With 80GB or 160GB of storage, iPod classic gives your music and video room to move. It also has plenty of energy (up to 40 hours of audio playback), good looks (a sleek, all-metal design), and a great personality (a brand-new interface with Cover Flow). In other words, iPod classic makes an ideal companion.If a picture says a thousand words, think of what all the album art in your collection might say. With Cover Flow on iPod classic, you can flip through your music to find the album you want to hear. Use the Click Wheel to browse music by album cover, then select an album to flip it over and see the track list.
List Price:
Our Price:
$399.98
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Product Details
Product Length:
2.4 inches
Product Width:
0.31 inches
Product Height:
4.3 inches
Product Weight:
0.26 pounds
Package Length:
5.7 inches
Package Width:
3.4 inches
Package Height:
2.3 inches
Package Weight:
0.55 pounds
Average Customer Rating:
based on 995 reviews
Features
iPod classic puts your entire music and video collection in your pocket with up to 160 GB of storage
An enhanced interface offers a whole new way to browse and view your music and video
Cover Flow technology lets you use the patented Click Wheel to flip through your music by album cover
Beautifully redesigned, iPod classic features a sleek, new all-metal enclosure
2.5-inch display; measures 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.53 inches (H x W x D), weighs 5.7 ounces
Average Customer Review: ( 995 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
133 of 138 found the following review helpful:
The New Firmware seems to have ironed out A LOT of the bugs others have talked about! Dec 09, 2007
By Jersey Girl **Before you read some of the negative reviews, please consider this was BEFORE the new firmware update 1.0.3 came out so unfortunately they had unresponsive clickwheels, itunes messing up etc. Also some people simply did NOT upgrade their firmware for whatever reason but A LOT of those problems have been fixed with the new firmware so UPGRADE YOUR FIRMWARE AS SOON AS YOU GET YOUR IPOD! It will make a BIG difference!**
Ok, on to the review..I just got my 80 gb ipod classic recently with a 3 year extended service plan, immediately got itunes version 7.5 and upgraded the firmware immediately to 1.0.3 which seems to have taken care of A LOT of bugs people have been reporting. It must have because I am not getting ANY of the problems other have reported such as laggy clickwheel, itunes freezing etc. The clickwheel is VERY responsive, only a light touch is needed and scrolling through cover art was very quick! No problems whatsoever with the clickwheel. I also have had no problems copying files to itunes and transferring them to my ipod. The ipod itself is a thing of beauty, love the non scratchable surface but the back of the ipod is where you can see all the fingerprints etc so get a good cover for it. The slimness of it is very sleek and heck this ipod just looks cool. I got the ipod up and running in no time after I transferred my music over. Love the search feature as well. There is a lot of features, settings and extra's. Heck I even like the clock.
PLEASE NOTE:TURN OFF & DON'T use the EQ (equalizer setting)if you want normal distortion free sound. I was using the EQ and wondered why a lot of my songs had distortion. I thought it was due to the bad sound everyone was talking about until I turned OFF the EQ. Upon turning the EQ off, the distortion vanished completely, the sound was just fine, pretty good in fact. It's a shame that you have to turn off the EQ settings to get good sound. Hopefully Apple will fix this with a firmware update.
I almost got one of the itouch ipods but the very limited space is what kept me from doing so. 80 gb is plenty of space for my music, a bit of videos etc. It might not have wifi or a touch screen but it's got tons of space for my music and that's what counts! I love my ipod classic, can't find much to be picky about except for the sound when EQ is enabled. It does exactly what it's supposed to, is easy to navigate, videos look crisp/great on it and most of all it holds a crapload of music. Just remember to upgrade your firmware to the newest version, disable EQ and invest in a good pair of headphones. One of the best things about the ipod classic is that because it has so much space, I don't have to worry about how many mp3's I put on it. I've never downloaded so many mp3's in my life! I literally put my entire collection of mp3's on it and still have tons of space left. Overall, I rate the ipod classic 80 gb (black)...absolutely superb.
244 of 263 found the following review helpful:
I've got one!!! Size matters.. Sep 09, 2007
By Nse Ette Ok guys, I just picked up my silver iPod classic 160gb from the Apple store on Regent Street in London so I can give an actual review on it.
I've had an 80GB video iPod for a year and it's already full, so I was really hoping Apple would make an iPod big enough for me. Presently I've got 110GB (and counting) of music, so this iPod is for people like me who have a large music collection, and who like to be able to take it anyplace.
