[Ed note: This review is a collaborative effort between Jenneth, Judie and Mitchell. Jenneth's remarks will be in black, Judie's will be in italicized blue, and Mitchell's in italicized green.]

Designing a music player to topple the almighty iPod isn’t a task we would wish on anyone, but if ever there was a company with deep enough pockets and enough stubborn determination to do it, it would be Microsoft.

Released just in time for the 2006 Christmas holiday season was the Zune, Microsoft’s first stab at a portable media player. In the past, the big M has partnered with various hardware companies to provide the software and/or Plays for Sure certification (more on that later), but with none of these enterprises seeming to make a dent in Apple’s iPod empire, it appears that Microsoft has decided to bite the bullet and design its own portable player.

Now before you dismiss the fact that Microsoft would dare try to successfully take on Apple - a company with a product that is currently at the peak of its game and with a near fanatical following - let me remind you of Palm and Sony. In case you’ve forgotten, these were two other companies that were also at their pinnacle when they were challenged by Microsoft’s Pocket PC and Xbox respectively.

In each situation, Microsoft managed to take a huge chunk of the other company’s market share, while carving a niche for its own product and creating new fan bases. Of course, past performance may not always predict future success.

I’ve had a 1st Gen Nano, iPod Video and a 2nd Gen Nano, and they were all great music players. While only the iPod Video competes in the video segment, it is still primarily a music player and for the Zune to make much of a dent it has to compete as a good music player as well as video player.

Will the Zune be able to recreate that “Microsoft Magic” yet again? We shall see….

If you haven’t already, you might want to take a look at the full unboxing I did back in…November 2006. Wow, time has flown! Be sure to also check out my overview of all of the desktop setup and software.

Specs at a glance

Size and Weight - 4.4 in. x 2.4 in. x 0.6 in. (h x w x d), Weight: 5.6 ounces
Battery - Music, up to 14 hours (wireless off), up to 13 hours (wireless on); pictures, up to 4 hours; video, up to 4 hours, Charge Time: 3 hours; 2 hours to 90%
Display -Size: 3.0 inches, Orientation: Vertical and Horizontal, Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels
Audio - Windows Media Audio Standard (.wma): Up to 320 Kbps, CBR and VBR, up to 48-kHz sample rate, MP3 (.mp3): Up to 320 Kbps, CBR and VBR, up to 48-kHz sample rate, AAC (.mp4, .m4a, .m4b, .mov): Up to 320 Kbps, Low Complexity (LC), up to 48-kHz sample rate
Pictures - JPEG (.jpg): All resolutions (desktop software will automatically convert to 640×480 at sync time)
Video - Windows Media Video (.wmv): Main Profile, CBR or VBR, up to 1.5 Mbps peak video bitrate, 320 x 240 pixels, 30 frames per sec., with Windows Media Audio up to 192 Kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo audio; Simple Profile, CBR, up to 736 Kbps video bitrate, 320 x 240 pixels, 30 frames per sec., with Windows Media Audio up to 192 Kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo audio.
Wireless - Connectivity: 802.11 b/g, Range: Up to 30 feet
Language - English

Design

The Zune is available in a 30GB flavour only, but you can choose between three different colours: white, black and brown. The Zune doesn’t have a garden variety paintjob, though. Each colour employs what’s referred to as a “doubleshot” effect, resulting in a glow around the casing that gives it a very distinctive look.

The white has a translucent tinge, while the black and brown have blue and green glows respectively.

Note the blue ‘doubleshot’ effect on the edges of the Zune…

…and here is the brown version’s minty green

The Black Zune with Blue edges

I decided to play it safe and pre-order the black, because I hadn’t yet seen any good pictures of the brown. However, before my black Zune shipped I had already begun to second guess my color choice; the chocolate and green combo were calling me! However, I would soon learn that the black also has its charms.

I too ordered the Black because I didn’t really like the Brown, and the White seemed to be trying to ripoff the iPod somehow. I’ve come to the conclusion that I quite like all the colours, and and actually thinking maybe I should have got the white, but the Black looks great, and the blue glow around the edges is very slick

As it’s not available yet in Australia, I could only base my colour choice on pictures I’d seen on the Internet. With this limited information, I daringly chose the brown, justifying to myself that I’d never had a brown MP3 player before. I have to admit that I wasn’t too enthused with the colour when I first opened the box. After using it for a month, however, it’s definitely grown on me. That said, I’d probably go for the more conservative white if I could pick again.

