it from the hoodie and held it in-hand. After nearly six attempts to drop it with the headphones in my ears, I realized that the shuffle is too lightweight to even detach from the headphones when dropped. It just falls and dangles, never having to come into contact with the cold, hard pavement. I was forced to be creative, so I simply draped the headphones over the back of my neck instead of putting them in my ears and dropped it the shuffle. It hit concrete this time, and when I checked the headphones, it was still playing. Everything functioned as expected.

What happens if you drop a shuffle in, say, a busy park where there are a lot of runners? There is some danger that someone else might step on or run over it before you can warn them to get out of the way. Stepping on the shuffle did nothing, so I decided to run from a distance, making sure that one of my strides landed on top of the fallen shuffle. Now, I'm no tiny geek, so I had some fear that the impact of my foot with all of my weight behind it might do some damage.

Not so. The shuffle was still playing and all controls functioned as expected. The only trace left on the nano was some tread marks from my shoe.

What happens when you drop a little, portable electronic device from say, your third-story balcony? We had requests to do drops from lower heights such as the first and second story, but we didn't have access to anything lower than the third story of an apartment building, so I had to work with what I had. This could potentially happen if you're out on the balcony with some friends, stupidly put your iPod down on the railing, and then someone knocks it off.

I ran downstairs to check on the nano (which I had left connected to the headphones—luckily the cord didn't get caught on a tree branch and my entire review would be foiled). It had hit the sidewalk below with a not-so-pleasant "thwack." I would estimate the fall to be about 35-40 or so feet up (my building has very high ceilings), so this was no little fall. This was the real deal. Some of you may remember that a similar fall is what put the nail in the coffin for the original iPod nano when we did our stress testing on it, but not for the shuffle. Much to my delight, the shuffle survived and was fully-functional, with perhaps just a few dings.

So, say you're at a party and for some reason, you brought your iPod shuffle (hey, somebody's gotta be the wallflower, right?). A cute chick comes over and wants to see it, so you try to show her how cool it is while also displaying how smooth you are. In a freak moment of over-smoothness, you drop the shuffle into your beer. Some of you may think this doesn't happen, but according to my inbox, it does.

I'll just cut to the chase on this one. After rinsing the shuffle out under the sink and setting it out in a warm windowsill to dry overnight, the shuffle was able to turn on, play music, and be fully-functional. Rest assured that the 2G iPod shuffle will survive those wild parties without a hangover, although we can't guarantee that you will.

I knew at this point that there were few, if any, things I could do to this shuffle to kill it. With no screen, such a small body, light form-factor, and being flash-based, there were few things in this little device that could fail. I received suggestions to microwave the little aluminum iPod, but in the interest of not burning down my apartment, I opted to skip that test.

So, I did the only thing left to d from all of the e-mailed suggestions we had received . That's right, kids. I put the 2G iPod shuffle up against, in the words of some famous tech writers somewhere, "the crushing power of German automotive engineering." Unlike last time I did this, there were a fair number of people around and traffic driving by, so I earned a few curious looks as I was trying to set up this experiment. I placed the shuffle in the path of the car—clip side down, control side up—and drove over it with just the front tire.

I got out, picked up the shuffle, and plugged in the headphones. I was sure that I was going to hear music playing... but this was not so. Nothing was happening at all. I turned the shuffle off and back on and pressed the play button again. Still nothing.

I had killed the shuffle.

Why did it die? I'm really not sure. The casing was slightly dented in a few areas, but everything still looked to be mostly intact. My only theory as to why it died from being run over was perhaps the parts of the clip that push up against the body of the shuffle were jammed against the body in a way that put too much pressure on some important component inside, such as the battery. Either way, it was time to move onto the autopsy.

Autopsy

[Clint Clint Clint Clint MUSHROOM MUSHROOM]

Conclusion

The second-generation iPod shuffle is way cooler than its predecessor in most ways. It's smaller, lighter, clips to your clothing, and holds more songs for cheaper than ever. It's also pretty darn durable, although in some respects, it did not last as long as the original iPod nano (then again, neither did the second-generation iPod nano). Not having used or tested the original iPod shuffle, it's difficult to make any comparisons based on personal experience, but it certainly seems that the new shuffle is a welcome improvement over the old.

My one complaint about the 2G shuffle is that it's slightly less intuitive to use than most other iPods. Obviously, its lack of a screen presents some challenges in product design in order to make the shuffle just as usable, and its new, tiny form-factor probably limits the number of switches and buttons that can be crammed onto the exterior. I can understand all that, but I would have still appreciated an actual hold switch somewhere on the body, as well as some easier way to be able to gauge battery life than the flashing color of the LED on the top when I press some combination of buttons. There's an entire guide to status light patterns in the booklet, making it seem more like a Boy Scout guide to morse code than anything at all related to the iPod. I played with this thing for days and I still don't remember what I was supposed to press, what patterns, or what colors I'm supposed to be looking for to identify how much battery life is left, not to mention that some users have complained that the difference in LED colors are so minimal (amber versus green, occasionally red) that anyone who has bad eyes or partial colorblindness may as well just give up from the start.

Basically, what it comes down to is this: The shuffle was harder to figure out without having read the booklet than any other iPod I've used. This is not to say it was impossible by any means, but having to read the booklet was one unexpected extra step that most users do not normally want or have to take when operating an iPod.

Overall, I like it—being a nano afictionado myself, however, I'll probably stick to the nano. Shuffle fans will probably welcome the change. The significantly lower price for 1GB of space, smaller form factor, and general durability earn it a solid 7. [Tell me what you think about this]

Pros:

• Best value iPod yet
• Can survive nearly any real world situation
• Lightweight and small enough that you can clip on or put in your pocket

Cons:

• Special dock required. "Universal" dock need not apply
• LED morse code indicator patterns hard to discipher
• No separate battery indicator
• No longer doubles as a USB thumbdrive

[All of the photos in here are currently hosted on my own web host, will eventually need to be moved]