The battery in my iPod Classic has been long at the end of its life, now only holding maybe an hour or two max of power listening to music, so I decided instead of getting the battery replaced, to keep the Classic for plugged in use with my car iPod interface, and our Bose equipment at home. What really attracted me to the Nano were two things:
- iTunes integration --- yes I long ago drank this Kool-Aid and it's not going to be any time soon that I move off of this platform for music management so I figured this wouldn't be a bad purchase.
- size - this little unit fits perfectly in the case for my Bose IE earbuds so it makes for the perfect portable solution.
I have yet to really run it through its paces, but early signs are that while a bit on the expensive side, it's pretty hard to beat the Nano as a music player. The Sandisk and Sony MP3 players I had been looking at were significantly cheaper, but they didn't offer anything beyond the Shuffle in terms of functionality in my mind. The only real omissions that I'd like to see fixed would be a video and picture taking functionality as well as the clip from the previous generation to fit onto clothing, etc. Of course the camera would bring higher cost. I am looking forward to linking it to my bluetooth speaker to see what kind of play quality I'll get across the air. I expect it to be the same as my iPad Mini which is great for that.
Is it perfect? Not by a long shot -- but it is a very good unit, and like my iPad Mini -- the build quality is outstanding - very solidly built.
<<edit>>
I meant to add to my original post that I have tried the smartphone solution for music, and while I find the one device notion to be obviously more convenient, I have to admit to forgetting that it was a phone sometimes, walking away from it, missing calls, etc. -- ergo the additional device.