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[#1]

There is no argument, the new iPod Nano is gorgeous.  However, you have to wonder if you really need one, especially if you already have an iPhone , iPod Touch or old Nano , Shuffle etc?

I have 2 iPod Shuffles (I thought I had lost one, replaced it and then found it)  4 Creative mp3 players, 2 Creative video players, a 2nd Gen iPod and and iPhone .  Enough memory to hold music and video to get me through a ride on a slow boat to China. Regardless, last week I bought the new iPod Nano .

Now you could argue whether or not I really needed it. (obviously I didnt)  But the new camera tucked in the back of this player and the ability to have another video player for the road that my toddler son could - ah, who am I kidding, I didn’t need this device, I got it cause I wanted it, end of story.

The big upgrade in the new iPod Nano is the camera.  The ability to take 640 x 480 VGA video now moves to the iPod line (there are reports it was to have been in the iPod Touch as well, but it didn’t materialize).  But with cameras already in every cell phone on the market and the Flip and Kodak Zi6 capturing imaginations, do we really need one in our iPod ?

Here’s a side by side comparison of the Flip and Nano video:

The video is serviceable, and it’s easy to get off the device and onto the web by synching through iTunes .  The issue comes in the placement of the camera.  The lens is behind the scroll wheel, not the screen.  So if you’re right handed and you hold the camera horizontal, your hands block the lens.  If you’re left handed, your hands block the screen.  It seems the best way to shoot video is to hold the device ‘upside down,’ with the screen at the bottom and the click wheel at the top.

But here’s the kicker.  When I headed out to the corn maze with my son this weekend, I grabbed my Flip Mino and left the iPod Nano at home.  This will be a poker table, vacation,  exercise iPod that just happens to have a video camera in it that won’t drain the battery in my iPhone which is used for important communicating tasks..

The bottom line is you definitely want this iPod , but you don’t really need this iPod . Then again when was the last time we really needed one?

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