Review: Apple Computer iPod shuffle (Second-Generation)

The second-generation iPod shuffle ships in a clear hard plastic box that’s identical in size and shape to the one recently unveiled for the second-generation iPod nano: it’s just large enough to hold the shuffle suspended in its front chamber, directly above a white card stock-wrapped compartment that hides Apple’s packed-in instructions and accessories. There’s no room for a CD containing iTunes software – instead, as with the nano and most recent fifth-generation iPods, you need to download iTunes yourself from the Internet. (Version 7.0.2 is the first to support the new shuffle.)

Opening the white compartment yields several components. First is a small stack of papers on how to use the shuffle’s interface, including a card focused on explaining the meanings of its various indicator lights, a short instruction pamphlet, warranty information and two Apple stickers. Second is the shuffle’s newly included Dock, made mostly from glossy, hard plastic, save for a large silver headphone port plug, a gray rubber bottom and a non-detachable 3-plus-foot USB cable. We’ll discuss the Dock’s functionality under Indicators, Battery, and Charging below.

Third – and the only surprise here – is a pair of earphones with two sets of black ear foams. For lack of a better phrase, these earphones are Apple’s “older, not as good” model rather than the new and improved versions found in iPod 5G and nano boxes these days. Despite the fact that these old iPod earphones still stand up well to the earphones found in other MP3 players’ boxes, they were frequently the deserving targets of user criticism for poor comfort and bass response, issues Apple acknowledged and then remedied in their lighter, silicone rubber-edged replacements. For that reason – and because Apple demonstrated the shuffle at a press event back in September only with the newer, better earphones – we didn’t expect to see the old earphones in the newest iPod’s box. Even if you try to rationalize their inclusion in some way, we consider them a step down from the current par earphone standard, and a disappointing component of the new shuffle’s package.

[Editor’s Note: We preserved the text of our original comments above; however, Apple in January 2007 replaced the shuffle’s outdated earphones with the company’s newer, superior models, as discussed further under January 2007 New Colors and Earphones below, mooting this concern. The photo immediately above shows the latest iteration of its packaging.]

Because of its simple feature set, the second-generation iPod shuffle is impressive more in size and construction than anything else.

It weighs 0.55 ounces, down from its predecessor’s 0.73 ounces, and is now around 39% the weight of a 1.41 ounce iPod nano. At 1.07″ inches tall by 1.62″ wide and 0.41″ deep, the new shuffle’s footprint is actually smaller than the screen of first- through fourth-generation iPods, and its body is only thicker than the nano because of its single new feature – a non-detachable rear clip, which can easily be attached to clothing, but isn’t guaranteed to stay steady during strenuous physical activity. For reference, the first shuffle measured 3.3″ by 0.98″ by 0.33″, which is dimensionally interesting because the new model has shrunk only in height – it has actually increased in width and thickness, the latter again mostly because of that clip.

The other size gains are attributable to its casing, which has been upgraded from glossy but scratchable plastic to iPod mini- and new nano-like anodized aluminum. Though the shuffle currently comes in five colors – silver, blue, green, pink, and orange – rather than the nano’s six, the new shell makes it feel tougher and look much cooler than its same-named predecessor, and also the device it was heavily inspired by, Apple’s January 2006 iPod Radio Remote.

Lacking the standard iPod’s Click Wheel controller, both shuffles and the Radio Remote feature a circular five-button interface called the Control Pad, consisting only of volume up, down, play/pause, track backward and track forward buttons, and a headphone port mounted on the top left corner.

But unlike the Radio Remote, the new shuffle has no port or cabling on its bottom: instead, there are two circular metal switches, one for power, and one that toggles between randomized and ordered playback modes. These two switches collectively do the same thing that the first shuffle’s rear-mounted, three-position power switch accomplished, without forcing you to change your shuffled/ordered mode every time the device is turned on. Thanks to swirled metal components, they also look nicer than before.

