iPod 5G Video – review

There are dozens of excellent iPod 5G reviews out there, so I’ll just chime in with some quick comments.

The Good:

1. Portable Video – I’ve watched over 20 hours of video, including Smallville season 1 (transcoded from DVD), in places I don’t usually watch TV (car repair shop, bed(without waking my wife up – yay headphones, while eating lunch, on the porch, etc).
2. The packed-in slip case is very nice. It adds nothing to the weight or dimensions of the unit, but makes it safe to carry the 5G in your pocket with your keys.
3. I can watch channel9.msdn.com videos on the go!!

The Bad:

1. Battery Life is around 2 hours of video playback – Good thing you can play it while it’s plugged in!
2. Easy to scratch screen / no official protectors available, yet.
3. 4G accessories are not worthless with the 5G.
4. No 30 second fwd/backword skip. This is actually a huge problem.
5. No way to insert bookmarks in videos.
6. If you stop a video and play another, sometimes it seems to remember where you stopped that first video and other times it doesn’t.
7. No built in speaker.
8. Almost all video content needs to be transcoded to work on the iPod.

Anyway, I love it.