Choosing the Right iPod

iPod Shuffle
The iPod shuffle ($79) is the most basic model—it lacks even a screen, but it’s cute, with a tiny metallic body available in five colors. The controls are dead-simple to use, and the integrated clip grips onto your workout gear. If you don’t have much digital music (it holds about 240 songs on 1GB of memory), or you just want something inexpensive to keep you company on a run, this is the iPod for you.

iPod Nano
One step up is the iPod nano (from $149), which has a sharp 2-inch screen and measures an ultra-slim 2.8 x 2.1 x 0.3 inches—perfect for style mavens. It’s still primarily a music player, but it plays videos that look clear and smooth. You can browse by album cover via Apple’s highly touted Cover Flow. The 4GB and 8GB capacities are good for small but growing collections, or for people who want less bulk while commuting, exercising, or walking around. The roughly 24 hours of audio playback per charge is also a plus.

iPod Classic
Those who have enormous amounts of digital music and want to carry as much of it around with them as they can should consider the iPod classic (from $249), which has an 80GB or whopping 160GB hard drive inside. It looks a lot like the full-sized iPods of yore, but it’s slimmer (0.4 or 0.5 inches thick, depending on capacity) and has a brighter 2.5-inch screen for playing videos. The front face is also now a scratch-resistant anodized aluminum, and it comes in silver or black. Battery life is much improved over previous models for both audio and video, at about 30/5 hours (audio/video) for the 80GB model and 40/7 hours for the 160GB behemoth.

iPod Touch
The cream of this crop is the Wi-Fi-enabled iPod touch (from $299), which looks like a slimmer iPhone, minus the phone. The 3.5-inch glass touchscreen supports multi-touch gestures, so you can easily blow up photos and Web pages. Its 8GB or 16GB of flash memory may not be enough for serious video buffs, but this is one killer media player. Extras include widgets for the Safari browser, YouTube, and calendar, but it lacks the iPhone’s e-mail interface (at least, without hacking the device’s OS). One huge bonus: wireless downloads from the iTunes Music Store. Battery life isn’t bad, at 22 hours for audio and 5 hours for video (with Wi-Fi off).