Pros: Fast and responsive interface, Zune Software, Zune Pass, very music discovery oriented
Cons: Lacks apps, lacks PDA-like functions
The Bottom Line: Excellent value if you're really into music, but not much else. For about the same price, the Touch does more, but doesn't focus on music like a laser.
nad_masters's Full Review: Microsoft Zune HD Platinum (32 GB) MP3 Player
The Zune HD... it will take some time for us to get use to. This is true for both current users of Zune and iPhone/Touch alike. It's nothing like the Touch when it comes down to the interface, nor does does it act like the old Zune when it comes to simplicity.
I must say, the good old Zune 30GB, 80GB, and the small flash Zunes have a very easy to navigate interface, even easier than the iPods with the click wheel. However, with added functionality, the iPhone interface was amazingly intuitive.
This cannot be said about the Zune HD. You will need to play with it a bit, touching different places to see what it does (or not do).
But alas, lets start off this review like how I normally start my review: the first impression.
The Box Unboxing the Zune reminded me of the old iPod unboxings. It was packed uniquely in the way you just snip two pieces of tape that's holding the box together, and pull the bottom part out. The outer box slides off, and what's left is a brand new Zune HD wrapped in plastic smiling back at you.
There is a bit of pressure holding the device in, so it will take a bit of force to pull out using the plastic tab, but after that, you will get lots of paper - a quick guide and lots of ads for Zune Pass, Zune software, Microsoft points, and the like.
There isn't much accessories to speak of: just a set of ear buds and a sync cable.
There's no charger, as Microsoft expects you to charge through your PC's USB port, much like the Apple iPod Touch does. In this way, the Touch and Zune HD are similar. The iPhones do come with an AC Adapter, however.
Setting Up Out of the box, the Zune HD is useless. While I understand that there's no using to play, you'd still need to sync up to the Zune software just to use the radio! So if you plan on playing with the Zune HD as soon as you got it, you'll be disappointed unless you have a net-connected laptop with you. Again, I guess this is not much different than the Touch, since Apple requires you to connect to a PC or Mac with iTunes installed. However, with the Zune HD, you can play with the menus a bit and get used to the flow of the user interface without syncing at all. The Touch just shows a graphic to sync, and you can't do anything else.
Once home, you'll have to download the Zune Software, much like Apple's iTunes. I was surprised to see that such a new device needs a firmware upgrade from the start! Then again, my brother's original Zune (30GB) had the same thing, which is an interesting experience. Once updated, the Zune HD was alive and usable.
Zune Software I can't talk about the Zune HD without talking about the Zune software first. If you are used to iTunes, then Zune software will make you feel lost for a while. However, after using it for a day, I must say that the Zune software is much easier to use than iTunes!
If you think of how the Windows Media Center is laid out, the Zune software makes much more sense. You get four main categories (Quickplay, Collection, Marketplace, Social, and Device). Each categories will have subcategories.
Quickplay allows you to quickly start playing music that the Zune software suggests based on your listening habits.
collection shows you everything you have downloaded or available already on your PC. This includes music, videos, podcasts, and pictures.
Marketplace is basically much like the iTunes store - you browse or search for artists, song titles, or albums, preview them, or buy them. With a Zune Pass, you can also download them without paying for it. More on that later. The interesting thing is the apps store, which doesn't have very much now, and everything is free so far.
The Social is very interesting. When Microsoft first debut the use of the word "social", it was for trading music with other Zune users wirelessly with just the Zune player. It didn't catch on. Today, the "social" actually means your XBOX Live friends, which is teaming with activity. In fact, you pay for your music using the same Microsoft points. You can see what everyone was listening to, message them, and suggest songs to them. This makes the Zune software more "social" than iTunes! It's also more social than the original concept Microsoft had.
When you plug in your Zune HD, the Zune software will detect it and add a new category called "Device". From here, you can see the music, videos, pictures, and podcasts on the device itself. You can also see an overall summary of where your storage space has gone. You can also force start or stop a sync.
Zune HD With so many companies overusing the two letters since HDTVs came out, Microsoft actually have good reason to add those letters to the Zune name. First of all, HD stands for High Definition, and the Zune HD does do HD videos!
While the screen itself isn't HD, it can playback 720p video content to your HDTV! This is quite impressive considering that it takes quite a lot of power to play back high def content. This great feat is accomplished by the nVidia Tegra SoC (system on a chip). You will need an expensive ($90) dock to do this, however, which outputs the video and audio via an HDMI cable.
