IPod Brings Music to Your Photos

Products Reviewed

The 2-inch screen on Apple's new IPod Photo looks sharp.

Carrying around a wallet full of pictures is so last year. Apple's IPod Photo makes looking at your most beloved pictures on the go as easy as listening to your favorite tunes. But it won't be cheap.

The IPod Photo comes in two sizes. I tested a shipping 40GB version, which costs $499--$100 more than the plain-vanilla 40GB IPod. A 60GB version of the IPod Photo comes priced at $599.

This IPod variant is the first in Apple's line of digital audio players to feature a color screen. The 2-inch, 65,000-color display is beautiful and crisp, though a bit small for viewing photos. It can also display tiny versions of album art while music plays.

You load photos the same way that you load music, via ITunes 4.7 software. Scrolling through thumbnails--even hundreds of them--is lightning fast. You can choose to look at a single photo, scroll through photos manually, or start a slide show. The Slideshow Settings menu lets you specify, among other things, the amount of time slides display, as well as a playlist to aurally accompany the slide show. An included cable gives you the option of plugging the unit into a TV's RCA jacks for big-screen viewing.

In spite of the color screen, Apple managed to improve the unit's battery life. I squeezed nearly 14 hours of listening and viewing pleasure out of one charge (that's up from about 12 hours of run time on current fourth-gen monochrome IPods).

The price may be steep, but the IPod Photo won me over with its gorgeous color screen and high-quality audio. Now instead of suffering through 40 minutes on the treadmill staring at the calorie counter, I can pass the time looking at my favorite pictures.