introduction
Apple should watch out, Microsoft's got an iPod Touch on their hands. It's a first-gen iTouch, mind you, but at the rate they put this thing together it's evident that they're quick to learn and improve their hardware, and it's only a matter of time before Apple's going to have to start looking over their shoulder a lot more often. In the meantime, I won't start this review by drooling over all the neat hardware described later. There are countless reviews out there which do just that, and so then conclude with a series of reasons for why the Zune HD and the iPod Touch aren't really targeted at the same audience, even though they clearly share the same market.
As a brief overview of Microsoft's media players, the Zune line is their most successful attempt at a unified, usable player that actually stands a chance of being adopted as a dedicated MP3 player. More than that, it's the first Microsoft-labeled device actually sold under their name. In the not to distant past, quite a handful of devices were being sold which ran Microsoft software and integrated with Windows Media Player (the Toshiba Gigabeat comes to mind). These devices, in their time, quite literally owned their own niche market with their high price tags, large screen, and large(r) storage capacities. Unfortunately (in my view, fortunately) Apple came into fruition and pulled much of the market out from underneath these bloated behemoths' feet. Many MP3 player producers had to rethink their gameplan in order to still make a profit off of their devices, with many of them considerably limiting their offerings in what I believe was an attempt to cut losses.
Microsoft then released the first Zune player. While it had a UI that, while vastly different from, was also capable of competing with Apple's aesthetics, it was, quite undisputedly, a brick. It had a few tricks up it's sleeve, such as the ability to "squirt" a song to another Zune user via WiFi, for them to listen to for a limited amount of time. This feature alone was as good as useless, since it of course required that you AND your friends carried Zune devices. In fact, one of the only useful features was the built-in FM radio with song tagging. This device was eventually replaced by the second-generation devices, equipped with a touchpad on the directional toggle and an entirely new UI appearance. These devices were received with the respect they deserved, as the hardware and software had matured to the point that they were serious devices to consider for anyone purchasing a new MP3/Media player. Due to the original Zune's rather dramatic flop, these devices didn't receive much fanfare, and I therefore deem them to be some of the most underrated and overlooked devices out there.
At last, rumors started flying around about a new Zune device. Something capable of walking in the same shoes as the iPod Touch. Something with a large flash capacity, killer design, and a touchscreen. And, the kicker, was that it was to be priced at or below the equivalent-capacity iPod Touch. Now the wait for that device is over, and what we have is the Zune HD. Let's dig in.
design
The bulletproof iPod Touch has four buttons on it's exterior (third generation, two volume, one sleep, one home). By comparison, the Zune HD has a mere three. How is it that the Zune, an upstart product from the world's biggest software giant who's first attempt fell on it's face managed to best Apple at it's own game of removing buttons? Through clever software, that's how. We'll get to that later, but now let's focus on the hardware itself. The first thing one will notice about this device is, of course, it's touchscreen. A 3.3-inch OLED display is situated behind a glass panel front-and-center on the device. The borders of the screen towards the top and sides is almost frighteningly small yet is counterbalanced by the null-portion towards the bottom. A home button (say what you want about Apple ripoff, look at devices like the Gigabeat to know where home buttons really came from) which is actually raised (as opposed to level with the surface) is the only protrusion on the entire front of the device. It's operation was quite satisfying, although I feel it could be lowered just a bit and still operate just as well. The "zune" name is put right below the screen, underneath the glass panel, in a tasteful manner.
Moving to the sides of the device, on the left-hand-side we find the multimedia control key. It also sits slightly raised from the most protruding plane on this side, making it's operation nice and easy, quite similar to the iPod Touch's volume key. This one, however, is plastic, and feels a bit cheap to me, anyways. I did like the dots put on it, however they give no clues as to what the button accomplishes and therefore I feel are slightly pointless. I have to wonder if perhaps this was a touch-sensitive volume strip in an early prototype.
The top-side of the device is the location for the third and last button. The logo put on it is/resembles a power symbol, and yet that's slightly misleading of what it, like the playback key, does. In this case I'm instantly reminded of the power button found in Windows Vista immediately after clicking on the Start/Windows button in the bottom left. In Vista, this will put the computer (by default) into a sleep state, and that's very similar to what it does in this case as well. I like the power button a lot- it's flush with the face it's mounted on, and while obviously a plastic key, it feels very solid and secure.
On the left-hand-side Microsoft has written "hello from seattle" in what is often interpreted as a direct take on Apple's own "Designed by Apple in California." Who knows if this is true... it might be, but does it really matter much? It's a nice little bit of typography to make the Zune just that much more interesting. You can also see the rather unusual sides of the device. The silver piece (plastic, I believe) has a grade to it whereby it is on a different plane than the black pieces sandwiching it (made of plastic and aluminum at different points). If gives the device a significant amount of stability when held in the hand, even with a mere two fingertips.
The bottom of the devices is home to the headphone plug and the Zune's proprietary USB connector (it's the same as all previous Zune devices, though, so don't worry here). The connector was quite reassuringly solid and yet easy to use, unlike many of the new iPod's I've had my friends come running to me with because their USB cable requires a significant amount of force in order to be connected. I believe this is also how the HD-video output is achieved, although without the special dock I cannot comment.