Otherwise, the Zune's screen (while not HD in resolution) is spectacular on it's own! Using new OLED display technology, whites are whites, blacks are truely black (not washed out black or gray), and colors just pops! I compared my current iPhone's screen (same one used on the Touch - I don't have my Touch anymore to do a direct comparison) and the Zune HD using The Dark Knight as a reference, and there's just no comparison! Since The Dark Knight have lots of dark scenes, having both devices side by side make the iPhone look so much more washed out! If only OLED HDTVs are available on the market...
The other reason to tag the Zune with "HD" is the radio. While there really isn't anything HD about HD Radio, that's the name they gave themselves, so Microsoft capitalized on it. That's right, gang - the Zune is the first portable HD Radio! Previously, HD Radio tuners tend to be for cars or in-home units because the receivers required a lot of power. Somehow, Microsoft was able to fit one in a small device and a small battery, and still get respectable listening time. If you were looking for a HD Radio tuner for your car, then you mind a well take a look at the Zune - you won't just get an HD Radio tuner, but a great music player to boot!
The touchscreen itself is glossy, and attracts a lot of finger prints and grease. The new iPhone's screens can deal with finger prints much better now, but the Zune HD is just too annoying in this respect! You really need an InvisibleShield for it!
The entire thing is smaller than either the iPod Touch or the iPhone. The screen is a tad smaller (3.3" vs 3.5"), but is a true 16:9 ratio - just like your HDTV at home. The iPhone/Touch screens are not, so you get black bars on the top and bottom when watching widescreen movies. It is still thinner than the iPhone, but thicker than the iPod Touch.
It is also very light, making it feel somewhat cheap, but on the other hand, the metallic aluminum brushed texture on the back and mostly glass front makes it feel as solid as the Apple products. The Zune have very squared-off edges, so it doesn't feel as welcoming as a Palm Pre. Overall, the platinum color for the 32GB Zune HD combined with the squared-off edges makes it look like a high-end audio device from the 80s.
In Use The Zune HD takes a bit of time to get used to for both Apple users as well as Zune users. For Zune users, it's easier to get used to since the menu list is familiar. However, there's no dedicated volume control, and the pinned items, history, and new items list also adds to feeling of being lost the first time you use it.
There are so many places to touch to do different things, it'll take a while to learn. In fact, if you're the kind of person who is afraid of experimenting or touching things "because it will break", then the Zune HD is not for you. There are small areas to touch to bring up a list of songs, for example. I would not have found out unless I thought to myself "I wonder if this does anything".
Otherwise, the basic controls is that the top left area is usually to back out of the current view back to the previous view. The home button located below the screen brings you back into the main menu.
There is no dedicated volume control. Instead, a single button on the side invokes on-screen controls for skipping tracks and volume. This can be tedious when all you want is to quickly lower the volume. I also quite miss the ability to use inline controls on the headphones much like the ones found on the iPhone. If Microsoft allows that, the lack of dedicated volume controls on the device itself wouldn't have been that bad.
The graphic animations are slick and quick. The menu selection animations are very fluid, making every flick and touch seem very natural. The way items zoom in and out as you select or deselect them seem more natural than the iPod Touch.
With music, you can sort by Albums, Artists, Songs, and Genres. Not only that, but you get to view your playlists, the artist's bio, related artists, and channels. Channels are like Pandora radio stations. It's also like the Genius on the iPod Touch. Basically, you choose the genre, and Zune will suggest songs in that genre for you. It's great for discovering new music within that genre, and rediscover old ones.
If you are connected to the internet via WiFi, you can also view artists that are related to the current one you are viewing/listening to. Either by similar sound, or if they were influenced by one another. You can also view the Bio of the artist, much like reading a Wikipedia entry. Also a nice touch are photos of the band or artist, in which you can also set as your background wallpaper, which really is just the lock screen.
Video organization isn't any better or worse than the iPod Touch. You get a list of videos, and there's no organization except for alphabetical order. There really isn't any real use of metadata such as actors, genre, year released, etc.
Podcasts are divided by audio and video, but that's about it. Other than that, there's not much else to it. It does resume where you left off, which is good when you are interrupted by real life while in a middle of a long podcast. Scrubbing is not as accurate as the iPod Touch, however.
