Before Apple was the iPhone company, it was the iPod company. Apple’s portable music player dominated its market for most of its heyday between 2001-2010. While the last “classic” iPod was released in 2007, the name continues with the iPod touch line, phone-less iPhones that are still on the market today.
Between 2001 and 2019, Apple and its partners released around 30 distinct iPod models, depending on what you call a “distinct iPod model.” (It’s more if you treat every U2-branded model as a distinct model or split the two revisions of the Classic, for instance.) That’s a lot of iPods! It’s enough for a March Madness-style (or, if you prefer, Squid Game marbles episode-style) battle royale.
In our family, we had six iPods: a third-gen, a fifth-gen, a second-gen Mini, a first-gen Nano, and second and fourth-gen Shuffles. So I know some of what I’m talking about here. Without further ado, let’s get to ranking 32 Apple iPod models. Be sure to stick around for the video at the end, where we reminisce about all things iPod.
Round 1 (iPods 32-17)
In this first phase of the bracket, I matched up a lot of similar pairs and had a few matchups between very different models.
#32: iPod+HP
The worst iPod in history, in my view, happened when HP skinned over iPods and tried to sell them as its own products. Although the fourth-gen iPod was a decent iPod, buying the HP model put you out of Apple’s support system and forced you to try to get support for an Apple product from HP, which wasn’t a great idea.
#31: Harry Potter iPod
Apple did a lot of weird, co-branded iPods between 2001-2004. You could get one with Beck’s or Madonna’s signature on the back, for instance. I’m calling out two on this list – the Harry Potter one and the U2 one (which had a great color scheme.) The Harry Potter iPod had a Hogwarts crest on the back and could only be purchased with a full set of Harry Potter audiobooks. Another dumb exercise in co-branding. Let’s put the rest of the “random celebrity signature” iPods here, too.
#30: iPod Nano 1
I mostly resent the first Nano for not being a Mini, but it ended up this low on the list because it was recalled for an exploding battery problem.
#29: iPod Shuffle 3
The only iPod to ever have no actual controls. . The controls were on the headphone cord, which also meant you couldn’t use third-party headphones with it and have any control over your music. Awful idea.
#28: iPod Nano 3
The ugliest iPod in history – maybe the only ugly iPod? – was a squat, somewhat misshapen thing with an infinitesimal 2-inch screen that you were supposed to be able to play games on. Our reviewer liked it at the time, but to me now, the idea of playing video on a 2-inch screen is hilarious.
#27: iPod Photo
The 4th-gen iPod with a photo display could show your iPhoto or Photoshop album pictures on its tiny, 220-by-176 screen. This was a silly and weird feature. Even at the time (2004) when phone screens were also pretty small and low-res, the awkwardness of syncing your photos to your iPod and then looking at them … on your iPod … was odd. The bigger-screened, next-gen iPod with video got things right.
#26: iPod Touch 1
The original “iPhone without a phone” was a good idea, but I’m putting it down here because it charged you a $4.95 fee to get the version of iOS which had the App Store on it. That’s not cool.
#25: iPod Touch 3
Apple just kept revving the iPod touch for a while to keep it up to date with the previous year’s iPhones. There was nothing particularly notable about the iPod Touch 3, which was (like some other models in the line) mostly a rev to keep the processor similar to the ones in the iPhones, and thus maintain third-party app compatibility. A forgettable iPod.
#24: iPod Shuffle 4
I know a lot of more athletic people loved this tiny, clip-style iPod, but I did not. I never liked the super-small Shuffles’ proprietary USB cables. I put this in the bracket against the similar but much more powerful Nano 6, and the Nano 6 is the clear winner.
#23: iPod Touch 6
Once the iPod Touch 5 was two and a half years old, Apple needed to update the processor so the Touch could run the latest apps. So the Touch 6 was mostly just a processor bump, and I noted in my review that it had pretty short battery life. Like the Touch 3, not a memorable iPod.
#22: iPod Nano 2
A mini manque without quite all the charm. The second-gen Nano copied the Mini’s aluminum body and was considerably slimmer, but I feel like it lost some intangible element which makes the Mini more of a true classic.
#21: iPod Touch 4
The fourth-gen iPod touch introduced front and back cameras but stuck with the previous generation’s 3.5-inch screen as the device became more and more app-dependent. The Touch 5’s 4-inch screen makes the difference for the win here.
#20: iPod Nano 4
The Nano 4 wasn’t all that bad. It had a tall screen which was good for scrolling through playlists, a classic click wheel, and nine different color options. But I bracketed it against the Nano 5, which was a killer Swiss Army knife of a gadget, so goodbye, Nano 4.
#19: iPod 2
Apple got rid of the charming mechanical scroll wheel on the iPod 2 but hadn’t yet gone to the lovely, fully solid-state approach of the iPod 3. The edges of the iPod 2’s physical buttons tended to get a bit grimy, and it still used a FireWire cable rather than the later, more common dock connector.
#18: iPod 5.5 (Video ‘06)
Yes, the 2006 upgrade to the video iPod made a lot of good incremental improvements, with a brighter screen and better battery life. But you don’t beat the bracket by being incremental. You beat it by being innovative, and this was an incremental iPod.