And if I could do it all over again I would probably go for the brown - or the newly released limited edition pink. Yeah, I want that one!

I was in the same boat as Jenneth, having to decide off photos alone which colour I wanted. Playing it safe I choose black, and I am quite happy I did, although I have been eying the white.

Apart from colour, the casing is fairly non-descript, but that’s not to say it’s unattractive. It has an interesting velvety finish that’s nice to the touch, constructed from a scratch-proof, fingerprint-proof magnesium alloy. This is certainly a nice change from the easily-marred iPod!

There are no buttons on the left side

The Zune measures exactly 4.44″ tall x 2.48″ wide x 0.65″ thick, and it weighs 5.7 ounces. It would be unrealistic to not compare the 30GB Zune to the device it is hoping to directly compete with - the 30GB iPod, whose measurements are slightly trimmer at 4.1″ tall x 2.4″ wide x 0.43″ thick and weighing 4.8 ounces. Whether or not the extra size will be a major issue is going to be up to each prospective owner. I personally prefer the shape of the iPod, but the case materials of the Zune. Figures, huh?!

From left to right: the HTC Universal, Zune and Samsung i600

From top to bottom: Samsung i600, Zune, HTC Universal

I have to agree that I like the iPod’s shape better. The Zune feels sharp and blocky, whereas the iPod sits more comfortably in the curve of the hand. The fact that the Zune is fatter than the 80GB is a bit annoying too. I mean if you are going to make it FATTER than the 80GB iPod, you should at least match it for capacity. Having their 30GB player almost twice as thick as Apple’s 30GB player with nicer curves really doesn’t make it tempting for people to buy over the iPod.

The sync and charge port on the bottom

What I’ve noticed after extensive use is that while the main case is scratch-proof (I’ve dropped it more times than I care to remember!), the navigation pad isn’t. Even though I’ve kept the Zune in its case almost the whole time I’ve been using it, there are fine, criss-crossed scratch marks all over it. Thankfully the screen is still scratch-free!

Yes, my navigation pad is also growing scarred after almost two months of use and abuse. Funny that I didn’t notice how marred it was until you pointed it out - thanks Jenneth. My screen has also managed to stay completely scratch free; from the beginning I kept a trimmed PDA protector in place, but these days my Zune is wearing the Belkin ClearScreen Overlay…which thanks to the closeup pictures I took, I can now see a bit of debris underneath!

My Zune is unmarked too, including the screen and the navigation pad. I still need to get a screen protector though, it is just asking to get nicked.

The top of the Zune has the headphone jack and the lock slider

Ah yes - the display on my Zune also has a few fine scratches on it.

The Zune’s face is dominated by the 3in display, which has a 240 x 320 resolution and is capable of displaying up to 65k colours. The backlight can be adjusted between low, medium and high, but there isn’t a huge difference between minimum and maximum brightness.

Although the Zune’s 3″ diagonal (2.5″ tall x 1.9″ wide) display is perceived as being significantly larger than the iPod’s 2.5″ (1.6″ tall x 2.1″ wide) display, their screen resolutions are actually the same. Stretching a 240 x 320 picture over the Zune’s larger screen does seem to make some pictures appear less “tight” when compared to those on the iPod, but overall I didn’t notice a huge degradation in picture quality when watching movies or viewing photos.

There are no buttons on the right side

I found the screen to be reasonably bright, with decent viewing angles and colour reproduction. For the display size, though, a bump up in resolution, say, to 320 x 480, or ideally 480 x 640, would’ve made a world of difference for movie watching. 262k colour screens are also becoming a lot more common in mobile phones and MP3 players, and this range of colours on the Zune would’ve transformed what’s currently a good screen into a great one.

I agree with you that a VGA screen would have been absolutely lovely on the Zune, but I suspect that it would have been wasted on such a relatively small display. Usually PDAs with VGA screens will have a minimum display of 3.5″. In its present configuration, a 3.5″ display on a Zune would mean an even larger device, which would have really brought out the screams of “it’s too big!!” from the peanut gallery. Therefore, I think for its size, the Zune’s screen resolution is fine.

I think a slightly higher resolution would have been really nice, but the screen is pretty good as it is. A resolution boost would have required higher resolution video to fill, and therefore more processing power to push it to the display, so I can understand why MS stuck with the 320×240 display. I would like to see a widescreen display on a future updated Zune with a 480×272 resolution though. That would be sweet

Features

It would be unnecessarily limiting to pigeon-hole the Zune as a mere MP3 player. The 3in display is probably the minimum size to bump it up into the portable media player category, although it doesn�t have an external speaker like many other PMPs.