Controlling the new shuffle is pretty simple: flip the power switch on, place the unit in the correct mode (randomized or ordered playback, as per your preference), and press play. Press play again quickly to pause, press the volume buttons up and down to adjust output levels, and press the track buttons to go backwards or forwards in your single list of songs; hold a track button down to rewind or forward within the current song. Like the first shuffle, holding down the play button for three seconds activates Hold mode – there’s no Hold switch – and repeating that command turns Hold off. Pressing the play button three times makes the shuffle restart from the beginning of its playlist. You can’t otherwise choose songs beyond to forward or reverse through them using the randomized or ordered playback modes. That’s pretty much it, save to note that the shuffle automatically pauses playback when you unplug your headphones, just like other iPod models.

It’s obvious that the new shuffle still has no screen, but you may also notice that two other elements have disappeared from the first shuffle: its front and rear lights, the former of which let you know that the shuffle was responding to commands, and the latter there to indicate battery status. Apple has taken a different tact with the new shuffle: now there’s a pinhole-sized indicator on the far right side of the shuffle’s top plastic surface, which is literally mirrored by an identical light on the shuffle’s bottom right, next to the power switch. The surprise is that these aren’t two different types of indicators – Apple now signals both commands and battery status through both the top and bottom lights, at the same time. This will make more sense in a moment, but one consequence is that the aforementioned included decoder card is now basically necessary to figure out what’s going on with the unit.

Each light flashes in two colors – a yellowish green and amber – in response to commands, and three colors to automatically tell you its battery status. There’s no button to trigger a current battery status check, unlike the prior shuffle, so you’re provided with updates only when the unit’s turned on or plugged into a power source. When disconnected from power, a green light means that the charge is “good,” an orange light “low,” a red light “very low,” and a white light empty. The light will flash red repeatedly when the battery is dead, and then turn off. Connected to a power source, an orange light means “charging” and a green light means “fully charged.” If the light flashes green then orange for 2 seconds, the shuffle has no music; if it flashes for 10 seconds, the firmware’s damaged and it needs to be restored with iTunes.

So why have two lights for the same purpose? The answer is simple: if the light was on the new shuffle’s top, you couldn’t see charging status when the shuffle’s mounted upside down in the dock. If the light was on the bottom, you couldn’t see it flash while you were wearing the shuffle with its headphone port right side up. Of course, placing the single light on the shuffle’s metal front would have been another reasonable option – a possibility given Apple’s recent hidden-behind-aluminum redesign of the iSight camera light for the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro computer – but we suspect that there were good reasons that this didn’t happen.

Our feelings on the new indicator lights are mixed. On one hand, they’re pretty small, and needing to turn the shuffle off and on to check the battery is an inconvenience, but on the other hand, indicator lamps were never the most important feature of the prior shuffles, and there’s now a built-in assumption that people who buy them basically don’t care about anything other than hearing their music. Practically, we’d call this a small minus overall, and one that won’t bother new users as much as people who were used to the prior model’s somewhat more robust interface.

Similarly, and potentially even more controversially, the shuffle has lost another distinctive part from its predecessor: the integrated USB plug is gone, and with it, the ability to recharge or add data merely by plugging your shuffle into any nearby computer with a USB 2.0 port. But as an alternative, the shuffle has become the first new iPod to include its own Dock since the 2004 iPod photo – this pack-in connects to the shuffle’s headphone port and provides both data and battery recharging functionality when tethered to a computer. It has no moving parts, and the shuffle snaps cleanly into place thanks to a central plastic spacer. If you’re willing to carry this Dock around, you can get all of the previous shuffle’s computer-ready functionality no matter where you go; Apple clearly was betting that most of the time, you won’t need it.

