Five Key Facts on Apple’s Colored iPod shuffles

By Jeremy Horwitz Editor-in-Chief, iLounge Published: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 Last Update: Tuesday, January 30, 2007

If you’ve been following Apple’s second-generation iPod shuffle since last year, and don’t need all the details found in our updated, comprehensive review, here’s a quick summary of five key things you’ll want to know about today’s colorful update to the shuffle family.

(5) Color - What’s the story? The most obvious change to the
November, 2006 second-generation iPod shuffle is its body coloration.
Apple has added four new colors - pink, blue, green, and orange - to
the prior silver shuffle. All five are still made from aluminum, just
like the multi-colored iPod nano, and the pink, blue, and green nanos
are color-matched to the nano’s vibrant tones. The new orange color is
equally striking, and very close in color to an actual Sunkist we had
sitting around. Notably, iTunes 7.0.2 does not yet recognize the
different shuffle colors, but that will likely change in a future
update.

(4) Has anything else changed to make this shuffle a better value?
Yes, there are other small changes, noted below, but they don’t
radically change the shuffle’s value equation. The colored shuffles
sell for the silver version’s prior $79 price, and still come with one
set of earphones, one Dock, thin manuals, Apple stickers, and an
LED-decoding card, nothing else. These shuffles all have the same 1
Gigabyte (240-song) storage capacity as before.

(3) So what’s new, then - the Earphones? Last year’s silver
shuffles shipped with Apple’s old, somewhat uncomfortable, and
bass-weak earbuds, even though the shuffle came out after two new
iPod/iPod nano models that had lighter, better earbuds. Today, all of
the shuffles come with Apple’s latest earphones, which are also sold
separately for $29 as Apple iPod Earphones (iLounge rating: B+).

(2) How do I tell old and new metal shuffles apart? If you’re
buying a green, pink, blue, or orange iPod shuffle, you’re guaranteed
to find the new earphones inside. But if you’re buying a silver iPod
shuffle, look for a package with gray print alongside the shuffle,
rather than green print. The gray print indicates that new earphones
are inside; the green print indicates that you’re getting the older
ones.

(1) What about the sound quality, or other changes? The latest
iPod shuffles sound the same as the ones shipped last year, which is to
say a step below other iPods - particularly in base level of noise -
when used with high-quality earphones. We still prefer the nano and
fifth-generation iPod to the shuffle by a fair margin. Apple appears to
have left everything else about the shuffle the same.

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