Pros & Cons
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- Nice design.
- Easy-to use.
- Three-inch screen.
- Wireless music & photo sharing with other Zunes.
- Good integration with software.
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- Small hard drive.
- Non-replaceable battery.
- Weak Battery Life.
- No PlaysForSure support.
- No Podcasts or Video offering in Zune marketplace.
Microsoft Zune Specs
| Audio Battery Life: | 14 hr |
| Battery Type Supported: | Rechargeable |
| Built-In Speakers: | No |
| Dimensions: | 4.4 x 2.4 x 0.6 inches |
| Music Playback Formats: | AAC |
| Music Playback Formats: | MP3 |
| Music Playback Formats: | WAV |
| Music Playback Formats: | WMA |
| Photo Formats: | JPEG |
| Player Type: | Hard Disk MP3 Player |
| Radio: | Yes |
| Recording, FM: | No |
| Recording, Line In: | No |
| Recording, Voice: | No |
| Screen Resolution: | 340 x 240 pixels |
| Screen Size: | 3 inches |
| Storage Capacity (as Tested): | 30 GB |
| Video Battery Life: | 4 hr |
| Video Formats: | WMV |
| Video Recording: | No |
| Weight: | 5.6 oz |
The Microsoft Zune ($249.99 list) is a shot across iPod's bow. By tightly integrating the Zune device with the Zune online store, Microsoft has made a digital audio player that is nearly as easy to use as the iPod. It has even added some innovative features, like the ability to share songs and pictures with other Zune users via WiFi. Nonetheless, when compared to the iPod/iTunes combination, the Zune just doesn't have the refinement, diverse media offerings, or peripheral support that make the former such a dominant force in the digital music industry.
Although it has capacity of 30GB, the Zune is bigger and heavier than the
Offered in three colors—white, black, and brown—the Zune is not nearly as shiny as an iPod. Translucent plastic covers the device itself, which diffuses the color a bit. It also has a subtle texture that feels good in the hand. This is a nice feature and means you cannot scratch the paint—though you could conceivably scratch the plastic.
When you first look at the Zune, you might think it is missing a few buttons. Microsoft is pushing simplicity here. The screen fills most of the face and delivers 320-by-240 images in portrait and landscape mode. Below is a navigation wheel that, unlike iPod's scroll wheel, is not touch sensitive but responds nicely to pushes. To the left is the back button and, on the right-hand side of the wheel, a play/pause button. That's it. The nav wheel is the focal point (aside from the screen) and is easily five times the size of the smaller buttons beside it. Holding the Zune, your thumb instinctively reaches for the center button. Within 30 seconds we were using the Zune to play music and watch the accompanying music video.
The interface has folders and levels, as you would expect. The main screen's options are Music, Video, Pictures, Community, and Settings. The nav wheel lets you move up and down the menu and the center of the wheel is used to select. The interface is remarkably straightforward, letting you drill down through albums to individual tracks in just a few clicks. We also liked the fact that you could take any picture (JPEG format, only) on the device and use it as your background image, it is just a nice way to personalize you device.
The audio quality on the Zune was very good. We tested them with the include earphones, with modest results, and the higher-end
Video-watchers should be somewhat more satisfied. Although this screen is half an inch larger than the 5.5-generation iPod, the resolution is the same, 320-by-240 (QVGA.) Still, the landscape view made for a better –video watching experience than the iPod. The Zune will play .WMV, MPEG4, and H264 video files, the latter two by converting them to .WMV during transfer. Unfortunately, the player doesn't support any DRM-protected video formats. Microsoft told us they want the Zune to take advantage of the types of viral videos that people forward to each other via email. That's a good thing because it will be hard to play anything but those on the Zune.
The video samples we loaded generally looked sharp and bright. We didn't notice any issues with reflection on the shiny screen indoors and the screen held up well in bright sunlight as well.
The player also has a built-in FM radio that picks up dozens of stations with almost startling clarity. And the device supports RDS data service, which some radio stations use to send station identification and track info along with the audio broadcast.
Microsoft is also really pushing the Zune as a social experience The most dramatic evidence of this is that the device lets you share files and photos with other Zune users. Zune has 802.11g/b ad hoc networking built in.
We used this feature at a Microsoft demo and were able to easily exchange music and photos with other Zune users. To send, you simply navigated to any piece of content and used the "send" option. This will take you to a menu that shows all available Zune devices. Anyone within a 30-foot range who has wireless turned on in their Zune (you can choose to have it off) shows up on the list. It can even tell you what they were doing—"watching video," "viewing photos," or "playing music." (This a little creepy, but it too can be turned off.) Just select any file, wait for that party to accept it, and it the file moves in seconds.
Unfortunately, we were unable to test this feature in the labs, because Microsoft only sent us one Zune to review. Chances are, most people who buy Zunes this holiday season will have the same problem. This feature, however cool, is only useful if you know other people that own Zune. And remember, shared files don't last forever.
Shared photos can live indefinitely on another Zune user's player. Music is another story. Any music you share will live for three days or three plays; then it goes gray and unplayable. The good news is that you can flag it so it's easy to find if you want to buy your own copy. Which leads us to the software.—
Inside the Zune MarketPlace
The thing that makes the Zune different from every other DAP on the market is the tight integration with the Zune online store. The Zune app is dead simple—its controls are obviously modeled on the physical Zune. When we tested the Zune market place the day of the launch, the store refused to let us log in, but the company seems to have worked out the bugs now. After installing the software, you can set it to synchronize with any number of folders on your PC. This worked seamlessly, and let us quickly load pictures, music, and video onto the Zune.
This elegant approach is very similar to the iPod/iTunes model, but it comes at a cost when it comes to compatibility. The Zune is not PlaysForSure or WMA-DRM9 compliant, so music from other compliant services, like
There is good news, though. The marketplace will launch with two million songs and—this is the really good part—a subscription service. You get all the songs you can digest for $14.99 a month. That's smart and something we've been begging Apple to do with iTunes.
You can also purchase music directly from the Zune marketplace for 79 "Microsoft points" per track. Microsoft points are credits that are currently used by Xbox Live subscribers to purchase content. The price of .79 Microsoft points is equal to about $1, but you have to purchase them in $5 blocks. So to buy one song you need to pony up at least $5. This is irritating.
The Zune software works pretty well, but the content offerings are nowhere near as robust as iTunes. Although the selection of music is comparable, the Zune Marketplace doesn't yet offer podcasts or videos of any sort. To get these on the player, you need to find or make them yourself and manually drop them into a folder and synchronize them over to the player. To compete against the iPod, the Zune needs to make it easy to download podcasts and video directly from the Zune marketplace.
We also found the battery life also a bit disappointing. The battery is rated for 14 hours (with wireless off) and 13 hours (wireless on), but in our tests it last just 11 hours 40 minutes with wireless on and 13 hours with wireless off. That is a far cry from the iPod with videos tested 21 hours of battery life. The Zune plays 4 hours of video—but without movies or TV shows, we're not sure who would care.
Clearly, the Zune has a lot going for it, but it comes with a few caveats. It is priced the same, $250, as a 30GB iPod. The WiFi file-sharing is really cool, if not that useful right now, and the subscription music plan is a great option, but it can be found elsewhere. If Microsoft can boost its battery life, broaden the video support, and make it easier to download podcasts, the Zune could provide some healthy competition to the iPod. Until then, the iPod will continue to reign supreme.
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