It�s capable of playing MP3, WMA and AAC music files, Windows Media Video and JPG pictures. The Zune software can transcode other video formats like MPEG and XviD to WMV, but be sure to make yourself a cup of coffee and have a thick book on hand, as the conversion process takes a loooong time. It also has an FM radio, with an auto-seek feature and a seemingly endless number of available presets. (I added 32 before I gave up counting.)

I have always ripped my music into 192kbit MP3’s, which I continued to do after my switch to Mac. Using Parallel’s I have the Zune software running in an XP Pro VM sucking my music files and podcasts out of my iTunes music directory. Anything I rip into iTunes gets transferred to the Zune, which means I don’t have to use the awful Zune software very often other than to sync.

Unlike many other portable media players, the Zune isn’t packed out with extraneous features. No games, no organizer features, not even a clock to tell the time with. I can’t say I’ve ever used organizer features on an MP3 player (that’s what I have a smartphone for), but I’ve taken to frequently playing games on my 80GB iPod having this functionality on the Zune would certainly have been an attractive little bonus. The absence of a clock seems to be an unnecessary omission surely it would’ve been dead easy to include this on the Zune?

Well, after returning from a visit with the Microsoft SPOT team at CES, I ask why stop at just a clock on the Zune? I think it would be fab to use the SPOT service to get the time, weather, local information and news flashes…include the first year of service with the Zune’s purchase price, and I suspect that most people would renew after it expired.

To be honest I don’t care about a clock or games (my watch and phone satisfy these needs), but I do LOVE the inclusion of an FM radio! There are times where I just want to listen to something totally random that I don’t have in my music collection, and FM radio satifies that need for me. Using a Sony pair of earbuds I get a decent quality signal on the train of a morning and afternoon if I sit next to the window. It will crackle sometimes, but it’s not too bad. MUCH better than the crappy iPod Radio Remote than I had with my iPod Video. That was a piece of junk, only good for controlling music playback.

There are lots of rumblings and rumours that a June firmware update to the Zune will add more features - like Xbox 360 integration, and perhaps some games. Or ca’maaaaan - at least a clock?!

Well now there is less than a month to wait, so I suspect that we will know what the big firmware upgrade will be soon enough.

As an MP3 player, the Zune rocks. The earphones it comes with are average for a bundled pair, and the earpieces are a tad too large to be worn comfortably for longer periods. It does have one cool party trick - the back of each earpiece is magnetized so that they stick together, minimizing (but not completely eliminating) cable tangle.

I tried the Zune with Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 Pros to test the audio quality, and it’s noticeably better than the 80GB iPod. Damien Rice’s “The Blower’s Daughter” track, which is heavy on vocals, cello and acoustic guitar, sounded full and rich  - a challenging track for any digital audio player to nail. The cello didn’t distort and blended in well with the vocals, and the guitar instrumentals were sharp and clean. The Zune also made short work of Dead Prez’s bass-heavy Hip-Hop track, providing a punchy and driving low-end.

Drum and bass also fared extremely well thanks to the Zune’s powerful bass - Pendulum’s Tarantula track never sounded better (on a portable music player, at least). The high notes on rock group Wolfmother’s Mind’s Eye track distort on the 80GB iPod, but on the Zune they retained their clarity admirably.

I agree that the sound quality of the Zune is very good. I would say that it is easily the best I have ever heard on any DAP, but a fair part of that credit can probably be attributed to my Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 Pros.

I too think the sound is excellent. Using the same headphones I used with my 1st/2nd Gen Nano’s and iPod Video I can’t tell any difference. They all sound/sounded great. And I hated the included headphones with all but the 2nd Gen Nano. Apple made a good move revamping their headphones from those awful bulbous ones they used to include. Unfortunately the Zune headphones aren’t very comfortable, but I use my Sony ones anyway. Anyone who wants quality earbuds/headphones will likely have some or buy some anyway; it’s worth the investment.

The Now Playing screen is well designed, with album art taking up two-thirds of the screen, with a timeline below it, as well as time elapsed, total time, song name, artist name, album name and a battery indicator. Pressing the middle button brings up the ratings, and the ability to turn shuffle or repeat on, send the song wirelessly or flag the track. The Zune comes with seven equalizer presets - sadly, you can’t change the preset from the Now Playing screen. Instead, you have to go back to the root menu and dig through the Settings section to change the equalizer.

