Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player (Red) by Zune
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Digital camera reviews of Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player (Red)
Digital camera Review: Exceptionally Happy with Zune Device
Summary: 5 Stars
Zune 80GB (red)--purchased over iTouch and over Samsung YP-2P Widescreen, and very happy I did. For those who like FM radio, Zune is preferable to iPod. User interface is straightfoward (though learning how to turn unit off entirely to save battery life is important and not obvious). I've downloaded extensive music collection onto the unit, and more than a dozen full length movies from dvd. Spent some time on the internet to figure out best way to rip/decode dvds, shrink them, and then encode the files to a format that synced well with Zune device. After a week or so of experimenting, I found that well known and safe freeware programs could transcode movies in both full screen (320x240) and widescreen formats (320 x 180) compatible with Zune. Full length feature movies use about half a gig, so there's room for quite an audio and video library on the Zune. This capacity for only slightly higher price made Zune preferable to Samsung unit above.
Unit is solidly built. I bought a hard (metal) case for protection and none too soon-wife dropped it first time she held it. No damage, period. I use it on a daily bike commute and when doing yardwork. So, far, excellent overall performance. I liked it so much, I decided to buy my younger daughter a 8GB (pink) Zune rather than an iPod nano because I was able to get twice the drive space for less than the price of the nano, and got the radio. (Older daughter has 30GB iPod Video so we're familiar with both products.) Same software combination allows storing movies on 8GB unit (though the small screen makes me wonder whether watching movies on it makes sense--10 year old daughter says it is, but I couldn't do it!). Anyway, 8GB unit has 3 Harry Potter films on it and music, and just barely half filled. Also, the sync feature between the 80GB and the 8GB unit worked flawlessly, though of limited use since synced items are playable only 3 times. Wireless syncing with library also functions well, but makes sense only for minor updates. Turning off wireless option helps to save battery, so it's a trade off.
Only caveat at this point is that video encoding produces a file that is rendered a bit dark, too dark for viewing in a well lit room or outside during daylight. Does not really affect B&W video files (even film noire pics like Big Sleep for instance).
Strongly recommended.
Digital camera Review: Factory Defective, or Something More...? Oh Well, i Like It
Summary: 4 Stars
First of all, i have to say that i love this device. Having such a huge space to view all of my media is so great.
i received it in great shape--as far as i could tell, there were not even any slight scratches on the back as described. The screen is clear and the headphone jack works properly. There is one minor flaw on the device body i can give, and that is that the "hold" button is somewhat flimsy. When activated, it lifts slightly and feels loose. Not sure if this is a design flaw or was merely subjected to misuse; regardless, it still works fine.
Now, speaking of flaws, there is only one that actually affects performance: the battery life. i sincerely hope that all Zunes of this generation were not manufactured with the amount of juice that mine has. On a full charge i can usually get about 2-4 hours of listening time at the recommended volume. Even when it has been turned off, sometimes it will "die" overnight. As you can see, the battery is not very strong or even consistent.
Now, as i said earlier, i maintain the possibility that this merely a design flaw responsible for by Microsoft. This is mainly because i have only been able to contact one other person who has ever owned a Zune, and they also acknowledged poor battery life experience. Besides, there has to be some reason why these things don't sell on the big market!
Overall, great product, works wonderfully for entertainment purposes--just remember to bring your power chord.
Digital camera Review: Far Better Than I Had Imagined!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have had an iPod ever since they came onto the scene. But I only had the 30GB and I needed more space for my music collection and I did not want to go out and buy the 160GB iPod Classic and the iPod Touch 32GB is just to expensive for my tastes and does not offer any more storage. So I was set on getting the iPod 80GB but I had heard about the Zune 80GB by Microsoft so I thought I owed it to myself to check it out.
Both were evenly matched in terms of price, although if I had wanted to get a refurbished iPod 80GB I could have for $200 on the Apple website, that is a whole $40 cheaper than what Amazon is charging for the Zune. But alas I am writing a review for the Zune since I did end up choosing it. If one is in a similar situation. I would just say this. If you are someone who is buying an iPod just to be trendy, do not buy anything at all until you can think for yourself. But if you are looking for tons of addons maybe you should by the iPod. But the Zune is slowly creeping new addons all the time. Plus all the features the Zune 80 has compared to the iPod 80 is just a win hands down. I enjoy Microsoft being the underdogs, they give you a superior product.
