Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player (Black) by Zune
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Digital camera reviews of Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player (Black)
Digital camera Review: A Fun Player With Some Baggage
Summary: 3 Stars
Early this year, I sold my Creative Zen Vision:M 60 GB player to my brother for some quick cash. After a few months, I was ready to jump back into the MP3 player market. I needed:
1. Anything but Ipod. Itunes won't run on my PC for some reason and I'm not a big fan to begin with.
2. A Hard-Drive based player which had the capacity to hold my 40 GB+ collection.
3. Good Sound. I'm not a hardcore Audiophile, but I expect good sound quality to come from my player, effected only by the quality of my headphones.
So with those 3 criteria in hand, I began to search the market, and sadly the market is fairly slim for what I need. Creative looks like it's getting out of the market, and other attractive options are older, hard to find and/or prohibitively expensive.
All of this brought me to the Zune 2nd Generation. A sleek, sexy 80 GB hard-drive based player for under 250 dollars? What's the catch?
A couple of catches, as it turns out. To be as succinct as possible:
1. SYNC OR "FAIL"
The Zune syncs itself with a designated music folder on your PC hard drive. For Ipod veterans, this is nothing new. For a former Creative user, this was a bit tough to swallow. I was used to dragging and dropping files, and treating my MP3 player as an extra hard drive. With the Zune, I can't get into the player's hard drive and tinker around without going through my PC software first. I have over 40 GB of music on an 80 gb PC hard drive. Keeping the 800-pound gorilla of my collection on my hard drive eating up space wasn't what I had signed up for in getting the Zune. I wanted to transfer the music onto the Zune and delete it off my PC. I tried this a few times, but got tired of connecting the Zune and having the software begin to arbitrarily delete albums from the player to sync it. Microsoft employees on the Zune.net forums say you can get around this by clicking the "forget this device" button in the Zune program, but I tried this a couple of times only to have it work for a couple of sessions, then start to yank albums off once again. It felt like a stopgap measure and not a true solution because the Zune was designed to sync with your hard drive. Period. I had to cave in and buy an external hard drive just to hold my music collection and appease the Zune software. No more random deletions! Yay?
2. "WE SUPPORT LOSSLESS!" UHH, NO, YOU DON'T...
If by "support", you mean the Zune software can rip a CD to WMA lossless format, then yes you "support" it. But supporting a format doesn't mean you convert a WMA Lossless file down to a dinky 192 kbps (or below, I'm not sure how low it goes) file before putting it onto the Zune player AND NOT TELLING THE USER WHAT YOU ARE DOING. I was thrilled to spend an evening and rip all of my Elvis Presley CDs to lossless format and put them on my Zune. It was several days later while listening to some of this music that I realized it just didn't sound right. A little flat. Sure enough, checking the file size of the original Lossless file and comparing it with the file on the Zune..."significant shrinkage!", as George Costanza would say. The best you are going to with the Zune compression-wise is WMA variable bit rate, or MP3 320 Kbps. Yep, it's all "lossy". Not the end of the world, but it felt a bit deceitful to go back and read FAQs with the Zune people saying "yes, we support WMA Lossless audio!" I also got a chuckle out of reviews here raving about how great the Lossless stuff sounds on their Zunes, but I digress...
3. NO EQ
Nothing clever about that title. I didn't try the first generation Zune, but this one does not have an equalization option on the player. With my Creative Zen players, I always tinkered around and brought the bass up a bit and lowered the middle ranges to keep the sound from washing out. With the Zune, what you hear is what you get. It sounds ok, but there tends to be a sharpness in the middle to upper ranges of most songs that has nothing to do with my headphones. The bass is present, though a little on the weak side for my tastes. I'm not a guy who wants the bass blasting down my neighbor's wall, but I like it nice and "in the pocket" as some musicians say. With a lot of my music, the bass is there, it just needs to be tweaked just a notch or two up, and the sharper high ranges (think a rock lead guitar) need to be softened up a notch or two. Again, nothing earth-shattering, but when you can't really fix it, it can bug you.
That's the bad stuff for me.
What's good about the Zune? I love the wide screen and the sleek design of the thing. You wouldn't think an 80 GB drive would be so compact. I had the small pleasure of showing my new red Zune to a friend who had just purchased an 80 GB Ipod classic and seeing a bit of envy in his face. He "liked the red" as he put it. The central touchpad feels good and it's easy to zip through your CD collection. Sound quality is overall decent, even with the aforementioned caveats. I would just recommend ripping at the highest possible quality to avoid some of the more avoidable sound issues. Get a decent pair of headphones. The in-ear buds that come with the player are rock solid as freebies, but I only use in-ear stuff when I'm on the go, as I generally find them all to be somewhat lacking compared to the over-ear stuff.
The software does an admirable job of automatically finding the Meta data (cover art) for most of my CDs, even some fairly obscure work. Out of 550 CDs, only a half dozen or so are without covers. It's a simple pleasure to scroll through the entire library on my player and see all the covers there.
Battery life seems to be decent. I haven't used the Zune for a ton of videos yet, but strictly as a music player, I get at least 6 hours of battery life. It holds a charge very well 2 months into owning it. The Zune doesn't come with a power adapter so you have to charge it through the PC USB cable. That may or may not be a problem for some.