#17: iPod 3
I loved my iPod 3 and used it for more than a decade, but sometimes we must kill our darlings. The iPod 3 was a full redesign, with a touch-sensitive scroll wheel, the 30-pin dock connector, and a beautiful, luminous white-under-glass body. But up against the iPod 4, the iPod 3 must fail because it still relied on FireWire for charging, and USB has always been a much more widely adopted standard.
Round 2 (iPods 16-9)
#16: iPod Photo ‘05
This iPod only made it this far in the list because I had bracketed it against the Harry Potter/Celebrity iPods. The iPod Photo was a silly idea in ‘04, and it was still a bit silly in ‘05 with a slimmer body and a lower price. The iPod Video was a better iPod for the time.
#15: U2 iPod
The U2 iPod is the last of our co-branded fourth-gen iPods. This one placed the highest of the bunch because I think its black-and-red color scheme was actually quite cool. The U2 color option continued up to the iPod Video ‘06 model.
#14: iPod Mini 2
The Mini 2 was an incremental upgrade to a marvelous iPod. It’s still nice, but incremental only gets you so far in this bracket.
#13: iPod Nano 7
The final iPod Nano existed a bit uncomfortably in the iPhone era. Bluetooth and video playback were good to have here, but the device has a sense of being something that’s almost about to play streaming music but not quite. The line was being eclipsed by the iPod touch at this point.
#12: iPod Shuffle 2
I really respect the idea here that you could clip a tiny iPod to your clothes and go running, and at least the Shuffle 2 had both controls on it (unlike the Shuffle 3) and a place to put your thumb where you wouldn’t hit the controls (unlike the Shuffle 4). But man, did I hate that it used a super-proprietary connector and could only be synced when sitting in its little dock.
#11: iPod Touch 2
A built-in speaker, volume buttons, and included App Store support made this the first real “iPhone without a phone” and guided iPod users to transition into a world where music would be stored in a variety of apps or streamed over Wi-Fi, not just synced from iTunes.
#10: iPod Touch 5
This absolute banger of an iPod touch stuck around for years, almost until software wouldn’t run on its A5 processor anymore. The 4-inch screen, Siri, and dual cameras put this in many ways on par with the iPhone 5 and original iPhone SE (although it was slower.)
#9: iPod 1
The OG iPod started it all, and that retro mechanical scroll wheel is a real trip. That mechanical wheel, in my mind, beats out the semi-upgrade in the iPod 2, but the original iPod’s chunky body, clumsy FireWire port, and low storage don’t match up to the classic iPod 4.
Round 3 (iPods 8-5)
#8: iPod Nano 6
Our reviewer called the iPod Nano 6 a misstep, but this is my bracket, and I disagree. The iPod Nano 6 was the ultimate iPod shuffle: tiny for workout wear, but with a cute little touchscreen to help you navigate through your music.
#7: iPod Nano 5
A much more beloved Nano, the fifth-gen Nano added a video camera, voice recorder with mic, and FM radio to the traditional iPod-mini-like form factor. It was a bit of a hodgepodge of features, but the “MP3 + FM radio” combination was a winner.
#6: iPod Video
The video iPod, from 2005, was a generally great product. It was sleek, with a bigger screen than the iPod photo, and that screen was just big enough to watch Star Trek on the train back in an era when you couldn’t quite watch video on your phone yet. A really solid classic, and the predecessor to the actual Classic.
#5: iPod 4
The last of the pre-photo iPods, the iPod 4 beats out the iPod 3 by fully jumping on the USB bandwagon. Now, don’t get too excited – it’s USB-via-30-pin-cable – but with the touch-sensitive and haptic click wheel and longer battery life, the iPod 4 was a noticeable upgrade in various ways.
Round 4 (iPods 4-2)
#4: iPod Touch 7
The Touch 7 (an iPhone without the phone) beats the Nano 6 (a multitouch Shuffle). The Nano 6 just tries a little too hard for its too-small screen. In 2021, meanwhile, music is in apps, and the iPod Touch 7 not only handles all the current music apps, it will do so for years to come.
#3: iPod Shuffle 1
I had the Shuffle up against the iPod Video. The first-gen Shuffle is the only iPod to ever use a standard USB plug. That’s so great! And it had controls on the body, so you could use it with any headphones! Yes, it only played one playlist, but you don’t want more than that on a screenless device. The Shuffle had amazing audio quality, and it was the first iPod to use flash memory, so it gets points for leading the way in a technology that now rules the world. In the bracket this time it goes up against the video iPod, and Steve Jobs did say video iPods were a bad idea. Shuffle wins because Steve says so, even though we all know he was lying.
#2: iPod Mini 1
The iPod Mini beat the 4th-gen iPod. This was a tough one; the fourth-gen iPod is an absolute workhorse. But the Mini is the essence of iPodness: palm-sized, candy-colored, and cool to the touch, with the click wheel and the full iPod interface. It’s a delight.
Round 5: The Best iPod Ever
#1: iPod Classic
The iPod is a music player. It is a beautiful paragon of unitasking. It doesn’t need to play videos or games; it needs to hold your whole music library and enwrap you in it. The Mini was a wonderful iPod, but the iPod Classic is your whole musical world. Everything since then has been a bit of a corruption of the idea. The iPod Classic has since then become a beloved cult hit, with hackers upgrading the devices to get up to 4TB of storage and even Bluetooth audio. All hail the iPod Classic; long may she reign.
Now watch: The iPod’s 20th Anniversary: A Look Back
