After a very long 7 months, my Gadget abstinence has come to a shuddering halt thanks to the new iPod nano with video camera. I opted for the very juicy orange in the largest 16GB capacity, which cost £135. I ordered from the Apple Store online at around 1.30pm yesterday afternoon and it arrived via UPS at 3pm today. That’s probably the quickest delivery time I’ve experienced from Apple in 4 years.

Pocket Sized

I was feeling quite underwhelmed before the ‘It’s Only Rock and Roll’ Apple Event last Wednesday, knowing the entire event was going to be devoted to iTunes and the iPod range – something that I wasn’t too excited about. That was until the One More Thing where the new nano with video camera was announced.

I’ve been wanting the iPhone 3GS since it’s launch a couple of months ago. However, due to being tied into my existing iPhone 3G contract until March, all options to get around that were hardly attractive. Pay up the rest of my contract and upgrade/sign a new 18 month contract, or buy the Pay & Go iPhone 3GS for £440 and pop my existing SIM in. The latter was the more attractive option, but word from some 3GS upgraders was “wait until next summer for the next new iPhone”. So, the new iPod nano is my go-between – with a more attractive price-tag.

The video functionality of the nano was the selling point for me as it was the biggest thing I wanted from the 3GS. Okay, so I can’t upload directly from the iPod itself to the internet like with the 3GS, but it takes moments to sync to iTunes/iPhoto so I can quickly trim a video in QuickTime and then upload to iTunes, MobileMe or YouTube.

I am very impressed with the quality of the video on the new nano. Due to time constraints today I have been unable to capture a large amount of video, but did manage to get this up on YouTube as a test for people who asked me via Twitter. I hope to get some more footage out in natural daylight soon. My initial impressions are very positive, considering it’s such a tiny device. It seems to perform extremely well when going from light to dark conditions which is something that past (and more expensive) camcorders I’ve owned were unable to do very efficiently.

I shall be posting a more indepth review soon. I am in the middle of some major home improvements right now which has slowed my Fruit Bytes dedication down, but if you have any specific questions about the new nano or a request for a test video then please feel free to ask me in the comments or drop me an e-mail and I’ll do my best to assist.