So overall, I have some significant quibbles with the player as a whole, but I do admit to being somewhat finicky about some things other people may write off as small potatoes. I'm an archivist, I want my body of music together on one machine, and I want it to sound good. With some trial and error, I have all but achieved that with the Zune. That's a good thing. I think the Zune is still a work in progress, and it's decent, but I'd like to see Microsoft not get away from the basic nut and bolt stuff that people want: Equalization, customization, sound quality. These things are important to music fans.
7/10 3.5 Stars
Digital camera Review: A G8 alternative to Ipod is here....
Summary: 5 Stars
I was devastated when my Creative M broke for the final time. However, it turned out to be an advantageous thing in hindsight. I chose to replace it with the Zune 80GB. The features on the 80GB are outstanding (wireless), ease of navigation, large- clear screen, FM-radio, not to mention a very impressive headset. Other reviewers have complained about the setup process, nevertheless, if you follow the steps carefully, (do not connect device before loading software.) It is a flawless synchronization. What's more I could not overlook price point for 80GB, far less expensive than comparable MP3's and Ipods. Lastly, the 2nd generation Zunes lost more than a couple ounces to become a sleek pocket friendly portable device. Try-it - Love it!Digital camera Review: A Must
Summary: 5 Stars
Before purchasing the new Microsoft Zune 80 gig, I was very skeptical. For me, I had to decide between: Apple's Ipod, Creative Zen, or Microsoft's Zune. I've lived with Apple my whole life. All of my computers have been Apple as well as my mp3 players. I decided on a Zune after seeing my friend have one. Best decision I have made. Superb player against the Ipod. Watch out Apple.Digital camera Review: A Wonderful Machine
Summary: 5 Stars
As many people state at the start of their reviews, I will too. I had an iPod for several years and was never dissatisfied with its performance. Thus, the Zune had a lot to live up to in my eyes.
I believe that the program used on the computer in order to load music is perhaps the most important part of an mp3 player. After using iTunes for years, I knew what I wanted in the Zune program. I ALMOST got it. For the average user, I believe that the Zune program is flawless. It has a beautiful layout, has podcast subscriptions, mp3, m4a AND wma file compatibility, and functions well with the mp3 player. However I have a few complaints. I am an organization freak. I like to have all of my music in the genre that I believe it is, not that of the internet. So when I rip a CD I will change the information accordingly. With the Zune program it takes more time because (at least that I find) it is not possible to edit the information for multiple items at once. You can just type in each one by one, or go find the files and do it through properties on windows explorer. That is my biggest problem; there is a lack of ability when it comes to editing the information that songs have. As for syncing with the Zune, there is one weird thing that happens where it keeps "adding" the same group of songs every time I connect my Zune. I read another review in which the person had the same issue. It doesn't add the songs again, it simply says it does. Kind of strange.
Onto the player itself. First of all the controls are wonderful. At first I was curious if I would be annoyed at having to flick my thumb a bunch to find the artist I was looking for. This never has happened. It is force sensitive, meaning the faster I flick it the further it goes. Or, if I don't want to flick my thumb, I can simply hold down the pad in the direction I want to go, great idea. The interface in the Zune is great as well. There are functions that let you go to the artist of the song you are currently listening to and other little things that make navigating through it a little easier than the iPod.
The screen is great for viewing pictures as well as watching video mainly because it is big. At least compared to the iPod's screen. Also when viewing pictures, there is a zoom option, which I do not believe the iPod has.
The FM radio is a great little bonus. Just in case one ever wants to listen to their favorite talk show on the walk home, or anything such as that, it's there. I haven't used it much, but its reception and quality seem great to me.
Sound quality is something I have had no problem with, even without the EQ that was apparently on the original Zune. I rather dislike the quality of the in ear headphones that came with it, but I have my over ear phones, and it sounds wonderful through those.
I have nothing to say about the "social" feature because no one I know owns a Zune. Hopefully they will gain popularity so I can try out the feature, however I don't think I would put it to much use, because the song only stays for 3 plays, which isn't saying much.
The Zune met and exceeded my expectation for it in many ways. Hopefully program bugs will get sorted out soon and maybe a little bit more functionality. Other than that I love the Zune player and will not stray from it any time soon.
Digital camera Review: A Worthy Ipod Competitor
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought my Zune about a year ago so i figure it's about time to review it. Overall i have been very happy with it. I still have not filled it to capacity, and i have a pretty vast music collection, + some videos. The screen is big and looks very sharp, great for videos. Navigation is simple. Microsoft is always upgrading the software and firmware, which is good. When the software first came out it was terrible, couldn't even really edit anything, but now i like it and you can do much more with it. Some people complained of no equalizer. I don't find it a problem. 95% of the time im using it in my car, which has an eq.
My complaints - Battery life is not quite as good as i would hope. I forget what was advertised, but its probably usually like 10 hours for me (just playing music) which is ok but not great. The zune pad is cool, but sometimes works TOO good. Like ill go to click on something and it'll slide up or over. i almost kind of wish they kept the button like the original had, but it works fine. I'd like an option for something other than shuffle all. a shuffle all by artist or something like that would be cool. hopefully they'll add something liek that with an update eventually. Also, doesn't support a lot of my video files, only some of em. Despite these, i still love it and woudl not trade it for an ipod. definitely worth my $240