The 160GB iPod is the same size as the 80gb, but costs less than the 80GB did when it first came out.
With a brushed aluminium front finish (similar to the 2 and 3G Nanos), it should be less prone to scratching, though the back is the same smudge magnet, and I don't know how resilient the screen is. The front is curvier than that of the last 2 video iPods, with the screen slightly depressed from the rest of the casing.
Additional features are extra long battery life (40 hours for music, 7 hours for video; I've tested this and playing music non stop without much fast forwarding, etc, it's about right), and cover flow (a fun way of scrolling through for music using album cover art, though it is a bit sluggish).
The new split-screen interface lists functions to the left half of the screen, and symbols (or previews of content such as cover art, videos or photos shown as a slide show) to the right as you scroll through the functions. Neat!!
During music playback, after being idle for about 80 seconds, the screen goes gray and displays a clock, and battery power. Viewing tracks in an album also gives you, at a glance, the track times. Same for video. A nice touch. To my hearing, the sound quality (without equalizers, mind you) is improved; more bass and a bit more treble. The iPod turns off in about 2 seconds, much faster than previous models.
It's still got the other regular features; album track lyrics (new, nicer text font, and it also shows the album art), can play video and games, store photos, contacts, calendar, notes, stopwatch, and screen lock (which allows you to lock the screen with a password), and it can be used as an external hard drive. It shows up in windows explorer as an external drive. The search feature allowing one to type in album/song/artist titles (introduced in the last video iPod) is still there, but relocated to the "music" menu. I didn't spot it at first. In fact, the menu has been reshuffled to make it better, and (under settings) one can now view number of songs, videos, photos, etc graphically just like in iTunes.
If you need loads of space for your music collection, you can't go wrong getting this. Judging from the crowds in the store, Apple's got another hit here. Now if only the iPod touch had this much memory...
60 of 63 found the following review helpful:
a user's review Sep 08, 2007
By S. Lee I don't know how many people actually have this and wrote the review but at least I have it. Here are my takes on it:
Good things about this device:
1. its new interface looks much better than the old generation ones. fonts are sharper, coverflow search is hip, and there are some subtle differences people will appreciate. For example, when you play iPod after certain seconds the screen goes black and it will serve as a watch. it tells you what time it is. it may not look like much, but you will appreciate it.
2. audio quality has improved and you will definitely notice the difference if you have listened to a lot of music. far less hiss on the background and the sound is just warmer.
3. enclosure is absolutely gorgeous. there is also some subtle difference that makes this iPod look far much better than the last gen iPods. plus it's a lot thinner than last gen's iPod as well.
now the bad things about it.
1. touch wheel response is almost unbearable. since Apple decided to manufacture touchwheels on their own it has been having very inconsistent responses. last gen iPod was too jumpy when you scroll so you would have difficulty being accurate. This iPod, on the other hand, does not respond well when you scroll. it will take you far more pressure and far more spinning to get to where you want to be.
2. there are some bugs that must be fixed too. it sorta happens randomly but sometimes you can't control the volume, and sometimes you can't scroll down within albums.
overall, this iPod is excellent. the top notch sound quality overcame some of the problems it had. recommended.
362 of 414 found the following review helpful:
Such a disappointment Oct 01, 2007
By T. Hosford You can read on for a detailed review. In summary, if my music collection wasn't larger than the iPod this was replacing, I would put the iPod classic on the shelf (or maybe ebay it) and run the old one.
This iPod is the first apple iPod product I have felt was just an afterthought. I have owned the 1G shuffle, the 2G 4GB Nano, and a 4G 20GB iPod color (wife also has a 5G 30GB iPod Video). I absolutely loved all of them. All felt like polished products.
The iPod Classic feels like an afterthought that they came up with when they decided to make the iPod touch not a real iPod, but halfway between a nano & an iPod.
The iPod Classic is very underpowered, or the firmware is poorly written. Either way, you will find navigating through the menus very tedious and will start becoming annoyed. The first thing you will notice is that there is something wrong with the click wheel. It doesn't pick up your finger movements the way the other generations of iPod did.
