Pros: HD radio, Wi-Fi-capable, Elegant touch screen, Zune
Pass subscription service
Cons: Web browser is slow, Few mobile apps, Windows-only
The Zune HD delivers one of the best portable music and video experiences money can buy. At a time when many people have shifted their focus to games and applications, providing a killer media experience may not be enough for potential Zune buyers.
Being the high-profile runner up substitute to Apple's iPod portable media player, the Zune has endured an unfair share of jokes and derision. Proving the wise saying that "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," Microsoft has taken four years'-worth of hard knocks and forged the Zune HD. As one of the only iPod alternatives that can match the iPod Touch in beauty and pricing, the 16GB ($199), 32GB ($269), and 64GB ($349) Zune HD also includes a unique stable of features worthy of Apple's resentment.
Its HD's slender
body and anodized aluminum built up has the futuristic and industrial look of a
sci-fi movie prop.
Like any touch-screen device, most of the Zune HD's functions are controlled by pressing or swiping your finger on the responsive capacitive display. Only three buttons have made their way into the hardware, including a large power/hold button on the top edge, a slim home button below the screen on the front of player, and a button on the left edge of the device for quickly calling up the Zune's onscreen playback and volume controls. We're not sure why the designers didn't just take a page from the iPod Touch and turn the side button into a dedicated volume control. Frankly, it's a pain to adjust volume on the Zune HD, and nearly impossible if the device is in your pocket.
Like any touch-screen device, most of the Zune HD's functions are controlled by pressing or swiping your finger on the responsive capacitive display. Only three buttons have made their way into the hardware, including a large power/hold button on the top edge, a slim home button below the screen on the front of player, and a button on the left edge of the device for quickly calling up the Zune's onscreen playback and volume controls. We're not sure why the designers didn't just take a page from the iPod Touch and turn the side button into a dedicated volume control. Frankly, it's a pain to adjust volume on the Zune HD, and nearly impossible if the device is in your pocket.
Music leads the Zune
HD's main menu for good reason. More than anything else, the Zune HD is a
portable music machine designed for curious fans with large appetites for new
music. The audio player supports MP3, AAC, WMA, and WMA Lossless formats, as
well as audio book files from Audible or OverDrive. Like most MP3 players, the
music you sync the Zune HD with can be quickly sorted by artist, album, song,
genre, and playlist, but the Zune HD's unique strengths as a music player are revealed
once you dig down to a particular artist or song. The set of features packed
into the Zune HD are unapologetically focused on media playback and
entertainment.
Radio has always
helped to define the Zune HD against the iPod. And while there is some irony in
the fact that Apple's latest iPod Nano is now imitating the RDS FM radio and
song tagging capabilities that the Zune put on the map, Microsoft continues to
innovate with the addition of an HD radio broadcast support to complement the
existing FM radio tuner. The Zune HD's Web browser rounds off its main feature
set. The browser is a cleaner, leaner offshoot of Microsoft's mobile Internet
Explorer browser, complete with a multitouch onscreen keyboard, and persistent
icons for navigating backward, bookmarking, and Bing-powered Web search. Just
like Apple's iPhone, the Zune's browser uses a built-in tilt sensor to orient
pages in portrait or landscape views, pages can zoomed with a double-tap or
pinch of the fingers, and scrolling is so smooth and responsive that it feels
as if the page is floating on water. Compared with the browsers we've seen on
similar products, such as the Sony X-Series Walkman or Archos 5 (Opera), the
Zune HD is miles ahead of the pack.
Another advantage Apple has over the Zune HD (or any portable media player, really) is the depth and breadth of third-party application support.
Another advantage Apple has over the Zune HD (or any portable media player, really) is the depth and breadth of third-party application support.
The Microsoft Zune HD is a beautiful device--inside and out--that presents one of the first attractive and reasonable alternatives to the Apple iPod Touch. Microsoft deserves praise for taking the Zune's music and video experience beyond the standard set by Apple. What remains to be seen is whether people will value Microsoft's premium media experience enough to resist the increasingly multipurpose appeal of the iPod.
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