Customer Reviews

Griffin iFM Radio, Remote and Recorder for iPod

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

My iFM worked great on my iPod Photo. It was a convenient compact size, and had great FM reception even inside buildings. I also used it to record FM radio. I used it about two or three times per week for two months when suddenly the FM radio only received static. It simply stopped receiving FM. I ONLY used this FM receiver indoors at my health club, and never abused it in any way. Boo to Griffin for such a weak product.

Well, it's a remote, with added fm features. Overall, I like Griffin products, they have been good with their ipod accessory line, I own a couple of them, they all seem to be ok in my standards. This little remote is no exception. Griffin just made another similar item for the ipod nano and it has won the Mac world best product award. I guess when the new product comes out nobody cares about your not even one year old ipod mini/4G anymore. Or maybe it's because Steve Job changed the design of the newer generation of ipod so you have to get the right to use dock connector before you can make anything for it. Regardless, this remote is a new product, but it's already old. Back to the review from my mindless thought. It does what it says, switch to FM, remote or record voice. Quality seem to be ok. Now the negative part:
1: FM recording is in the pathytic apple low bitrate format so don't expect CD quality music so you don't have to buy that brand new CD just came out that's also playing on the radio. Sure, none of us ever used the tape recorder that came with the stereo 'wink' A easy fix of that could be found with a little twist of the iPod OS, ... LINUX!! google it and you will find it to be a quite useful feature for your ipod, more versitility and programs, you can change a lot of settings "hidden" in the ipod and you can also switch back anytime you want. If you get ipod linux, you can up the bitrate of recording the FM radio to at least a MP3 quality. BTW, you can get Linux for your xBox too, what a great idea!
2: The cord design is relatively flawed, I like the orginal ipod remote design where one line comes in one line out, this ifm has both on the same side, with the heavier weight of the remote itself and a clip looks like a hair pin just pulled out of a barbie, you might find yourself with the remote dongling on your ear a couple of times.
With those in mind, now you can decide, the voice recording capability can be done through Ipod linux program alone, so you are basically buying a FM turner that you can get the "oh...that's my song" on the radio feeling over and over again.

The really positive is the sensitivity of the tuner. It picks up distant stations better than _any_ of the portable players I have (Sonys and Panasonics.) I like to listen to NPR and classical stations - and in Santa Barbara, the only ones are many (60 plus) miles away. Also positive is that it's easy to use - I have the iPod photo.

The downsides would be the long cord - it would have been nice to have a separate short cord also. It's a little awkward dialing stations - there's no fast way of going from one end of the FM spectrum to the other.

Interesting about the recording comment of the prior poster, noting to convert to LINUX OS for better recording. I haven't tried recording with it yet. I wonder how one changes the OS and how that would affect the rest of the iPod.

All in all, I am very pleased with it.