Digital camera Review: Former iPod user is a Zune Convert! - long review
Summary: 4 Stars
So I should first admit that I was originally only familiar with the 1st generation Zune and had heard bad things about them. I owned 2 different iPods, the first one being an older 20gig model which was stolen and I replaced it with the 80gig iPod classic which I really enjoyed. Unfortunately it died without explanation--in the middle of playing a song even--less than a month after the warranty expired. The Apple store in my town said it could not be repaired and offered to sell me a new one at a small discount. I was so annoyed that this very expensive gadget had died as if almost on cue right after the warranty ran out that I went home and ordered this Zune as a protest purchase.
To put it simply I really really like this player. I've had it for 2 months now and I mainly use it in the car with an aux connection to my radio, but I am comfortable saying that I like the Zune more than the iPods I have owned.
The Casing: Unlike the iPod, I don't feel like I'm holding a delicate piece of equipment. It looks and feels sturdy without looking cheap. There were scratches all over my iPod within a week or two of taking it out of the box, but I've yet to see a single mark on this Zune. It's been in my pocket, my backpack, the center console and glove box of my car and various junk drawers around my house. This thing is a trooper.
The Screen: Primarily, it's bigger. To watch videos you actually turn the player horizontal which provides you with basically a wide screen effect that makes watching movies or tv shoes very easy with no squinting. My iPod would always crop the sides of widescreen movies even when I adjusted the settings but you get the full picture on this thing. Everything is clearly visable even if you happen to be looking from a slight angle unlike the iPod. Also the screen seems very resistent to scratches.
FM Tuner: I don't listen to the radio much but the FM tuner that's built in displays station id, song info and artist info if available. It also allows you to save a song from the radio if you like it so you can purchase it later from the Zune Marketplace (more on that later). Apparently the attenna is built into the earbuds that come supplied and I've had no problems with reception. I haven't used any other earbuds with the player, but I would assume you would loose reception without the Zune earbuds to pick up the signal. That's purely a guess though.
Display: The background for the menu screens on the player can be customized much like your desktop wallpaper on Windows by either choosing one of the approximately 30 backgrounds that come preloaded or by using any picture or image loaded from your computer. I was actually surprised by the variety and quality of the images that come preloaded on the Zune and would have been relatively satisfied if my background options were limited to these mostly abstract, occassionally pyschadelic designs and patterns, although having the option to choose my own background image is even better. The menus themselves are completely intuitive and very easy to navigate.
Controls: This model Zune has a square-ish touch pad with a 'back' button to the left of the pad and a 'play/pause' button to the right. I've found the touchpad to be much more responsive and easier to use than the fickle wheel thing from my iPod. You simply slide your finger up and down to scroll through the menus and once you're listening to a track you perform the same motion to adjust the volume. For making left/right selections you simply slide your finger in the desired direction. When you turn the player horizontal to watch video, the touchpad automatically re-orients the direction of the controls appropriately. And if you don't like sliding your way through menus, it can also be used as a d-pad to manually click through to the selection you want. I like to slide through my artist list to quickly get in the general area and then manually click to the artist I'm looking for so I don't scroll past it.
Earbuds: The earbuds are great. Certainly not the absolutely best ones out there, but much better than the ones that come with iPods. Not much more to say about them.
The Software: The only reason I gave this 4 stars and not 5 was due to the Zune software that you must load on your computer to sync the media from your computer to the player (I'll just call it Zune-tunes for simplicity and to avoid confusion) and partially due to the a particularly annoying feature of the Zune Marketplace which is similar to the iTunes store. To provide you a point of reference, I'm running Windows XP, fully updated.
