Product Details

• Brand: Apple

Customer Reviews

Minor improvements makes this a great player
First of all, this is, to my knowledge, the cheapest 80GB Hard Drive MP3 player on the market, and with a name like Apple backing it up, this rendition of the iPod is well worth your time to look at.

*Technically this is still not the iPod Video, this is still an iPod with video playback; rumors are still buzzing about a Widescreen iPod, but still no official word*

NEW:
-Longer battery life
-Games
-iTunes 7 has movies
-Search feature
-Larger capacity
-Brighter screen

GOOD:
-Great GB/$$ ratio
-Great build
-Bright screen
-Battery life on video is double what it was before
-Great interface
-Innovative search
-Games are pretty fun
-Excellent design
-Minimal buttons
-Oodles of potential accessories

BAD:
-Still scratches easily
-Prone to fingerprints
-Sometimes a little sluggish (not as much as before)
-Battery isn't removable
-Still no FM tuner, line-in, or voice record
-Expensive accessories (not many in box)
-Cheap earbuds

BOTTOM LINE: If you are too hardcore for the 30GB version, than this is definately your cup of tea. This is the perfect MP3 player for any causual music and video enjoyer's needs!

Gave up my 60gb iPod video for this one!
I have been using the 80gb iPod Video for several days now, and I am extremely pleased. First, a note of caution. The surface of this unit is identical to the earlier iPod video, so it is extremely prone to scratching. My 60gb iPod video was always transpored in the $99 Apple leather case, and it still attracted scratches! This one comes with a chamois-like form-fitted pouch which does a nice job of protecting the finish, but provides no protection from hits or drops. The screen is bright! Much brighter than the earlier models. The integration with iTunes 7 takes the hardware/software experience to a new level. I purchased some games and TV shows, which downloaded flawlessly, and playback time appears very impressive (read: better battery life). I'll know better on my next 12 hour flight to Asia, of course! 80gb is a staggering amount of storage space. I have nearly 10,000 songs, several music videos, several FULL seasons of TV shows, my contacts and my date book data, and a few purchased games, and I am barely halfway to filling the drive. The new iTunes interface screen for the iPod is much more friendly, allowing different settings to be made for, say, music, TV shows, PodCasts, etc. from within a tabbed browser environment. Apple still demonstrate that less IS more, and the total user experience blows away anything else in the market. It would be hard to imagine another solution (player/online store) emerging that could get the experience any better than Apple does. Though I realize several are trying... Zune anyone? :)

Simply the best MP3 player around!!!
I've owned the 60GB Video iPod for close to a year now and with 11,000 tracks, 10 (Music) videos, and about 30 photos on it, I had 2.13GB free and was wondering what to do for more space.

Then along came the 80GB video iPod. More than enough room for my growing music collection, well at least for another year or so. Meant for those with large music collections.

Exactly the same size as the 60GB model, this too comes in black (which I got) and white, and it is cheaper than the 60GB model was when it came out.

It seems Apple finally acknowledged complaints about the earphones as they have been redesigned and fit better and less painfully in the ear for a long period of time, something I could never bear to do with the previous earphones. Oh, and sound quality is great too!!

I'll move right to the major changes with this version. First up is gapless playback of tracks. No more gaps between your tracks on Madonna's 'Confessions On A Dancefloor', or those Donna Summer 70s albums, or your live albums. Note, if you update the software on your 'older' video iPods, gapless playback works on those too.

Next is the new search method, you can now search for artists/albums by alphabet or numbers, still by using the scroll wheel to type out the names. This makes it much easier for someone like me with over 1000 albums stored.

Battery life has been improved for video playback, to 6 and a half hours. The screen resolution is brighter and sharper, making viewing of videos and images an even greater joy.

And finally, iTunes has also been updated. Among other things is a new interface, showing at a glance, how much space music, photos, and videos each take up, and space left. You can also set it to search the internet for CD artwork for CDs you've ripped yourself.

Still remaining are all the usual cool iPod features: You can attach CD artwork (doesn't make the iPod sluggish, or even skip like it used to), include individual track lyrics (both of which are essential to a music buff like me), screen lock, contacts, stopwatch, video playback (this responds faster now and resolution has been increased), photo display (you can do a slideshow of your photos while music plays) and downloadable games. You can also use it as a removeable hard drive, for backing up your data.

You definitely must get a case for your iPod, if you don't want it looking like your cat's scratch post within a week of use. There are loads of cases out there; rubber, leather, to clear hard plastic, the latter which I favour as it protects better, and you still get to see your iPod in all it's glory. XtremeMac, and agent18 (do a google search) make great tough plastic cases which snap on and off with ease, and protect all parts, especially the screen.

Also on the downside, as well as still scrimping on a wall charger (it charges by USB), there isn't an iTunes CD in the pack. You must now download iTunes (for free) from the internet.

Still, this is definitely my favourite gadget of the moment (it feels awesome to be holding over 1000 CDs in the palm of my hand), and yet again raises the bar for other MP3 players.