Will a new Ipod Classic sitting on the shelf for a year or two have problems?

[Max Dread]

Hi all

If anyone can help me on this one ASAP I would appreciate it hugely...

I'm going to see an iPod Classic later today which someone is selling locally. They said they bought it but never used it. As such, it has been sitting unused (and "as new") for a year or two.

Is there likely to be any issues with it for the fact that it has not been used? I guess I'm thinking along the lines of the battery and the hard drive (as it is mechanical). But there may be other things to consider which I have not thought of.

Many thanks

Max

 

[Cold Irons]

The hard drive should be fine. Had a circa 2007 iPod 160Gb that still works, although I've replaced it with a newer 160Gb after about 5.5 years of almost daily use. I might be a little concerned about the battery. I don't know how they respond to not being charged in 2 years.

 

[kornchild2002]

Anything physical should be fine, this includes the hard drive. Hard drives can sit dormant for y ears without there being any issues. The main problem could be the iPod's battery as those will actually degrade if they aren't used. They don't need to go through a full charge cycle like the first few generations of iPods but they do need to be used. It's not good for them to sit there empty (it would empty itself) for a long time. You might be OK but that would be my only cause for concern.

Has the person selling the iPod conducted a battery life test lately?

 

[Max Dread]

How do you conduct a battery life test? Is that something specific or just "try it to see if it works"?

Is the thing you say with the battery different if it has NEVER been used, compared to if it was used and then allowed to drain?

I'll look into the priec of a replacement battery too (unless anyone here knows off the top's of their heads?)

Thank you so much guys.

 

[kornchild2002]

You conduct a battery test by loading up a 50+ hour playlist of music onto it. Plug in a standard set of headphones (the factory Apple earbuds will work just fine), set the volume to 50%, start the playlist (it has to be a playlist), and walk away. Don't touch the iPod until it completely turns off. Plug the iPod back into your computer, look at the last played song in the playlist, and tally up the playtime (you can do this in iTunes rather easily by highlighting all of the songs that were played and it will display a total playtime at the bottom, I'm sure foobar2000 has something similar).

The iPod classic's battery is rated for 36 hours of audio playback. However, those battery estimates from Apple are on the conservative side. You should be getting about 40 hours of total playback. Keep in mind that the use of a higher bitrate for your songs (such as 256kbps and above) will result in a decrease in battery life as the iPod's hard drive has to spin up more. So, if you load up a playlist of 256-320kbps files, you're looking at a playback time of about 34-37 hours. You should get 40 hours if you use a bitrate of 192kbps and below though.

What I said about the battery takes into account them charging it up once or not at all. iPods come with a charge directly from the factory. So, even if they never ever turned it on (which is hard to believe), the battery would have had a charge in it anyway. Then, after sitting for years, the iPod's battery would have drained. So it really doesn't matter if they charged it up once or twice and then let it drain or they just let it drain directly after buying it.

A replacement battery is less than $20 for the iPod classic but, if it is really a concern, you need to take that $20 purchase into account when buying the iPod classic from the seller. In other words, if they are currently charging you $200 (this is an arbitrary number) for the iPod classic, you need to argue them down to $180 since you're going to have to spend $20 and get a replacement battery. You should be able to argue them down further since you will have to take the time to conduct a battery test, buy a new battery, and take time to install it.

 

[Cold Irons]

You conduct a battery test by loading up a 50+ hour playlist of music onto it. Plug in a standard set of headphones (the factory Apple earbuds will work just fine), set the volume to 50%, start the playlist (it has to be a playlist), and walk away. Don't touch the iPod until it completely turns off. Plug the iPod back into your computer, look at the last played song in the playlist, and tally up the playtime (you can do this in iTunes rather easily by highlighting all of the songs that were played and it will display a total playtime at the bottom, I'm sure foobar2000 has something similar).

Great idea; wondered how you would test this. May try this on my older iPod 160Gb this weekend. I know it's battery is not as good as the new one, but was wondering how much it had degraded. Thanks for the idea....

 

[kornchild2002]

Sure. I forgot to mention that the iPod needs to be fully charged first. That should be pretty obvious but I don't want to leave any steps out. I used to conduct battery tests all the time on my iPods, the ones with hard drives. I stopped after getting an iPod touch though as the results were always the same. I have yet to conduct a single battery test on either my iPad or iPhone, I find it pretty unnecessary at this point especially since both devices are used for many, many different tasks that will use the battery differently (i.e. 3D games use more of the CPU and GPU so they consume more battery than if I was watching a video).

It's still a good check for the iPod classic though to see if it's battery is still in good shape. That's really the only way to see if the battery needs replaced. Even if a battery isn't holding 100% of it's capacity, that's not the end of the world. It could mean going from 40 hours of music listening to 36 hours of music listening. That's a 10% decrease but, when translated to real-world numbers, it doesn't really mean much. You can take an additional 10% decrease and that would net you 33 hours of audio playback. Again, not the end of the world and the battery really wouldn't need to be replaced until things get annoying.

 

[Max Dread]

Plug in a standard set of headphones (the factory Apple earbuds will work just fine)

The only headphones I have at the mo are these:

Ultimate Ears 200 Technical Specifications - Logitech FAQ

Will they be ok for the test or is their spec too different to the standard Apple earbuds?

start the playlist (it has to be a playlist),

When you say it "has to be", is that so you can see how long things have been running for in iTunes, and the last song played? If I just played all songs from #1 onward, made note of the time, and then just kept an eye on it and noted when it turned off/ran out of juice, would that work just as well (albeit less elegant of course!)... Or is there more to it?


Presumably EQ should be flat...

Should Soundcheck be off?

Want to make sure I get it all right so that my result is valid.

Cheers

Max

 

[kornchild2002]

Your UE headphones will be fine. You shouldn't conduct the test with big over-the-ear headphones as they consume more power than earbuds like what you have. It's better to use a playlist since you never know when the iPod will shut down. You can try to start playing music so that the iPod shuts off when you're around and awake but that hardly ever works out. Using playlist will help especially if the iPod runs out of power at 3:00 am when you're asleep. Plus that means you won't have to constantly monitor it during the day.

Sound check should probably be off but,from what I recall, it doesn't use that much additional power so you could leave it on. From what I remember, my classic would get 37 hours of playback (instead of 39) with sound check enabled. The EQ should be off all together. I don't remember if that means setting it to flat or actually being able to turn it off.