Great sound and pictures from the iPod touch

THE NEW iPod touch is much more than a powerful four-inch tablet computer – it’s also a dandy music player that gets great sound out of digital tracks, it can capture good-quality photos and, best of all, it works as a fitness tracker to help you stay healthy.

The sleek aluminium enclosure, just 6.1mm thin and 88 grams in weight, comes in silver, gold, pink, blue, “space grey” and red like the elegant model I got to test.

Like the iPhone 6, the new touch runs on iOS 8, which can be upgraded to iOS 9 when that comes out. The power derives from the Apple-designed A8 chip, with 10-time-faster graphic performance than the previous touch, so count on a more immersive gaming experience. This is the same 64-bit processor found in the iPhone 6 as well, six times faster than the CPU of its predecessor.

An M8 motion coprocessor tracks fitness activities continuously using advanced sensors, including a gyroscope and an accelerometer. The M8 offloads this task from the A8 chip for more efficient use of power. 

The M8 works with the “Health” app to provide accurate information, such as steps and distance. You need to customise the app with your date of birth, gender, height and weight so it can properly gauge calories burned off while exercising.

The new touch uses “Metal” technology that’s optimised to let the CPU and GPU work together to deliver detailed graphics and complex visual effects. Apple says there are now thousands of Metal-optimised games, so the touch is becoming a popular mobile-game console as well.

The games are displayed beautifully on a four-inch Retina screen with 1,136x640-pixel resolution at 326ppi, an 800:1 contrast ratio and fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating. That resolution and clarity make this a great gadget for viewing photos and high-definition YouTube clips on top of everything else.

The cameras are quite good. The main iSight camera with eight-megapixel resolution uses a five-element lens with an f/2.4 aperture and a rear-illumination image sensor. You have Burst mode, Auto HDR and photo-geotagging via Wi-Fi and can record 1080p video at 30 frames per second or Slo-mo video at 120fps. In my test I was able to get sharp, clean, beautiful photos in Auto HDR mode in most lighting conditions.

The 1.2MP front-facing camera has an f/2.2 aperture and the same backside-illumination sensor. Connected to Wi-Fi, it works well as a FaceTime HD camera.

Wi-Fi 802.11 AC connection is straightforward. I quickly hooked up to a Linksys WRT1200AC router and could hear and watch streaming music and videos with no glitches.

The touch’s performance as a tablet is also impressive, with very responsive menus and touch screen and readiness to make full use of Facebook and Instagram apps. I had no problem capturing snapshots and sharing them on the social media through a Wi-Fi connection.

Of course you’ve got access to Apple’s App Store, where 15 million apps in 24 categories are waiting to be downloaded. The built-in apps include Music, iTunes Store, iBooks, Game Center, Safari, Maps and Siri, along with the free apps iMovie, Numbers, Pages, Find My iPhone and Find My Friends.

And you can enjoy the new Apple Music stream, free to use via the Music app for three months (US$4.99 per month thereafter).

The Music app also provides access to Beats 1, Apple’s first-ever live-radio station, and Connect, where artists communicate directly with fans.

The iPod touch supports several digital music formats – AAC, MP3, Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), AIFF and high-resolution WAV. 

To help you enjoy the tunes, you get good-quality Apple EarPods, whose design matches the geometry of the ear. I found the sound quality delightful through the EarPods, with clear details and good bass. Listening to ALAC and high-resolution WAV tracks, I could further enhance the quality by using my Sony MDR-1ABT Hi-Res headphones. Every nuance of the songs could be heard spectacularly. 

All that’s missing in this otherwise comprehensive menu is support for the FLAC 24bit/192kHz Hi-Res format.

To transfer music files to the player you need the iTunes app on your desktop or notebook computer. Then you simply drag full playlists onto the app’s iPod touch icon.

The iPod touch with 16 gigabytes of storage costs Bt7,200, with 32GB Bt8,900, with 64GB Bt10,900 and with 128GB Bt14,500.

 

Key Specs

- Operation system: iOS 8.4.1

- Processors: 64-bit A8 chip, M8 motion coprocessor

- Cameras: 8MP iSight camera; 1.2MP FaceTime HD camera

- Display: Four-inch multi-touch IPS display with 1,136x640 pixels

- Wireless connection: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1

- Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz

- Audio formats supported: AAC (8 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), HE-AAC, MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, 4, Audible Enhanced Audio, AAX, and AAX+), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV

- Video formats supported: H.264 video up to 1080p, 30fps; MPEG-4 up to 2.5 Mbps

- Input/output: Lightning connector, stereo headphone mini-jack, built-in speaker, microphone

- Battery: Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery with up to 40 hours of music playback time

- Sensors: Three-axis gyro, accelerometer

- Dimensions: 123.4x58.6x6.1mm

- Weight: 88g

- Syncing with iTunes requires: OS X v10.7.5 or later on a Mac; Windows 7 or later on a PC; iTunes 12.2 or later