Back in Black: iPod Nano + Griffin iTrip

By Cyrris

The more observant of you may have noticed that January 2008 never actually existed. At least, not according to our definitive collection of recorded history anyway. Yes, things have been incredibly quiet on this online home of mine, but the real world couldn’t be more different. Things are in fact much, much noisier than ever before.

For the past 6 months I have made the hour-long journey to work in a 1992 Corolla Seca. Several dozen hail dents, mismatching and broken hub caps, disintegrating seat covers, and a steadily growing amount of rust. It also doesn’t have a working sound system. My trips to work were typically either in silence (or as silent as one can hope for, with all the road noise a car like this doesn’t block) or with my iPod Shuffle plugged in to my ears. When I say a Shuffle, I don’t mean one of these funky new clip-on ones. Mine is an original 512mb USB stick, and the lack of capacity really kills it’s usefulness once you’ve gone through the collection a few times and can’t be arsed plugging it back in to iTunes.

As of 2 weeks ago however, an opportunity arose for change. My new car, being a black one of these, actually has a working sound system. (For those who care, my variant is the 2.0 TDI with DSG). Not content to just burn MP3 CDs, I made my way to the department store last Saturday and bought myself some new gear worthy of the new car. And colour coded, too.

First up is a 3rd generation iPod Nano. Black, of course, to match the car, and 8GB, of course, to ensure my future needs are covered. Currently I have my entire music collection on there and am using barely a quarter of the space available, so I should be set. All with the added bonus of not having a hard drive to clunk out on me.

I have to admit that when the 3rd Nano was released, I thought it looked incredibly stupid. Gone were the slick dimensions of the first two models, only to add in video support which I felt (and to some extent still feel) to be completely inane on such a small screen. Seeing one in the flesh for the first time on Saturday, however, changed my opinion completely. I didn’t know just how darn small and how darn thin these things are. Up close they are incredibly slick, and once accustomed to the screen dimensions, the older Nanos seem visually restricted.

The only things I find odd about the Nano is that the earplugs for it are still white (which makes sense for any colour Nano except black), and there were no provided cushioned bud covers (luckily my Shuffle came with two pairs). Of course, given that my iPod lives in the car, neither of these are really much of an issue, but odd nonetheless.

This brings us to product number two. Since the VW doesn’t have any auxilary inputs (which should be considered a sin in any new car), the only way to realistically get sound moving through the car speakers has been to find an FM transmitter. And since there is only one easily accessible 12v power point in the car, it also needs to be able to charge the iPod at the same time. Thanfully, after a quick walk around the electronics section of the department store, a few options presented themselves.

The best of these, that I could see, was the Griffin iTrip Auto SmartScan. The device houses a few nifty features, such as a light on the charger which tells you what is going on using different colours, a good clear LCD screen, and the SmartScanner. This last feature supposedly scans the airwaves for the three best available frequencies to broadcast on, and lets you save them. All good, at least in theory, for a place like Sydney where the FM bands are chock full of useless stations.

Unfortunately, playing with the iTrip when I got home proved the SmartScan function to be somewhat useless. Scanning several times, none of the detected stations could ever broadcast my iPods music clearly, some not at all. It was through some manual fiddling that I settled on 103.7, which will be fine until I go to Brisbane, where that just happens to be a major radio station. But who wants to go to Brisbane anyway?

The actual biggest selling point of the iTrip Auto was it’s size. The charger is tiny, the FM transmitter is also nice and small, and that’s essentially what caused me to buy it over a chunkier Belkin option also in the store. It’s size means I can stuff it and the iPod in to the tiny dash compartment where the power outlet is, closed off and hidden from anyone peeking in through the Golf’s windows when not being used.

Overall the device is working well - the music from the iPod is quite clear, though the odd glitch has to be expected, given the tiny power output of the transmitter. I am a picky person, and even I find it acceptable, so I doubt anyone else would find it bothersome. That said, I can’t say that the SmartScan is worth the added cost over Griffin’s more basic iTrip Auto, assuming the transmitter is the same. I certainly would have gone for the cheaper option if it were available in the store.

And so, my very own black operation moves forward. Black sunglasses. Black phone. Black car. Black iPod. All that’s left on the list is the black computer, black screen, and hell, I’ll take the black president too.