8 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
Truly at or near the top of the pack!
Date of Review: Jun 21, 2008
The Bottom Line: Truly a great buy. Clean lines, great finish, beautifully bright screen and whimsical, almost poetic interface design.
With the recent release of Zune in Canada I picked up the Black Zune 80gig model.
Size and Design:
I must admit the finish on the Zune 80gig was a welcome sight. Though it's a "little bit" thick and heavy for an mp3 player, I must admit it feels really sturdy and solid in your hand. You can tell that a lot of thought went into the type of finish that was used and the clean lines that this player focuses on.
The front face of the zune smugs pretty easily but it's also easy to wipe clean. It helps that it isn't touch screen so you don't have to worry about pushing any buttons you don't want to. The back has a nice metal finish and does not smug at all that I can see.
Navigation & Controls:
If you're a former iPod user like myself you might find the Zune navigation a little tricky to use but after a few hours I felt like a veteran using it. It's quite user friendly but make no mistake there is a learning curve and the functionality is quite different from other mp3 players I've used.
The controls are simple and easy to use. The touch wheel I find a bit too sensitive but I also got used to this is no time at all and it's no longer a problem but a definite strength. You can also turn off the touch-sensitivity of the wheel and just use it as a click-wheel.
The Screen:
The screen is big and bright. The settings for the screen and backlighting are plentiful. The text is large and easy to navigate and video and cd covers display large in their glory.
Video:
The video was clean and the screen was large enough that I truly didn't mind watching videos on it; however, videos are not my primary purpose for the Zune so I'm not too worried.
Audio:
The sound quality is top notch. Only issue I had was some of my music (all purchased) didn't seem to encode properly to the Zune and it stalls whenever it hits one of the songs and I have to hit "Next" to make it continue. I realized this was just some issue with old mp3 encoding and I simply noted and burned the handful of cd's again (no issues after that).
The Earbuds
The earbugs are truly the shining feature for the audio. The noise cancelling inner-ear buds take some getting used to as they need to be pushed right inside the ear. I must admit though, they no longer pop-out of my ears like regular earbuds did. I also don't have to crank the volume up to so much because of the noise cancelling of the inner ear design.
If you pull the earbud jack out of the Zune for any reason it automatically pauses itself. A very nice feature.
The Wifi
I don't notice a huge battery drain using Wifi but I tend to like to turn off Wifi when away from my syncing range with the Zune Software. It's a nice touch to just put my Zune down on any table in my place and any changes I make in my zune software are automatically synced without wires.
Battery Life
Never had an issue with this at all. Everyday I have travel times of 1-2 hours to and from work and I run the zune the entire day at work, often forgetting to pause the zune and the battery life holds up pretty well (I maybe use 25% of the battery life in a working day with 320kbps music files).
I think the key is being smart about the use of the Wifi to be honest. Turn it on when you need it, turn it off when you don't. That's my experience anyway.
Software:
The software for the Zune did not actually come with it. I had to log onto the Zune site to download the software. There was no clear notice when opening the box that I had to do this. Not a huge issue.
The software is very clean and sexy just like the Zune. A lot of thought went into the design of the software for the Zune and it quite user friendly.
