The iPod Radio Remote and Griffin Navigate
Some of you know that I use a second-generation iPod nano (the best iPod ever) with an iPod Radio Remote. There are two generations of iPod Remote; here they are side by side:
The original is on the left. It was for the 2G iPod (that’s what I had, anyway) and possibly some other models. That remote didn’t have a radio tuner in it. The one on the right, the one that has a Dock connector and looks like a 2G iPod shuffle, is the iPod Radio Remote.
The iPod Radio Remote never did work with the iPhone and iPod touch. Every introduction of a new iPhone or iPod touch model (including the originals) made clearer that they’d either make a third generation or kill it. Sometime around the time when they introduced the new Apple Remote, they chose the latter.
At some point, Griffin Technology introduced their Navigate. I spotted one today at Walmart for $20 on clearance and snapped it up. Walmart normally sells it for $50, and MSRP is $60.
Not only does the Navigate work with my 1G iPod touch, it adds a display showing the current track. The iPod Radio Remote never had this! The picture on Griffin’s website doesn’t do it justice; it actually looks much better, as shown in this video:
(If you want to really see how good it looks, click through to the YouTube page and watch it there.)
Like the Radio Remote, the Navigate has a clip. Unlike the Radio Remote, it’s not a moving part; it’s just a fixed, flexible (but not too flexible, but not too stiff, either) bit of plastic. Time will tell how easy it is to break.
True to its name, you can even use it to navigate your music: It will let you pick a playlist, artist, or album to listen to, and change the shuffle setting. However, it does not let you go straight to a specific song, which makes that feature useless for me. I understand why that limitation exists, though: It would be much more difficult to scroll to it with the Navigate’s buttons than with the iPod’s own click wheel or touch screen.
Navigating the FM band isn’t exactly easy. When moving along the frequency band itself, next and previous move one frequency-stop at a time. You can set presets, but only four of them. It’s not at all obvious how to set and use them; I’ll leave it to the manual to explain it. Ameliorating this problem is that it remembers the last station you had tuned, so it’s not like you’re going to have to deal with the preset menu every time you turn on the radio.
I do have a couple of significant problems with it.
The first is that it doesn’t remember your volume setting. (The Navigate has its own volume setting, separate from the iPod’s; the iPod’s volume setting has no effect on audio through the Navigate. This is another difference from the Radio Remote, which had no volume of its own.) The Navigate doesn’t have a battery; it relies on the iPod for power, so it goes dead when you unplug it. Then, when you plug it back in or plug it into a different iPod, it’s back to the default volume, which is quite loud for me. This will probably grate on me a bit.
The other problem is that it doesn’t fit in my iPod touch’s Dock connector with its SeeThru hard case on it. My iPod nano doesn’t have a case on it, so I don’t have that problem with that iPod. If you don’t have a case on your iPhone or iPod touch (or other iPod), or you use a different case that won’t conflict with Griffin’s Dock connector, then this won’t be a problem for you.
I hope a future version of the Navigate will remember the volume setting and have a slightly thinner Dock connector so that it isn’t blocked by my iPod touch’s case. Even now, though, I consider the Navigate a worthy successor to the iPod Radio Remote, primarily because of the display, secondarily because of the iPod touch (and iPhone) compatibility.