“It’s sooooo thin.”

As an owner of the 2012 edition of the iPod Touch, you’re going to be hearing that a lot. Either from your stunned and impressed friends or possibly even involuntarily from your own mouth. Yes, it’s thinner than 5 DVD discs stacked one on top of the other – and yet holds more data then all of them put together.

So dang thin.

The second thing that leaps out at you is the amazingly vibrant colored casing. We got our hands on a PRODUCT (RED) special edition of the iPod Touch, and man is it ever red. It’s just so wonderfully eye-searingly red that in combination with the white fascia it makes you long for a jaunty Coca Cola swoosh down the back to complete the look.

So dang red.

And wait! What’s that silver button on the back of the Touch? Oh, it pops up? And there’s a matching red handstrap in the case that attaches to that silver button? Awesome!

So dang ... uh, handstrap.

All this gushing, and I haven’t even turned the thing on yet. So you can imagine my gurgle of delight (“…gasp…glrlgrllll!”) when I fired up the 4-inch screen and beheld the wonder that is the iPod Touch’s Retina Display. To use a tired cliché that every other gadget reviewer has abused for the simple fact that it’s true: Everything looks like it’s printed on the surface of the screen. It doesn’t look real – but it is.

Lest you think this is a puff piece rave review, this is where I now introduce some balance into the article. Tiny little niggles and flaws that mar an otherwise amazing device. My ardor and lust for the iPod Touch actually started to diminish a bit once I got around to using it. Just a tiny bit.

I know it may just be nitpicking to some, but I was disappointed to find out while loading the iPod up with content that its nifty new Lightning connector was transferring at USB 2.0 speeds despite the fact that my MacBook Pro is capable of USB 3.0. What a waste. But I was indeed duly impressed by the fact that yes, you can plug it in any side up and it works just fine.

But at this point in time, October 18th, 2012, God forbid you should leave that cable in the office (as I did) because once you get home, there’s not a single cable in your house that will help you charge your new iPod Touch. Unless you already own an iPhone 5, in which case you are an incurable Apple fiend and don’t need to be reading reviews.

Another niggle has to do with Maps and GPS. Now, I don’t want to jump on the Apple Map-hating bandwagon, but really, Maps on a device like this would be so much better with GPS. I know it was a lot to hope for because Apple has never ever put GPS on a device that didn’t come with a SIM slot, but part of me was really hoping that this generation of iPod Touch would be different. Can you imagine how cool it would be to have your iPod Touch running RunKeeper or Endomondo or Strava or some other GPS-powered exercise app while you bike/run/walk with it strapped to your arm? Or to be able to use the Touch as a handy dandy map reference / navigator while walking around the streets of a strange city? Ugh. Too bad.

And the new EarPod earphones: they sound better than the previous version, as Adel noted in his review, but the bundled iPod Touch EarPods lack the three button remote and microphone that come on the standalone version. Really, Apple? No remote music controls? On your flagship music player?

On to the cameras. As an owner of an earlier model iPod Touch (which was the first review I ever wrote for Technoodling, incidentally) I was absolutely thrilled to finally be using an iPod that had a decent rear camera for a change. The panorama mode in iOS 6 is stunningly good. And a built in LED flash too? Now we’re talking!

Panorama!

As you can see, the pluses far outweigh the minuses. The only real caveat I can think of right now is that if you’ve got enough money saved up for an iPod Touch, you’re well within budget range of next week’s iPad Mini. And now we’ve got two devices with some definite overlap – but that’s a subject for another article.

In the meantime, if you’re an Android user who secretly wants to partake of the iPhone 5 experience, or an owner of a previous gen iPod Touch, or just someone who wants to own the greatest, thinnest (and reddest?) all-in-one portable music / media player / camera / gaming platform device in the world – this is the gadget for you.

Philippine SRP: Php16,490 for the 32GB iPod touch and Php21,990 for the 64GB iPod touch. Incidentally, it comes in colors other than red.

Vic

Vic spends entirely too much on gadgets. So rather than try and kick the habit, he decided to become the Reviews Editor of Technoodling. Now, he has a perfectly good excuse. It's not an addiction: it's a job. His favorite noodle: Pappardelle.

email: vic@technoodling.netwebsite: http://www.technoodling.net