Review: Zune 80

Most people have heard of I-pods by now. If you haven’t, I’d really like to know where you’ve been hiding, (and do you have room for one more?)

I-pod’s are definitely cool little gadgets, but they do not have a total monopoly on the music player market. Microsoft offers a line of comparable products called the Zune. I bought one a couple weeks ago, and I thought I’d share my thoughts on the device.

Before we start, I need to explain my basis of comparison. I bought an 80-gigabyte Zune, and I’ll be comparing its features to the 80 gigabyte I-pod – not the I-phone or the I-touch – the basic 80 gig I-pod.

First, let’s look at what they have in common. The two units offer the same storage space and share similar price tags. Both units cost about $250 anywhere you look these days. Both units come in an assortment of colors and can be customized to some degree with different “skins,” decals, and etching options. Both play music, audio books, movies, TV shows, and podcasts. Both display pictures and album art. Both have a wide selection of accessories, and both are within a few millimeters of being the same height, length, and width.

The Zune trumps the I-pod in a few areas. From a hardware standpoint, the Zune has a larger viewing screen (3.2 inch vs. I-pod’s 2.5 inch screen.) The Zune is 0.4 ounces lighter than the I-pod. I also like the feel of the anodized aluminum casing and glass screen. It makes the unit feel more solid in my hand. The Zune has a built-in FM tuner and has the capability to synch wirelessly with your PC. The Zune also synchs up easily with an Xbox-360 and can send video output to a TV. I also like the Zune’s user interface better than the I-pod. It uses a combination of a touch pad and selector buttons that is much more accessible to a guy with big fingers. The I-pod scroll wheel drives me crazy. The Zune ships with earphones that are better than the factory standard I-pod ear buds.

The I-pod has a few wins to its credit. It can play games and can be used as portable storage. Out of the box, the Zune cannot be used as a portable hard drive although I read that it can be modified to act as such. The I-pod also has a clock/stopwatch, a screen locking feature, and can synch with your email contacts and calendar. It can also display text files. I find these last three features to be particularly useful. I can’t edit the text files, calendar, or contacts, but it’s very handy to call up contact details, double check your schedule when making plans, or reviewing “to do” lists on the fly. The I-pod menus are intuitive to navigate. The I-pod has more accessories from more vendors, and its battery usually lasts longer than the Zune’s.

So far, I’ve not listed any one pro or con for either device that would sway me one way of the other. It’s time to get to the deal breaker. Let’s talk about the software. Both devices require a software package to be loaded onto a computer. This software manages your file library and acts as a middle-man that you use to place/organize/delete files and playlists on your device. I-pod uses I-tunes. Zune uses “Zune Software.” I was never a fan of I-tunes. It duplicated songs on my hard drive and offered up other minor annoyances, but I-tunes is a sinfully erotica dream compared to the Zune software.

The first time I used I-tunes, I was up and running in about ten minutes after the installation completed. I eventually had to dig into some online documentation to figure out advanced features, but the interface was natural enough that I was doing most tasks in a few minutes without additional instructions.

In contrast, I fooled with the Zune software for hours before I finally went to bed. I was going to return the device the next morning, because I couldn’t get it to synch right with the song directory on my hard drive. Instead, I read some FAQs on the product support site and discovered that the Zune throws a fit when plugged into a USB hub. But even after I figured that out, I still hated the software. It didn’t synch all of my songs to the hard drive. When I made playlists, they didn’t synch correctly either. Certain songs were already on the device, but they were not listed on the play list no matter how many times I tried to make them match. The user interface on the Zune device is OK, but the software interface on the PC is atrocious. Trying to navigate through the song lists is pure, mind-numbing agony. You have to pick an artist in the left pane and then wait 30 seconds while in the middle pane it loads art for all albums you have by that artist. Every song of every album is listed in alphabetical order on the right side. If you click an album, you get the specific tracks of that album only in the right pain, after waiting for another 25-30 seconds. It takes FOREVER to find a specific song or lyric.

When you have an expansive library like mine, this is inexcusable and intolerable. It took me almost 4 hours to build TWO playlists. Considering this, if I had it to do over again, I’d get an I-pod, just to save myself the hassle of the Zune’s pathetic excuse for user software. I also miss the calendar, contacts, and text files on the Ipod.

So, in summary, I think the Zune is a solid piece of hardware that surpasses the I-pod device in most respects, but the I-pod software (I-tunes and the additional software features on the actual device) beat the living daylights out of the Zune.