How tiny the iPod Shuffle looks next to the iPod Touch and iPhone! Beware you might loose it in your pocket.

What’s in the box?

In terms of design you get simple, sleek, stylish lines and brushed aluminium: it all looks great.

Everything that follows is bad news.
The Shuffle comes with the traditional white earbuds, the very ones with the same poor audio quality we underline each time. You will also find a few pieces of paper and here we will deliver precious advice: do not throw away these instructions, read them!

The device has only one button with 3 positions. Flip it to the left, and your music shuffles. Flip it to the middle, and your songs play in order. Or flip to the right to turn it off.
All the other controls have been moved from iPod shuffle to the earbud cord.
In an attempt to make everything simpler, Apple put only 3 buttons on the integrated remote. As a result, apart from the 2 volume controls (+ and -), the central button does it all: play, pause, previous/following song...

So basically you will be doing a lot of pressing, twice, thrice, long press, short one… you better know what you are doing.

Sound quality

No surprise, there is little to say about the sound. The Apple earphones  are compulsory for the moment and are pretty bad. So you’ll just have to wait for one of the major brands in audio such as Klipsch to deliver a product that is compatible. But even then do not expect to be carried away.

So what can one really say about the Shuffle?
Apple no doubt still excels at design.
But for all the rest, we have Sandisk’s Sansa Clip on our mind. A device that is hardly any bigger, that features a display and that has one of the best audio qualities available.
So all in all, the Shuffle next-gen is much like the Apple In-Ear: they are both just beautiful.