My birthday falls in Fall, and some friends gave me an iPod Shuffle. (Seriously you guys, this sick cycle of giving has got to stop.)

I had no idea that the iPod team are such fans of me and this blog.

A relative size comparison. That’s my portable amp beneath the Shuffle.

As you can see, the damn thing is small! But not too small. It’d probably take some effort for a kid to sallow it. But it should be kept away from dogs. The design is fantastic, and the unit is pretty well built. (It is a mass produced product that sells for under $100, not a Pagani Zonda, so you can’t expect perfectly even gaps and faultless symmetry. :-P)

The stock, white earbuds sounds surprisingly good. I wasn’t expecting much, but the sound quality is definitely acceptable for walks. Being earbuds, the “sound stage” is pretty small. After using my Grados for a year now, the first thing I noticed with the earbuds is that the sounds are close together. The clarity, however, is fairly good. And a lot of sound comes through just fine. (All of this is based on very limited listening though.) The earbuds feels a little loose in my ears. But I have big ears. Although I have yet to try it, I’m sure it’d be ok to run with them. Walking around with white iPod earbuds does make me feel like a tool though!

I’m very used to browsing for my music through directories, so having to use iTunes to add music to the player is a little painful and slow. Although the one click firmware update is slick.

In any case, it’s a great a little mp3 player. And it makes an excellent gift. ;)

Edit: Hell yes, bitches!  iPod shuffle Database Builder just rocked me.