It's hard to argue with the grace and power of the iPod Touch. It displays photos and videos flawlessly, it gives you lots of innovative ways to navigate your music collection and its use of Wi-Fi is a quantum leap past that of any other dedicated music player. But after playing with it for a couple of hours, I can't help but wonder whether a music player really needs to be this much.

I don't mean this much money, though certainly $649 for 16GB of storage is a lot (the 8GB model is $479). What I mean is whether a player really needs to be this complicated, this powerful, this pretty. I think of music players as rugged, simple companions you can take anywhere, on a run or out camping. The Touch feels a bit precious. It's a player to gaze lovingly at and show off to friends, but it would feel almost sacrilegious to toss it into your backpack and run for the bus.

Perhaps that's just the Puritan in me, though. Certainly, if you want a music player that does it all — and with panache — this is the one to buy.

SLIM AND TRIM

The Touch is based on the iPhone, of course, but it's an iPhone on a diet. At less than a third of an inch thick, it seems considerably slimmer than the iPhone, which is about half an inch. That thin profile makes the Touch feel a bit fragile, though we haven't yet given it any torture tests as we have with the iPhone and new Nano.

If you're familiar with an iPhone, getting around a Touch will be cinch. It's got the same welcome screen with icons for Safari, YouTube, Calendar, Contacts, Clock, Calculator, Music, Videos, Photos and Settings. The new addition is an icon that takes you directly to the iTunes music store.

MUSIC OPTIONS

Touch the music icon and you'll find so many ways to look through your music you'll lose count. Icons at the bottom switch from viewing your music by playlist, artist, song, album and more. But that's not all. You can scroll through a list of music by flicking it with your finger. You can use an alphabet list at the side to get more quickly to an album beginning with N, for instance.

Or you can turn the Touch sideways and navigate using Cover Flow, the virtual Rolodex of cover art.

It's interesting, though, that there's no way to use the multitouch capability when you're looking through music. It's one finger only throughout.

Like the iPhone, the Touch has only two hardware buttons — the on/off switch and the one button that takes you to the home page. So what do you do if you're looking at pictures and song comes on that's way too loud? Double-click the home page button and basic music controls (volume, track forward and back and pause) float above the screen you're looking at. Once you've turned the music down, you can dismiss the controls and go back to what you were doing. Oddly, though, the controls don't come up if you're in the Cover Flow view, meaning there's no way to change the volume in that mode.

You can plug any standard headphones into the Touch without having to use the ugly adapters the iPhone requires. The audio quality seems about equivalent to other iPods I've used.

LOVELY VIDEO

Video looks fabulous on the Touch. In fact, videos from iTunes seem to be made for this size screen. On my notebook, they looked pixelated, but on the Touch, they looked like high-def.

Getting onto Wi-Fi was simple, especially because I violate all the rules and run my network without any encryption. The Touch detected my network, asked if I wanted to get on and worked flawlessly from then on.

The Touch's integration with the iTunes Music Store is well thought-out. When you first synch with iTunes on your computer, it grabs your account information, meaning that downloading a song doesn't require you to enter any of your billing data again. Touch a song, click "Buy Now" and all you have to do is type in your password with the iPhone-like on-screen keyboard. Within a minute or two, you can be playing your new tune. And when you next synch, the song will get copied to your PC.

You can get around the music store in a few ways — look at the latest featured albums, browse top ten lists for various genres or search for the name of the artist you're looking for. As you type, iTunes will suggest artists based on the letters you've entered so far.

BUT SHOULD YOU BUY IT?

Despite all that praise, I don't think I'd recommend a Touch to someone who's primarily interested in a music player. It's too expensive, feels too fragile and just does too many extraneous things. But if you want to watch a lot of video on your handheld, could use a mini-browser on occasion and are willing to pay a premium for gorgeous design, you'll love the Touch.