The Microsoft Zune is a very unique product that has a lot of potential. When I say unique, I’m not necessarily referring to it’s functionality. The Zune is unique because it actually stands a chance against the Apple iPod, which has clearly dominated the digital player market since it’s debut in 2001.

The key to the iPod’s dominance wasn’t simply due to superior design or functionality, the iTunes store was at the heart of the success. For the first time iTunes provided a way for consumers to easily find, purchase and download music to their iPods, the whole process takes a matter of minutes. Before iTunes came along, consumers would purchase the music in CD format, rip the tracks from the CD, then transfer them to their digital player of choice. Sounds like a big hassle doesn’t it? Not to mention, time consuming as well.

Why other digital player manufacturers haven’t followed in Apple’s footsteps is still a mystery to me. That’s where the Microsoft Zune comes into play, they are the first company I’ve seen able to match the iTunes store in ease of use and pricing of music.

Package Contents

• 30GB Zune unit
• 3.5mm earphones
• USB cable (for synchronization and charging)
• User Manual
• Zune Software CD
• Cloth case
• 14-day Zune pass

Physical Aspects

The Zune is available in Black, White and Brown. The model in this review is black, covered by a blue tinted transparent layer of plastic (try saying that 3 times fast, yeshh…) this is referred to as the “double-shot effect” by Microsoft, it does add a nice touch to the Zune’s appearance. The screen is a 3-inch QVGA (320×240) display, half an inch larger than the 5G iPod Video’s display. The construction of the Zune feels solid, creaking isn’t a word in the Zune’s dictionary. The surface is not glossy like the iPod, instead the Zune has a matte finish. The Zune’s surface laughs in the face of finger prints, unlike the iPod… The display however does attract finger prints, no real surprise there.

There isn’t much to the back, just the Zune logo and a circular indention. The purpose of the circular indention is solely cosmetic.

Port used for charging and transferring music via USB cable. When connected, the USB connection is quite stable no jiggling to report.

The hold switch is located on the top as well as the 3.5mm headphone jack.

Controls - The mid circular control is somewhat misleading, many would assume it works similiar to the iPod’s touch sensitive click-wheel, where one can control the volume by simply gliding their thumb in a circular motion over the click-wheel. The circular button on the Zune is actually a 5-way D-pad. The only gripe I had with the 5-way D-pad was the inability to scrub through lengthy tracks, I usually listen to trance mixes on a daily basis, which are typically 60 minutes or more in duration. The key difference between the Zune’s D-pad and the iPod’s click-wheel is the iPod has the advantage of accelerated track scrubbing. This advantage grows greater as the track increases in duration. On the bright side, this issue won’t affect many people, since the majority listen to tracks of 3-5 mins duration on average.

The back button is located on the left and the play / pause button on the right, the play / pause button also acts as the power button when held.

This isn’t the best control scheme I’ve seen, but it’s also not the worst. Microsoft made the right move by keeping the controls simple, as opposed to some companies that make their digital player appear to be a television remote.

Size - The size of the Zune is it’s greatest weakness, I should save Microsoft some time and just stamp ACME on it, it’s a brick. When compared to the Video iPod 5G, it’s noticeably thicker and taller. For the added thickness you get a larger display, Wifi (rather useless at this point) and FM radio. In my opinion the added functionality doesn’t justify the larger size.

Storage - The Zune is capable of storing up to 30GB of media. For this larger storage capacity there are some weaknesses you should be aware of. The hard drive is platter-based, an easy way to picture a platter-based hard drive is to think of the platter as a vinyl record and the hard drive container as the vinyl record player. Imagine the vinyl record spinning with the needle placed in one of the grooves, this works great in a stable situation. Now imagine lifting the vinyl record player 2 inches off the surface and then dropping it, most likely there will be some damage done to the vinyl record when the needle hits the record with additional force from the drop. This is analogous to what happens when the Zune is dropped.

Engineers prefer to design products with as few moving parts as possible, the belief is, the less moving parts a device has the fewer points of possible failure. It only takes one failure at a single point to make the device inoperatable. Additionally, since platter-based hard drives require movement to function, this consumes more battery life than a SSD (solid state drive).

The benefits of platter-based hard drives is the cost of capacity, it’s much cheaper than SSD and the greater storage capacity, which is much higher than what SSD is currently capable of.

Headphones - The headphones are average in terms of audio output, as with most headphones, don’t expect it to provide deep bass. I did find the wires to be a tad thin, makes me wonder just how durable the wire will be over time. My iPod headphone wires lasted for 3 years until the internal metal wire broke, I have a feeling the longevity of the headphone wire was due to the extra thickness of the protective plastic coating.

Table of Contents:

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: ConclusionPage 3: Specifications