As a Wi-Fi wireless device, the iPod Touch is nigh on miraculous. It makes handheld surfing a real pleasure, and suggests a whole new world of interactive applications that's just waiting to be realized.

PLUS

• Slick multi-touch user interface
• Full media-player features
• Effortless connectivity and great surfing options

MINUS

• No voice communicatins
• No "serious" apps built-in

The iPod Touch is a very different beast compared to almost anything else on the market at the moment.

Basically, the iPod Touch is an iPhone without the phone. The cellular radio is omitted, but you still get powerful connectivity via Wi-Fi, on top of Apple's top-of-the-line portable media playback capabilities.

The first thing you notice about the Touch is its thin profile. Thinner than even the iPhone, it's like a handheld organizer that's fallen under a steamroller. The front is jet-black, the back gleaming chrome. Oddly, though, the front face meets the sides in a sharp edge, which feels a bit harsh to the fingers.

You power up by pressing a single round button on the front, below the display. The screen shows a sliding button, which you drag sideways to unlock the unit.

That's when you start to notice the second distinctive thing about the iPod Touch: that amazing iPhone interface. The Touch has the same brilliantly sharp LCD, and the same array of colourful icons that access functions like Calendar, Contacts, Calculator and Clock. At the bottom of the screen is an extra row of icons for accessing media functionality: Music, Videos, Photos and iTunes Music Store.

To get hooked up, you tap the Settings icon, then General, then Network, then Wi-Fi. Here you can browse the usual list of your neighbours' networks, or enter your own SSID and password. The on-screen "soft" keyboard works pretty well; each "key" enlarges as you touch it, and there's a good, positive click sound.

The Touch connected immediately and exhibited no issues during any of my tests. In fact, it was the only device I tested for this feature that encountered absolutely no issues of any kind, either in connecting to my Wi-Fi network or in any other facet of its operation.

For surfing the Net, the Touch is more pleasant than any other handheld device I've tried. Tapping the Safari icon on the home screen opens the Web browser. You can type in a URL address at the top of the screen, or access your bookmarks from an icon bar at the bottom. Another icon on the bar lets you shrink the view to display multiple pages, giving much the same capability as tabs in recent desktop browsers.

By default, Safari displays complete Web pages shrunk to fit the LCD screen. At this size, the largest headlines are just legible. If you want to read more, it's easy to zoom in using Apple's unique Multitouch gestures.

Double-tapping instantly zooms in on an area.