The back of the device is composed mostly of a nice brushed-aluminum plate secured with some not-so-common screws. I've seen disassembly pictures of this device, and no warranty-void-if-opened warnings seem to exist anywhere, but after seeing the contents I still wouldn't recommend anyone without significant technical knowledge attempt to replace their own battery. Between the plate and the plastic segment is a small polished metal (steel?) tag with the serial number etched in it. (By comparison, iPods have their serial number etched directly on the steel backplate of the device instead of a little tag.) This little piece gives the device a nice little sense of class that the iPod could learn to adopt. The plastic panel at the very bottom (soft-touch black plastic) is very reminiscent of the original iPhone. Without digging up reasons why, I can assume this is because antennas are located underneath, and their reception is much better under plastic. Once again, something the iPod Touch might learn about- on a tangent, why the heck do iPod Touch devices still have the little plastic chunk towards the top-left of their back casing? If antennas are located under it, then I'd much rather they follow Microsoft's solution and dedicate a larger section, because the Zune HD has got things right.
Etched (quite deeply, I might add) into the aluminum casing is the Zune logo. It's a nice touch, which I think looks especially good on the black model.
Overall, as you can see from the pictures, the Zune was designed by someone very in-tune with today's Industrial Design themes. Lots of glass, lots of aluminum, laser engraving/etching, exposed screws (sounds weird, but it's true), and neutral colors. Sure, the Zune HD can be bought in neon green, bluebird blue, and a sort of royal red, but most customers (I think) will purchase either the black or platinum silver versions. The two-plane (in geometry terms) sides beg to be inspected, and the whole device sits in the hand nicely.
By now you might be thinking, "Yeah, that's good an all, but what about in direct comparison to the iPod Touch's hardware? How's it stack up?" Well, literally, it stacks up a lot taller. The iPod is thinner, but by just a bit, yet in-hand the difference is noticeable. That may be because of it's rounded edges and thinner length-by-width versus thickness ratio, but facts support the feeling so there's not much more to talk about. Placed on top of each other the Zune is significantly shorter and less wide than the iPod Touch. Where the iPod has about half an inch above and below it's LCD before the edge of the device is reached, the Zune chops over half of that distance away from the top of it's OLED. In comparison, the OLED also is noticeably smaller than the LCD equipped on the iPod- but hey, if you really wanted a giant AMOLED you'd be shooting for an Omnia HD and all the memory cards you could afford. Then again that also does HD-video out, so perhaps that would make for an interesting comparison!
With an iTouch and a Zune HD in separate hands, the Zune is amazingly lighter. It feels smaller, more like an iPod Nano, and yet the knowledge of what's inside is what makes one wonder just how this thing will perform...
usage
First off, how can I say this without sounding like every other drooling nerd out there... the AMOLED (which stands for Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode, in case you didn't know) is really something that's hard to capture in a picture. However, you don't need me to be discrediting the validity of my pictures and therefore half-assing any portion of the review which directly relates to the display.... which is precisely why I will now compare the display technologies used in the Zune HD with that of the Apple iPod Touch.
Take a moment to observe the above picture and see what you can gather from it. Bearing in mind that I have retouched the colors slightly and dimmed down the saturation a significant amount to give the picture a bit more of a natural feel, the differences between OLED and LCD technologies should be obvious. Where the Zune is displaying black, one literally sees an absence of light emitting from the display. This is the big feature of OLED, is that each pixel is essentially an independent LED, requiring no backlighting (as they themselves emit colored light). By comparison, the LCD's blacks are obviously backlit, and in this side-by-side setting the display appears to be leaking a lot of unnecessary light. In truth, the iPod Touch has a very impressive LCD panel, but it still falls on it's face when competing against the OLED.
However, the impact on battery life of each technology is a completely different story. Since an OLED requires no power to display a black screen, and a lot more power to display an all-white screen, battery life is directly related to the types of media being displayed on the screen. LCDs, on the other hand, are much more dependent on LCD-backlighting levels to determine their battery life, leading to much more consistent battery life figures.
The first thing one notices, when using a Zune HD, is the rather unusual unlock sequence. While most non-Apple touchscreen devices employ a similar left-to-right swipe (in the Droid's case, a rotary left-to-right swipe), the Zune has something of a lift-the-curtain unlocking sequence. As you can see in the picture (it's rather poor quality, I apologize), the action is rather simple. The device is a little buggy (or maybe just this one device is), and it didn't always unlock. By-default, a rather colorful (yet very clashing and frankly revolting combination of colors) is the wallpaper at boot. This is replaceable with user-loaded images, although the process of doing so isn't nearly as polished as the iPod/iPhone system. Rather, images are scaled to fit no matter what you do, so it's best to crop your images to the correct top-up and aspect-ratio in order to have the most appealing wallpaper.
