We live in the age of mp3 downloads and the Cloud. Google, Amazon and Apple all have music cloud solutions. And you can buy your music from any of the above, and never download a song. All you need to do is stream your collection over the Internet.

Sounds amazing doesn’t it. No need to use a bookcase or a cabinet to display or store your CDs. No need to rip and then sync across to your devices. So surely the iPod Classic reign is over.

Well, it may be in a few years, but it’s actually a hidden gem. With a storage of 160gb it has a huge capacity for holding your music. I have my entire music collection stored on it. It also sits in the cloud via Google Music by the way. With the Classic you don’t need to pay for unlimited Internet or increase your broadband capacity. You have a small pocketable device that you can plug and play. Simple. If you Cloud service goes offline you are screwed. Not with the Classic. But that’s the only start of what you can do with it. You can use it as your home music system by connecting to a dock, and because it still uses the old 30 pin connector, you have portable audio solutions. Using the 30 pin connector, you can bypass the iPod’s built in headphone amplifier and connect it to a dedicated headphone amp as shown in the photo below.

This enables a better audio experience. Mind you the iPod Classic is known to possess a decent default sound signature.

So with all the usefulness of the iPod Classic, it’s huge hard drive and its always available without the Internet, it still has a number of years left.