Though there are good and bad points to requiring the Dock, we generally think Apple made the right choice here: like Mobiblu’s earlier Cube MP3 player, there’s no reason to make you carry around the weight of a USB connector if you don’t need it, and there’s nothing wrong with offloading that functionality into a separate piece that’s small enough to fit in any pocket – so long as you don’t have to buy it separately. Apple will also sell extra shuffle Docks for $29, just as it did with the prior shuffle’s Dock (iLounge rating: B); the only difference this time is that the new Dock has no less expensive alternative for charging or syncing. It still doesn’t offer an audio-out feature of any sort, which regrettably means that you can’t listen to the shuffle and charge it with the Dock at the same time.

The only other power-related change to the new iPod shuffle is in battery capacity. In 2005, we tested the original shuffle’s “12-hour” battery and found that it ran for much longer – 16 hours and 42 minutes on a formal (approximately 50% volume, completely random audio file) test, 18 hours and 30 minutes on a more casual test, both exceeding Apple’s estimates by a substantial amount.

With the second-generation shuffle, Apple has again promised 12 hours of battery life, and exceeded it: the new model ran for 17 hours and 51 minutes in our approximately 50% volume test with a library of songs that varied in format from MP3 to AAC, and in bitrate from 128 to 192kbps. As with all iPods, battery performance will vary from use to use, and most notably decrease when you turn up the volume and use more demanding file formats.

Frankly, of all of the shuffle’s features, its ability to remain on par with the prior model’s battery life was the most surprising. Though Apple does not identify the companies that provide the new shuffle’s chipset, we’re aware that the first shuffle’s chipmaker SigmaTel has continued to improve its processors to become far more energy efficient, enabling manufacturers to create smaller devices with smaller batteries that perform as well as their predecessors. Regardless of who’s behind the new shuffle’s run time, it’s impressive, and keeps this model viable despite some of its other omissions.

The iPod shuffle’s audio performance is roughly the same as its predecessor, which isn’t to say that they’re identical, but they’re very similar. For reference, Apple representatives suggested in mid-2005 that they felt that the shuffle’s audio was the best in the iPod family to date, thanks to better handling of some very low-end bass detail than earlier iPods, though the model wasn’t without its issues. Despite the fact that subsequent iPods, such as the nano and fifth-generation iPod, have continued to improve since then, some people continue to hold the first shuffle in especially high regard.

Though it’s arguably overkill to test a $79 MP3 player in this manner, we always use both the included earbuds and premium-grade, reference-quality earpieces when trying a new iPod, as high-end monitors always yield a superior level of detail, and let us hear more easily what’s changed or stayed the same from the prior version. This time, we relied on Shure’s E500 earphones and Ultimate Ears’ UE-10 Pros, our top premium in-canal picks for punch and fidelity, respectively, and tested the new shuffle against the original version, a current-generation iPod nano, and the current, enhanced fifth-generation iPod. Though neither shuffle supports Apple Lossless audio files – our preferred format for defect-free testing – we tested with WAVs, iTunes Store downloads, and high bitrate MP3s to see how the new model would sound under various conditions.

The first thing we noticed was a difference in the various models’ base noise levels – one which showed the first-generation shuffle to be better than the newer model, and both the nano and 5G to be even better still. During silences – the gaps in between spoken words or instruments, and when the iPod’s paused, the new shuffle exhibits a higher base noise level, and makes a slight static sound, like a TV tuned to an empty channel with the volume turned down low. This noise doesn’t go away when you turn the volume down, and most affects below-average volume listening – but only with good earphones. When used with the shuffle’s packed-in earbuds, the difference was barely noticeable, so this is an issue that will bother only audiophiles.

On a more positive note, the second-generation shuffle makes much less audible noises when idling or changing tracks than did the prior model. When it’s idling – paused, with a flashing light – you don’t hear anything, and when it changes tracks, you’ll hear two tiny clicks – they’re difficult but not impossible to notice with the included Apple earbuds. In the original shuffle, a small high-pitched warble could be heard under both conditions, again difficult but not impossibly so with Apple’s stock buds. In these regards, the new shuffle is an improvement over its predecessor, though not as quiet as the fifth-generation iPod or nano. It’s worth mentioning that the new model also changes tracks faster than the prior shuffle, within a split second rather than 1 or 2. Apple doesn’t promise iPod- and nano-style gapless playback for the shuffle, but it’s far more possible now than it was with the past model.

