Top Five Best Travel Accessories for Your iPod Device

Regulations have made flight travel somewhat difficult with handheld devices, but certainly not impossible. Here are the top five best travel accessories for almost any iPod device that you can use in the hotel room, in the car or on a plane.

1. FM Transmitter: When you're going on a long road trip, a few CD's just aren't enough. Bring along your iPod with several gigabytes of songs on the hard drive and plug it into your car. But you don't have an auxiliary cable in your car, you say? Not a problem.

Many iPod accessory companies, such as Griffin, carry an FM transmitter for iPod that connects directly into the cigarette lighter of your car. So not only does it stay charged throughout the trip, it provides a one-step connection between your iPod and car speakers. The transmitter uses FM radio to transmit songs from your iPod to the car, so the connection might not always be perfect, but it's certainly better than driving in silence.

2. In-Flight Charger or Car Charger

If you're traveling on a flight and you're in an airplane with headphone jacks located in the armrests, plug the charging adapter into that jack and connect the other end to your iPod. As long as the pilot keeps the power on for the "safe to use portable electronics" period, your iPod will stay charged.

Similarly, you can bring a car charger along on a road trip. These plug directly into your cigarette lighter and allow your iPod to stay fully charged throughout your journey.

3. Protective Case

Don't just stuff your iPod in your carry-on luggage anywhere you feel like it. That's a great recipe for it to get smashed to bits through airport security. Instead, place it in a protective leather case that's made for this purpose. You can usually buy these on Amazon for less than $20.

The leather case ordinarily snaps shut and flips open. The iPod screen is then exposed so you can play with it without taking it out of the case. When you're finished, just snap it shut and put it back in your bag. It's too easy of an accessory to take along that there's no excuse not to make the investment to protect your device.

4. Retractable Cable

You have no idea how much I love taking my retractable charging and syncing cable with me on flights and road trips. It's so much easier to tote a wound-up cable than one that keeps falling out of the rubber band.

Most car charger kits come with this cable, otherwise you can purchase one on its own. They're always fairly cheap, and they're great to have as a backup cable at home, too. They plug right into a laptop so you can sync your iPod when you get to the hotel.

5. Noise Isolating Earbuds

Listening to your iPod on a flight is almost impossible unless you crank up the volume, which, at high levels, is damaging for your ears for extended periods of time.

That's why I highly recommend investing in a pair of noise-isolating earbuds. These earbuds come with several different sized earpieces so you can pick the one that fits your ear best. You can keep the volume low on your device while blocking out some of the jet noise and your chatty neighbor in the seat next to you.

They're not quite as sound-proof as noise-cancelling headphones, but they're a lot easier to pack.

So next time you go on a trip, think about taking some iPod travel accessories to make your life easier and keep your device protected.