Once at the main menu, however, the Zune manages to take Apple's UI crown. Or, at least in my opinion it does. The text-based menu is clean and minimal, and manages a more professional feel than Apple's attempt. However, should Microsoft had gotten carried away and thrown a million different menu options onto the home screen, they would have been better off using Apple's method, and so in remaining calm for once, I heartily pat them on the back. They also have a bit of a trick feature on the home screen- a history / quick-launch-favorites menu which hovers in the background and is opened with a flick of the finger. In it you'll find recently played media, along with favorites pinned into place. Anything can be pinned to this menu; radio stations, videos, streaming audio (from Zune Pass) and of course MP3s are all fair game for this sidebar of media.
Of course it's only natural that, about this point, I stop talking about the small details that define the Zune HD player and start talking about performance as a media player, since that's first and foremost what this was designed to be. Without ever having tested the audio qualities of the original Zune devices (only playing with them sans-headphones), I can't compare audio quality in that manner. What I can say is that the audio quality is excellent, easily outperforming your "average" MP3 player and besting the iPod Touch only just. This is all merely what I "felt" from listening to the two, but something about the Zune just seemed more... poised? I'm not sure that's the proper word but it'll have to do. Videos I can't comment on, though, because I am both too cheap to purchase anything right now (again), and encoding seems like a waste since I have no HD-out dock (or an HDTV) on which to really give the thing a run for it's money. The demo video, though, plays quite nicely, so if that's of any concern, then just be content knowing it's flawless. (I do rather hate the garish combination of colors in the blimps in that demo video, though... what's up with the dreadful colors, Microsoft?) Radio is a rather standard affair... it works very similar to a high-end car radio, with a small amount of content data being received and displayed if tuned to a compatible station. HD-radio was crystal clear and- it being my first time ever using an HD radio- I was rather surprised when I could walk around and not lose a single bit of audio clarity. Perhaps I'm just being stupid about this new technology, but I really like it. That's not to say the HD radio stations I found were the ones I normally listen to, but it's a cool feature to have.
My one big problem with the Zune is it's playback controls. And this is, in my opinion, a rather big deal. You see, on an iPod, in the now-playing screen you can seek through the song, pause, play, skip, go back, and change the volume. In the Zune, you have seek, play, and pause. For everything else, you have to click on the media/volume key on the top-left, and then this (see above picture) menu appears. From here you can play/pause, skip forward/back, and change the volume. There's no volume slide, which isn't the worst thing in the world, but it would be nice to have. Lemme tell you, Microsoft: There's a reason the iPod Touch went from no physical volume key to a dedicated up/down one.
Not to worry, though, Microsoft did a very good job for it's first attempt. I mean, it's not like they screwed anything else up, right? Oh. That's right, the internet browser. Seriously, Microsoft, you think you can package the same crap in a new box and we'll eat it? Internet Explorer Mobile anyone? Seriously, Microsoft. The web browser built into the Zune is so bad that Gmail recognizes it as being a very simplistic cell phone. Text entry is actually not half bad, although it takes some time to get used to, and has a UI which is both different and on-par with Apple's attempt. Honestly, not much more is to be said about the web browser other than it's a gimmick which should have been present on the first Zune, but seeing it finally released on an otherwise quite refined device like the HD is nothing more than pathetic.
conclusion
Like I said at the beginning, Apple needs to watch their back. Because Microsoft has released a device which, had it existed at the same time as the original iPod Touch, might have potentially stolen Apple's market share. Now that it's only just being released, Microsoft had better hope that it's very-loaded hardware, very designer-eque build, and music-lover's software will pay off. Otherwise, this may be the last device to come out of the Zune line.
Should you buy a Zune HD? If you've reached this point in my review, you may be split. And, to be honest, I too am a bit split on whether or not I can recommend a device such as this. If I were a salesman working with a customer who was split between the Zune HD and an iPod Touch, I would ask them whether or not Applications mattered to them. True, with the recently-announced games for the Zune this may be a bit of a moot point, but Apple still is way ahead of the game on this one. If apps don't matter, then I'll ask about the situations in which they'll be using the player. I know that, supposing I was selling to my dad, I would recommend the Zune. First, he already uses Windows Media Player so transferring his files will be easy. Second, he rarely uses public transportation, prefers CDs for his car, and is most likely to use his player on an airplane or while in his cubicle at work. In both situations, the media-key for adjusting volume is not so much of a hassle as, say, while riding a light-rail. The Zune Pass is something he might appreciate quite a bit more than I might, especially since he can afford to continue it indeterminately whereas I cannot due to potential budget constraints. For someone like me, the iPod Touch makes a bit more sense, as I like the ability to change volume without taking the player out of my pocket (say, while walking to class), and a useful web browser and email client (in addition to useful social networking apps) are always extra welcome. The AMOLED screen is a regrettable loss, as is the HD-out, but perhaps both are features we will see in a future release from Apple.
In a short summary... the Zune HD is a very well packaged product, with no flaws assuming you are the type of user whom the device was primarily designed for. That is, you appreciate a very immersive music experience loaded to the brim with biographies, album art, extra media, and a very good set of links to similar musical tastes. You want a device that looks good and has a great user interface, and aren't just another sheep in Apple's flock. If that's you, then this is the device for you. Otherwise... hang tight, and either Apple's next big release will snag you, or Microsoft will mold the next Zune into something even greater.
Recent Comments