The radio is actually very good, however. Tuning the radio, as you can imagine, is very quick and intuitive, thanks to the flickable touchscreen. If you find a station, it takes a few seconds to recognize if there are HD stations available. You can then switch between HD substations with a touch or a flick. You can add stations to presets as well. Just remember that the radio uses your headphone wire as the antenna, so if you are using a auxiliary jack to your car stereo, make sure the cable is long enough to act as an antenna as well. Another nice thing about the radio is the fact that you can pause and resume it! Unfortunately, there's no way to fast forward or rewind, so you may not even be listening to a live broadcast if you forgot you paused it!
If you have WiFi access, you can also buy music off the Marketplace! If you are listening to a station that broadcast the artist and song as well, you can tag it to purchase. You can also buy apps as well, but no videos. If you have a Zune Pass, however, you cannot just download the music as "all you can eat" through the device.
You can also use the Social to check your inbox (not email, but messages through the XBOX Live system) or check out music your friends are listening to (as long as you set your software to sync up their music).
Lastly, the apps. Right now, there isn't many apps, and they are all free. There are a few games. I downloaded the calculator (every device needs at least a calculator!) as well as the Weather app. Apps take way too long to load, however. Even the simple looking calculator took an enormous amount of time! This is where the Zune HD may fail if Microsoft does not amp up the app store as well as the loading time for apps. The iPod Touch at least tries to mask the loading time by first showing an initial screen of the program before it's ready to go! Even then, it's still very quick for most apps.
What's cool is not in the main menus. Instead, look to the left side! You get a "Playng" screen, so you can get back to what you were doing last.
You can pin the most used app, most listened to song/album/artist, and also most viewed video, or even most listened to radio station! Just tap and hold onto the item you want to pin to this area! You can also see a history of things you've listened, watched, or used!
One of the best things here is the New area. Basically, anything that was just newly sync'd shows up here! I know how I used to hunt for the new stuff, but now I don't! This goes for new podcasts (they are usually weekly shows), as well as a newly bought album, or even newly downloaded videos!
Sound Quality After listening to my friend's Touch and my Zune HD to do an A-B comparison, I found that the Zune seem to have less bass reproduction than the Touch when both EQs are turned off. The Touch also seem to have a louder volume at the max than the Zune. Both were able to reproduce clear and clean sound without any distortion even at the loudest setting.
The Zune HD also seem to exhibit some artifacts during some of the noiser section of Nine Inch Nail's "I Do Not Want This", but it could also be the way the file was encoded. This song was directly from the Zune Marketplace (192 kbps WMA), so it's not like it was a bad bitrate.
I could listen to both the Touch and Zune in my car, as well as at home on my home theater set up - both environment seem to prove that the Touch is a hair better sounding than the Zune in two areas: overall volume and bass reproduction. Both units was able to recreate the treble and the mid range very well. It's not to say bass performance for the Zune was bad. In fact, it is not. It's just that the Touch just puts a bit more emphasis on the bass than the Zune. Overall volume is not an issue, since most people won't blast either at full volume with ear buds or headphones.
Still, I always find myself needing to turn both of the units up full volume for my car's auxiliary jack so that I can listen with the head unit's volume level at decent volume. I find the same when connected to my home theater's receiver via minijack to RCA stereo inputs. Could it really be that full volume is "line-in" level?
After all that's said, you'd be hard pressed to find much sound difference if you didn't do a direct A-B sound comparison on the same audio file. Leo Laporte of TWIT fame also noticed the minor difference, but I would not make it a deal breaker.
Web Browser The web browser isn't bad, but it isn't as good as Safari on the Apple devices. First of all, most sites will present their WAP pages (simple pages made for old mobile phone browsers). You cannot stream MP3 audio or MP4 video off web sites like Safari can (Safari passes it to the built-in Quicktime audio/video player).
The browser also seem to load/render pages much slower than the Touch. In fact, it's actually comparable to a Windows Mobile IE browser on my old HTC Touch Pro smartphone. That's not all that great, but once loaded, you can use the same pinch and expand finger gestures to zoom in and out of web pages. Similarly, you can double tap an area to auto-zoom in or out, much like Safari on the Apple devices.
The keyboard much smaller, but you can orient it in landscape mode. Just like the Apple devices, the letters on the keyboard expand when you touch them.
The browser does orient to landscape mode rather quickly, making good use of the accelerometer. It's actually slightly faster than the Apple devices in responding to the orientation change.
