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BusinessWeek reviews Apple’s iPod nano: for sheer multimedia portability it’s hard to beat

Thursday, October 04, 2007 - 08:54 AM EST

"The latest edition of the nano, unveiled in September, was overshadowed by the launch of iPod touch, a new line with Wi-Fi and a wide-screen display. Nevertheless this third-generation nano sports some impressive enhancements, starting with a video-capable screen," Arik Hesseldahl reports for BusinessWeek.

"Being the most popular member of the iPod team clearly made video a must. Yet given its size, you might think the notion of watching video on it silly. The nano's screen measures just 2 inches diagonally, which is half an inch smaller than the display on the iPod classic, and not much more than half the size of the 3.5 inch screen on the touch. But small has its advantages, and I've been pleasantly surprised after a few weeks of watching videos on the nano that I am barely aware of the screen size. The image quality is gorgeous," Hesseldahl reports.

"Its bright enough and clear enough that the size matters less, which is the point. The screen density—the number of pixels crammed into each square inch of screen space—is the highest of any iPod that Apple has ever shipped, and the end result shows it," Hesseldahl reports.

"If you're intent on toting around gobs of both audio and video content, you may be better off with the 160-GB capacity of the latest iPod classic...The addition of video to the mix of media I carry around forces the unpleasant choice that intermittently drives me back to my spacious, hard-drive based iPod. But for sheer multimedia portability it's hard to beat the new nano," Hesseldahl reports.

More in the full review here.