The new shuffle’s overall audio balance is very similar to its predecessor’s, only with a bit of additional treble and mid-treble detail to complement its still-strong bass response. The difference is noticeable even with Apple’s stock earbuds, and other than the added noise, we’d prefer it to the prior model’s sound. However, it’s our feeling that the new shuffle is now overall a step behind the full-sized iPod and nano in overall sound quality, as these models have come a long way since the fourth-generation and mini the shuffle originally sat beside. Buy an iPod or nano and you’ll hear sound that’s nicely balanced and neutral, with less noise than the new shuffle, particularly at lower volumes.

As a related aside, the shuffle indirectly includes support for Apple’s Volume Limit feature, a March 2006 addition to iPod and nano firmware that lets users or their parents set a specific maximum audio output level to limit or prevent hearing loss. Though the shuffle lacks a screen through which the peak volume level could be changed at any time, iTunes enables you to set the limit in the iPod shuffle’s settings menu, a feature that works for both first-generation and second-generation models, but isn’t locked with an iPod/nano-like combination code.

Finally, relative to the full-sized iPod and nano, it’s worth reiterating that using the shuffle means giving up support for Apple’s Apple Lossless audio compression format, which isn’t as bad as it might initially sound. Like iPods and nanos, the new shuffle plays back MP3, AAC, and Audible files, which means that it can play back virtually everything in the average user’s iTunes library without a hiccup, and it can also play huge, uncompressed WAV and AIFF audio files, the former created by some PC and Mac recording programs and devices such as iPod recorder accessories, the latter new to the second-generation shuffle, but barely used at all any more. All it can’t play are the newer Lossless files, which compress WAV and AIFF audio down to the smallest possible size without discarding any audio data. On one hand, 95% of iPod shuffle users don’t and won’t care – a 1GB model can hold only around 40 Lossless tracks – but on the other hand, this is a tradeoff that you wouldn’t need to make in an iPod nano.

Overall, between its noisier audio and its continued lack of support for the Apple Lossless format, the new shuffle is in our view less of an audiophile’s iPod than the nano and fifth-generation models, which shouldn’t be any surprise to most of the device’s target audience. So long as you go into the shuffle with the expectation that it’s not going to outperform its more expensive predecessors, you won’t be disappointed by its audio performance – most users won’t know or care that it’s different from the last shuffle or other iPods – but harder core listeners will care, and we’d be surprised if they preferred the new shuffle to the alternatives, rather than just tolerating it because of its small size.

In our tests of the original iPod shuffle’s USB transfer performance, we reported that an iTunes transfer of enough music to fill a 1GB shuffle took 14 minutes with our test computer – a time that, as with all USB-based devices, can vary based on other processes running on your machine. This year, we tested the new shuffle, an old shuffle (with 1.1.4 firmware) and a new second-generation iPod nano with a newer computer – an Apple MacBook Pro – and the latest version of iTunes. The new nano took 3 minutes and 42 seconds to transfer our 928 Megabyte test playlist, while the old shuffle took 6 minutes and 26 seconds – less time than last year’s test – and the new shuffle took 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

In other words, the new shuffle’s closer to the new nano in transfer speed than the old shuffle, but it’ll still take a little longer to load than the nano – assuming the extra 51 seconds really matters to you. Although your times may vary a bit, we don’t think that anyone will complain about being able to completely load a 1GB shuffle with new music in under five minutes. For additional convenience, Apple has preserved the Autofill feature introduced with the prior shuffle to enable you to refresh the new model’s contents with a single button click; today, the feature can pick songs randomly, pick higher-rated songs more often, and/or select songs only from a pre-designated playlist, depending on your preferences.

Placing files on the new shuffle was just as easy as on its predecessor – so long as we had the Dock around.