Much like any mobile browser nowadays, you can bookmark pages, as well as do a quick search with the built-in search field. In this case, it's not surprise to see Microsoft make Bing the only search engine it will use for it's search field. There is currently no way to change this. At least Apple lets us choose between Google and Yahoo (but no Bing - again, not too surprising). Although, Yahoo is suppose to use Bing's engine for search results... I wonder how Apple is going to respond to that!
Battery Life Battery life is hard to judge in daily use. I simply cannot run the device down all the way dead. I would charge it up fully overnight, take it out in the morning (7am), listen to music in the car (1:30 hr drive), get to work, play it over my computer speakers (at least 6 hrs left on), and maybe switch tracks once in a while (display lights up when I do this). I'll get back in the car around 5pm after work, continue playing in my car (1:30 hr drive), come home, and put it on my PC to sync new stuff while it charges.
When I get home before syncing and charging, I noted that I have a little over a third of my battery life left. So about 8-9 hrs of use, that's not too bad, but still far from the 33 hrs of music playback Microsoft claims. Of course, I wonder if Microsoft means 33 hrs of music playback untouched (does not activate display) and repeating a low-bitrate audio file.
Despite the lovely OLED screen, I don't really watch any videos on it. It's true of my iPhone too. I guess my current lifestyle doesn't allow viewing portable videos (work and car). I don't ride the bus or train, or that'd be the first thing I'd do! When I'm home, I get to watch any videos on my 46" Samsung HDTV!
Impression as a Whole The Zune HD coupled with the Zune software and the Zune Pass makes for a great music lover's platform! First, you get to discover new music through your social group, as well as the Channels. The fact that you can download any music you want and listen for as long as you can during the subscription period is also great for discovering new music, as well as rediscovering old ones!
For example, I've been downloading some old stuff I used to listen to when I was back in high school, as well as grade school! I wasn't afraid to download a bit of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. ;-) I would have never done that if it wasn't for the unlimited downloads! You do get 14 days of free Zune Pass for the first time.
Also, the fact that you can read about their BIO while listening to their music, look at the band or artist photos, as well as jump to a related band or artist makes the Zune HD the perfect device for music discovery.
Unfortunately, there's no such nirvana with movies or TV shows.
But alas, the Zune Pass is only $14.99 a month, and you get to download and keep 10 songs, which are usually DRM-free! This means if you stop your subscription, these songs are still yours to keep. Since most songs are 99 cents anyways, it's almost like having all-you-can-eat music for only $5 a month!
The device itself is actually pretty simplistic compared to the iPhone or the iPod Touch. There's no email client, but Microsoft promised a Facebook and Myspace apps are in the works. No signs of YouTube, however, which is a pitty, considering the gorgeous OLED screen.
Right now, it's still a one-trick pony - media, but more specifically music. It's great to navigate to get to new and favorite songs, artists, and albums, read about your favorite artist's BIO, and check out photos of them. And the Zune Pass really does push this further. Apple doesn't even compete in this area. However, the Touch does have more things going for it: it's more of a small hand-held computer able to handle many things. It's got a calendar, alarm clock, and email. Plus, theres a lot of 3rd party apps to add more functionality. The Touch is more like a PDA with a good support for music and video. You can't call the Zune HD a PDA at all right now.
However, both the Zune an Touch is nothing but a glass touch screen. Everything is done in software. So what this means is that the ZUne HD and the Touch is the same basically - it's just a matter of Apple offering an updated music player with the same or better functionality as the Zune's, as well as offering a subscription-based service. For Zune, they have much work cut out for them. Their software is slick and impressive, but compared to the Touch, it lacks the functionality that's already built into Touch's software. We're mainly talking about things that will make it more of a PDA as well as a general use device, such as a calendar, email support, an alarm clock, etc.
Maybe Microsoft is holding back so they don't step on an up coming Windows Mobile 7 OS. Wouldn't that be something?
The Upshot The price difference between the Zune HD 32GB and the iPod Touch 32GB is so minuscule, it really depends on what you value more. If you are a music lover, the Zune HD is a great pick. However, I love the versatility of the Touch. Since the price is so similar, I'd still go for the Touch.
So does this mean the Zune HD will go back to the store? Maybe, maybe not. I think I'll keep it longer. If anything, I can always put it up on eBay or Craigslist. :)
Something tells me it's still too early to count the Zune HD out.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 289.99 Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
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