Apple has never been very friendly to audiobook listeners, but the current software makes it really bad. You can no longer sort your audio books by genre (or author, or even book title). All audiobook files are only accessible in a single alphabetized list. Yes, that's files, not books. So to get to 'State of Fear' part 6 of 8, you need to scroll down through every file of every book you have that has a title that starts earlier in the alphabet than "S". For me, that's 187 files. What's worse, is the list isn't a normal list of files (as was in the last generation of iPod), but is double height for each file and displays a tiny picture of the book's cover next to the file. What's still worse is that most of the time these just show question marks and slow the scrolling process even more.
The podcast menu uses the same double height lists, as do virtually all lists. Currently you can't turn this off, and you get to wade through your songs in this manner.
The cover flow feature is completely unusable as it is so slow and the album art isn't populated quick enough to actually be of use.
The general navigation utilizes a 1/2 screen for the menu and 1/2 screen for artwork, cut vertically. Its only use is to look good in apple commercials. After the "wow, that's neat" wears off, you search around for how to turn it off, but sadly, you can't. All it does is make what you are trying to read cut off, and also slows down the iPod. You will notice between a 1 & 2 second lag time from selecting an item before the sub-menu shows up.
I would say you should buy a fifth generation if you can find one, or hold out for the next generation of the touch (when it has enough space to hold your music).
The only good thing about this iPod is that all the problems appear to be software related... however my fear is that apple won't be working too hard to fix them as the "touch" is their baby right now. The click wheel problems might also be software related, as it seems like some of the non-response you get is the software locking up, rather than the click wheel itself not detecting your finger. I would recommend not purchasing this iPod until a SIGNIFICANT software update is released.
I will update this review for new updates to the software if there is any noticeable difference. Currently I have version 1.0.1
*Update: I have found that if you disable "view album artwork" on the settings in iTunes, this dramatically speeds up the iPod. It is a shame you need to do this, but it even makes the click wheel more responsive. You will have no artwork, at all, on the iPod, but the music and menus will function quickly.
*Apple released software version 1.0.2. I have not noticed any change in performance running the iPod without artwork. I enabled artwork to test if the patch did anything there, and I must say that the speed of the menus has improved and the coverflow is a lot more smooth (though still not very useful). However, it is still slower than the old iPods and the flaws mentioned above remain.
*Apple released software version 1.0.3. Hopefully it will address some of the above mentioned concerns.
***WARNING - I have installed software update 1.1. It has some serious issues and I would not advise installing this update. For some, it is bricking the iPod. Not for me, but there are some really weird/bad things it does and I haven't noticed anything good that it does. The most noticeable negative change is that the iPod does not turn off correctly at the end of a playlist. I like to listen to my iPod as I fall asleep (The Classic Tales podcast is excellent, look into it), so I do an "on the go" playlist with one episode, so that after I fall asleep the episode will end and the iPod will shut off. Not so with the new update. At the end of the episode the iPod just plays what I can only describe as dead air. So, the iPod will just play this (I guess until the iPod runs out of batteries, but I usually just find it playing dead air in the morning and turn it off manually by holding the play button).
My fears about the software updates not being priority for Apple look like they are coming true. I have a sneaking feeling that they will update the iPod Touch to a full sized iPod (30GB-60GB) before the Classic is fixed. Again, buy a 5th gen if you can find one and avoid this product.
109 of 122 found the following review helpful:
Re: Ipod classic TV out problem Sep 16, 2007
By M. D. Levin
"Former Ipod Fan"
Apple has intentionally disabled the Video Out button on the Classic models. Spend more, get less features. I am shocked to hear that Apple will treat so poorly those who shell out $349 for a 160 GB Classic. I contacted the Geek Squad none of the salespeople or support team had a clue that Apple had disabled the video out feature. They pushed every available button before contacting Apple to find out that Apple has disabled a basic feature available on all prior video Ipods. I had stopped at Circuit City first and had the same experience there.
I would not have bought this so quickly had I known that Apple disabled the video out capability. The video settings menu is still there, but all the clicking in the world will not change OFF to Ask or On. Apple will soon be selling a $49 accessory to allow some limited output of video. I already own the Icuiti IWear. Memorex and Virtual Reality Ipod video accessories, all now rendered useless by this greedy move on Apple's part. We all expect value-added from Apple, not elimination of a basic feature. Shame on you, Apple and Steve Jobs.
based on 995 reviews
I've got one!!! Size matters.. Sep 09, 2007
By Nse Ette
Such a disappointment Oct 01, 2007
By T. Hosford