The one thing that I always like about iTunes was that the user interface was so simple that anyone who has even spent 5 minutes using a computer could easily figure out how to play a song, make a playlist, burn a cd, or download media. The user interface for Zune-tunes, however, seems needlessly complex and would be foreign even to folks who are familiar with Real Player, Windows Media Player or any other commonly-used multi-media software. That being said, it has grown on me over the past two months. After getting used to its design, I began to appreciate some of the little extra features that Zune has over iTunes. For instance it provides a number of options for managing your podcasts that I find very helpful. It also has a feature similar to iTunes Genius (the automatic playlist generator) called SmartDJ that gives a bit more control in setting criteria for the sort of playlist that you want it to create. I often found that my Genius playlists lacked variety, but SmartDJ provides certain options that let you generate a playlist that doesn't just keep repeating the same 3 or 4 artists. The settings menu also allows you to specify the level of 'flashiness' (my term) you want the software to display on a sliding, numbered scale depending on how much RAM you have to spare which I find very helpful because even though my 2gigs was plenty years ago, now it gets eaten up fast if I have a web browser open and media playing. Also, Zune-tunes doesn't ever try to take over your My Music folder like iTunes always wants to and is very non-intrusive to the computer's files overall. However, since it is a Microsoft program the whole thing still works pretty seamlessly with Windows just not in an obnoxious way.
As for the Zune Marketplace, my only complaint is the point system which is used to make purchases. You must first purchase 'points' and then those points are used to buy various media. I haven't bothered calculating the precise exchange rate, but I bought 2,000 points for $25 and with that I've been able to buy 2 standard priced albums with enough left over to buy 4 individual songs which are usually 99 points each (I have a few points left over after that but not enough to buy anything). So you can see it's a little difficult to comparison shop but I suppose that's the point. Otherwise, the Marketplace is easy to navigate and has a decent selection of different media.
The Zune player certainly isn't the status symbol that an iPod is, but I honestly believe it to be a superior product; and the software's flaws regarding its interface are certainly balanced by many other benefits that it has over iTunes (but again the points are really really annoying). I would definitely recommend this player.
Digital camera Review: Gave it a shot but returned for Nano
Summary: 4 Stars
Long story short. The Zune 80 GB (Red) is feature rich but after purchasing and using one for two days I returned it and purchased 16 GB Nano (4th Gen) instead.
This is only my second MP3 player purchase. I am replacing a 4 GB iPod Mini that is still working reasonably well (but no color screen). I rip my own CDs so actually do not care if I use Zune Music management Software or iTunes. I find them both unintuitive.
It is possible the touchpad on my Zune was defective or I was just not using it right but I could not get the "clicking" down right. I would scroll to Music or Video and then "click" in the center but half the time I would end up scrolling up or down instead. Within the Music section I had trouble getting the left to right scrolling working all the time as well (playlist, songs, etc). One time after I held it down for about 10 seconds, its started scrolling like crazy and I had to turn off the Zune.
The radio and scanning the channels did not seem that user friendly. One of the reasons I chose the Zune was to get a radio (although not to identify music to purchase as Microsoft intends).
Video was nice but really I don't see much difference between 2" and 3.2" screens (same resolution). Guess video on the Touch would be more impressive than the Zune or Classic but after playing with some videos on the Zune and watching a James Bond flick my interest in thinking I'd watch lots of movies on the Zune dissipated a lot! Not because of the quality which was fine, just the screen size. I'll still watch some videos on the Nano.
I did quite a bit of research prior to picking the 80 GB Zune and my 3 top picks were the Zune, iPod Classic and new Touch (I looked at Archos, Cowon, Creative, Sansa, Sony, etc.). The Touch is not really a competitor to the first two, but of course its very different and cool. I think of its as a PDA though and many of its features are things I just don't care about/will probably end up with on my next cell phone anyway. My coworker just got a 8 GB Touch and is having trouble with the battery life (lots of posts on the support sites about this).
One of the reasons I chose the Zune 80 GB over the 120 GB was because the former comes with the "Premium" headphones, but I was not impressed. Bass was to low for me. Once I plugged in my foldable Sennheiser PX100 headphones, the bass picked right up though (or I probably would have returned the Zune just for that reason alone).
Anyway, I decided to get the 4th Generation Nano after thinking that I should stick to a Flash based unit this time around. I did hear the hard drive clicking a few times on the Zune which I never hear on my Mini. I run with my Mini but just on the treadmill where it sits in the cupholder. I only went with the 4th Gen Nano today because Apple put out a release to take care of the Cover Flow issue (because of the accelerometer). Otherwise I probably would have looked for a previous generation Nano.