Zune was an interesting device, but it was not sexy and didn’t have any real edge over the iPod, except in two areas: the WIFI sync and more importantly, the Zune Pass: a music rental option that doesn’t exist with Apple. The Zune HD is sexy, slim and solidly built. It is actually smaller than it looks on the product photos and many people are surprised when they see it for the first time (which is good for a music player).
It is also very light (2.6oz, versus 4.23oz for the iPod touch). The other day I was looking for it, after forgetting that it was in fact in my pants pocket. However, once you get over the first physical contact, the new user interface and experience is really what matters.
Design – The Zune HD is not a simple curved rectangle with a screen, like the iPod Touch, but a resolutely industrial, luxurious, angular and slim design. From the angled back to the visible screws to the long and thin home button, the Zune HD is a look all its own. Constructed of aluminum, rubberized black plastic and glass, the Zune HD feels tough and solid in the hand.
The widescreen display offers less space for non-media applications like web browsing, but for media (which, after all, is the Zune HD’s raison d’etre), it’s a really nice size. It won’t quite fit in the change pocket of your jeans, but it’ll slip into even the tightest of regular pockets. The iPod Touch may be a hair thinner, but the Zune HD’s narrower body makes it feel much smaller.
Display – Just as you may have heard, the 480×272 OLED screen looks fantastic. Colors are bright and accurate and blacks are absolutely black. Pixel response is very fast and lends well to watching videos. Like any OLED screen, it can get washed out when viewed in outdoors. You must crank the brightness all the way up in order to view it on a sunny day. Even then, direct sunlight might make it difficult.
GUI – Like all good touchscreen devices, the Zune HD provides a lock screen which requires a swipe up to clear. Once you’ve pushed away the very-slightly informative page (you get the time and the battery life here), you’re greeted with a clean menu of content options. Scrolling through the list is smooth as butter on the HD, but you’re also able to swipe to the right, bringing up a list of “pinned” media, recent selections, and the newest content that’s hit your device.
A swipe left takes you back to the main menu. When you click on “music” in your list, it feels as if you’re zoomed down into a new region of the device, when you click on your side menu you flutter out of one list and into another. The effect is quite different from the navigation on a touch or iPhone, where you feel like you’re constantly managing lists.
Hardware – On the inside, the Zune HD is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra SoC (system on a chip) that has an 800Mhz ARM processor and a graphics processor (GPU), which makes it powerful enough to play 3D games like Quake 3 at high frame rates. The Zune HD runs on Windows CE. Yes, it’s scary, but microsoft has added some “special mojo” that makes the Zune HD much better than any Win CE device they had before.
Connectivity – The Zune HD has WiFi, and it connected easily to my home network. The internet browser is very slow. When I select the browser, it takes 20-30 seconds to start. Part of the problem is that the browser always refreshes the last page you were on.
Most of the time, I don’t remember what web site I last visited, and I certainly don’t want to waste half a minute for it to be refreshed only to realize I don’t want to be on that page. The default search engine is Microsoft’s bing.
Multimedia – The Zune HD is the best sounding hardware to date. The sound is even throughout the spectrum adding more clarity to the mid-range and mid-bass compared to the Zune 120. Compared to the Sansa Clip+ it is a little bit more on the warmer side. It does not suffer from the hard drive background noise like the Zune 30 / 80 / 120 did with background noise near non-existent.
With the Shure SE530’s that typically hiss with all players since they are so sensitive, the Zune HD’s background noise is among the lowest with the SE530s ranked there with the Clip+. Overall it’s a very clean MP3 player sound wise. Video looks fantastic on the OLED screen. Its fast, colors look great, and it outputs nicely to 720p via the separate dock.
If you want to get all of your content from Zune Marketplace, it is incredibly easy to do with the software and it is an overall great experience. You can get nearly any TV show or movie from the marketplace in a matter of minutes and play it on your Zune or TV; however, you will pay for that convenience.
