The colors, the colors! We chose blue, but dang does it pick up fingerprints.

The fifth-gen iPod nano arrived in our offices yesterday, and we can't stop playing with the cute little thing! Here's our first look; full review to follow in an upcoming issue of Mac|Life.

Setting Up: VoiceOver

Setup asked us if we want to install VoiceOver, saying, "With the press of a button hear your song, artist, and playlist names. iTunes will download and install the VoiceOver Kit." We went ahead with the install, thinking we could control the nano via the headphones, like with the button-less iPod shuffle.

No dice, however. The nano doesn't include the Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic (which come with the shuffle), or, obviously, the more-expensive In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic. So while you can press the Center button once at the Now Playing screen to hear the currently playing artist and song name announced, you can't actually control your music or playlists with the headphones unless you buy one of those compatible sets. 

But anyone can use the Spoken Menus feature (it's a Universal Access thing) to hear every menu item spoken, no matter what headphones or speakers you're using.

Built-In Speaker

The fifth-gen nano is the first to have a built-in speaker, and you can use it to listen to your songs or videos, but it's teeny-tiny and beyond tinny. It's great for playing the audio of videos you shot with the nano itself, so you can show a few people your video on the nano's screen and they won't need to take turns with the earbuds to hear the audio.

You can't use the speaker to play the radio, however. The radio only works with a pair of headphones plugged in, because the headphones' wire acts as the antenna. You can't even play the radio if your nano is connected to a set of powered speakers that use the Dock connector -- it has to be headphones.

Radio

Speaking of the radio, let's talk about that next. To tune the radio, press the Center button to bring up the radio dial, then use the clickwheel to browse through it. While the dial is displayed, you can also press the Previous and Next buttons to seek stations, or hold the Next button to scan for stations. (Press Center to stop scanning.) 

You can pause live radio by pressing the Pause button. (If you can still see the radio dial, you'll need to press Center first, then Pause.) To resume from the point where you paused, just press Play, but you can also scrub through your paused radio with the Fast-Forward and Rewind buttons. You can't save the recorded radio permanently, and the paused radio is cleared if you keep it paused for 15 minutes, turn the nano off (duh), change the station, play non-radio media, or if the battery is dying.

Pressing and holding the Center button while the radio is playing brings up a contextual menu letting you add the station to your favorites, or tag the song, if the radio station supports iTunes Tagging. (You can tell this at-a-glance if the currently playing song's name is displayed along with the radio station's station ID.) Tagging a song adds it to your Tagged Songs list, and then when you dock your nano, that list is transferred to iTunes, where it shows up in the sidebar under the iTunes Store. Click the Tagged Songs list to preview the songs and buy them in iTunes.

Pedometer

The built-in pedometer is found under Extras > Fitness. When you turn the Pedometer on and pocket your nano, it counts the steps you take until you turn the pedometer off or dock the iPod. You can set your Daily Step Goal in the Settings, as well as your current weight, which lets the pedometer calculate how many calories your steps have burned. The settings also let you leave the pedometer turned on all the time. (A little shoe icon at the top-left of the screen lets you know if it's on or not.)

When you dock, iTunes will ask if you want the data sent to Nike+. You can send your data over before you even have a Nike+ account, then just click Visit in the pop-up dialog to go to the site and create an account. The site's default goal is to climb a 100-story skyscraper, and it adds up all the steps you take in progress to that 4,500-step goal.

The Nike+ Active site tracks our progress up this skyscraper. We've taken 95 of 4,500 steps so far...um, where's the elevator?

Next page: The video camera, voice memos, contextual menus, and more...