iPod touch 5th gen review

Hey guys, Andy here with my full review of the 5th Generation iPod touch

First of all, hardware. The new iPod comes in 6 colours: black, white, blue, pink, yellow and (RED). I got a black one so I would get a different colour to my MacProClub friends. The 4 inch retina display still keeps the old 326 ppi, but is now 1136x640, and is at a 16:9 aspect ratio, so movies fit the whole screen rather than being letterboxed.

The CPU has been upgraded to an Apple A5 chip, so the iPod is much, much faster than its predecessor. It also has more RAM, which makes the multitasking feature first introduced in iOS 4 work properly (it actually stores recent apps in memory rather than listing them and relaunching them when switched to).

The cameras have been upgraded to 5 MP on the back and 1.3 MP on the front. It also shoots 1080p on the back and 720p on the front, for higher quality videos. It also has an LED flash, so taking photos and videos is actually possible in low light. The camera protrudes out a little bit as Apple were unable to shrink the camera assembley down enough to fit the 6.1 millimetre thinness of the new iPod. You can now also take panoramas, and HDR shots.

With the iPod, you get a "Loop" matching the colour of your iPod. The loop is basically a wrist strap that attaches to a push button on the bottom left hand corner of the iPod. My tightener on my Loop is deteriorating a bit, by the black covering coming off, but that's probably just a defect or the result of me fiddling with it. You can get extras for AU $10 each if yours break or you want a different colour Loop.

You also get the new EarPods with the iPod. These ones don't have the remote and mic like the ones with the iPhone 5 do, but they still sound AWESOME!!! I tried my old earbuds after a week of using the EarPods, and ripped them out of me ears because they sounded soooo bad. The only bad bit about the EarPods is that you can't just put them in any random ear, because the sound is projected out the side of the pod, so the sound goes directly into the ear canal. Both an advantage and a disadvantage...

The lightning port of smallness is also a port of annoyingness. Okay, well it is good for some reasons: much, much smaller; more durable; all digital so it only uses the signals it needs; reversible so you can't put it in the wrong way. But some of us have a few 30-pin accessories, and I have about 6 30-pin cables. Apple should include at least 1 free adapter with every every lightning device. Those things start at AU $35 a pop, more than the cable itself which are AU $25 a pop.

The 5th generation iPod touch also includes Siri, the personal assistant you would probably use most when your out and about, even though the iPod needs WIFI FOR IT!!! Why Apple? If your gonna give us Siri give us some data for it!

My rating: 4.8/5
Pros: faster, multitasking works, better camera, Siri, Loop, more colours, EarPods
Cons: camera isn't as good as Apple could have done (you have 8 MP cameras, use them), lightning is incompatible with everything.