My dad went to Shenzhen lately and bought home some Chinese made gadget. One of which he bought is this MP5 portable media player. It’s brandless or in fact the brand and model name is MP5. Very funny.

It looks pretty with a large 2.7 screen but not a touch screen., the screen is quite plastic which I feel that it will be cracked easily. Though the colour on the screen is pretty and the interface too. The buttons are all located on the side and is not difficult to navigate around the menu.

It has a 2GB memory which plays mp3, wma, avi, jpg, txt files for eBook and even Real Media format files (rmvb). There’s also FM radio and a voice recorder feature. It’s a cheap media player which cost around US$30 but there’s some cons about this are, cheap built quality, slow interface and sound quality is not as nice as the iPod.

Breaking news as Apple just update their iPod line with the new iPod shuffle. Previously, the 2nd generation’s claimed to be the world most smallest mp3 player and now, there’s even a smaller iPod shuffle than the 2nd generation iPod shuffle.

It’s a surprise release as I didn’t know about it until my brother IM me on Live Messenger. I thought he was lying and after checking through Apple’s site, it’s confirmed.

It stores up to 1000 songs in it’s 4GB capacity and will be selling at 79US$. It will also be available in two colours which is black and silver.

“Imagine your music player talking to you, telling you your song titles, artists and playlist names,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPod and iPhone™ Product Marketing. “The amazingly small new iPod shuffle takes a revolutionary approach to how you listen to your music by talking to you, also making it the first iPod shuffle with playlists.”

Voice Over is the new feature of this new iPod Shuffle which is that a voice will talk to you about the song name and artist, it’s also to guide you to navigate through playlist because it’s screenless. Another new thing that you see on the new iPod shuffle is there’s no button on the iPod itself, everything is controlled via the tiny remote on the earpiece.

For your little information, the 2nd generation iPod shuffle is still available in store.

Check out the guided video:

I just want one of this although I already have a 2nd generation iPod shuffle! Apple rocks! I just can’t imagine about the future 4th generation iPod shuffle.

By the way, beware of misplacing it somewhere, it’s super tiny.

I have went into the Apple store to check out the new iPods. Unfortunately, the only demo unit available is the new iPod nano. Nevertheless, I quickly got my hands-on on it. It feels better than the fat 3G nano. Seriously, I like a long one than a fat one. The curve design makes it looks thinner and more comfortable. It has a very striking color for the silver iPod nano because the click wheels is in black

Screen is not very big, 2″ size, but when comparing with the 1G and 2G iPod nano, it seems big. It’s a little bit longer than the old Nano.

Navigating through the menu, nothing much amaze me. It’s still and iPod user interface, with thumnails and also cover flow when viewing the iPod nano in a vertical way.

The best new feature I like about the 4G iPod nano is the built in accelerometer. Besides working for cover flow, you can shuffle a song by just shaking your iPod nano. It’s like the Sony Ericsson W910i and W580i with shake control. Don’t you will be shuffling your song when you go on a run or a bumpy ride, you have to shake hard to shuffle to the next song. Isn’t that cool?

The rest feature remains the same. Videos, photos, music, and of couse it’s cheaper now. One thing I forgot to mention is, the new iPod nano is colourful, there’s 9 colours to choose from. I like the green, black and silver. What about you?