The only thing I don’t like about the album art is a flaw that’s well-documented online - all of it is of a lower-resolution, making the graphics look grainy. Given that larger thumbnails are available through Amazon, I don’t think it wouldn’t been too big of an ask to get Microsoft to provide album art that’s optimised for the Zune.

This limitation was finally addressed in the December Zune firmware upgrade; album art is now optimized to fit the Zune’s QVGA screen at 240×240.

Yes good quality album art looks great on the Zune screen. The high res stuff is very clear and takes up the whole upper two-thirds of the screen when playing music. Very nice, much better than the tiny icon displayed on the iPod normally. To get a larger album art on the iPod you have to hide all the other info.

The Zune supports playlists created through the Zune desktop software, but you can add tracks to a “Quick List” for on-the-fly playlist creation. The ‘Add to quick list’ option is nifty for queuing up songs to play - similar to a jukebox.

I think that watching videos on the Zune has been one of the surprising benefits of ownership. I had a 4th generation Photo iPod before the Zune, so I’ve never really watched video on my digital audio player. I really didn’t think I would want to watch movies on a sub 4″ screen, but since I had already ripped Boogeyman with Pocket DVD Wizard to watch on my Universal as well as a few episodes of Da Ali G Show, it was no problem to instead load them on the Zune.

Video playback is the main reason that I bought the Zune. Travelling for 2hrs a day on the train, and sitting at the station for about 1hr gets boring quite quickly, and when I don’t have work I can do there is not much else. With my Zune I have all my recorded TV from my Media Center PC (thanks to ZuneTVWatcher) with me that I can watch wherever I want. The quality on the Zune is actually very good, and I am very comfortable watching an hour or so of video on it. Conversion of DivX files and MPGs in the Zune software (using the registry hack to enable that functionality) is quite quick on my Core 2 Duo E6300. I haven’t timed it but I would get it converts about twice real-time speed. I can easily set some files converting in the background before I go to bed, and they are all ready for my Zune in the morning. This is the one area that I love about the Zune software.

I found the audio and visual playback on the Zune to be very well synchronized and enjoyable, even better than I had found on some DIVX playing PMPs. However, I am 99.9% positive that the Zune’s screen is the smallest I could stand watching without squinting; I don’t think I would (or could) tolerate anything smaller. I should mention that when Joel and I met up before the Samsung 10th Anniversary dinner in New York, he took one look at my Zune’s screen and told me it was “dropping frames”. I honestly have no idea what he is talking about, as I have not experienced anything that I would attribute as such.One thing that I did get a kick out of while we two Zune owners were in close proximity was…wait for it…”squirting” songs from my Zune to Joel’s and vice-versa via the WiFi connection. Honestly! Who thought up such a nasty sounding name to describe the process of sharing digital files with another Zune user? Joel and I quickly figured out the intricacies of “the social”, and we discovered a few surprises that I later had confirmed at CES when I was in the company of even more Zune owners at once. Content that is owned outright can be beamed with no trouble from one Zune to another for up to three playbacks in a three day period. However, if the song is part of the $14.99 “all you can eat” Zune subscription, then that song can not be beamed for the three plays - even if the other Zune owner is also on the same plan! This seems like a very short-sighted approach by Microsoft, one that Chris, Tong, Matt & I thought for sure must be a mistake when we were attempting to beam content to one another at a CES Mobius Meet-up. Unfortunately we discovered that it was most certainly true. While I can understand the idea of not being able to beam “leased” content (we’ll talk about that concept shortly) to just anyone, it would seem that four people who were all “leasing” the same access to the same music should have been able to share that same content with each other…but what do I know.

As mentioned above, improvements to the screen - such as a higher resolution and support for more colours � would�ve made video playback a much better experience. As it is, however, I found watching movies on the Zune to be very enjoyable. Launching a movie automatically rotates the display to landscape, and holding the device in this position with two hands feels much more natural than holding it upright.

There are also cases being manufactured which take advantage of the automatic screen rotation, such as the Belkin Folio Kickstand I previously reviewed.

De rigeur for an MP3 player with a colour screen is support for picture display and slideshows. As mentioned above, the Zune only supports photos in the JPG format. If you�re only going to be displaying pictures from a digital camera, this limitation isn’t important. If you’re using it for work purposes, on the other hand, such as displaying BMPs or GIFs, then it becomes an unnecessary nuisance - especially as other media players support more picture formats as standard. The Zune software also down-samples all photos to a 640 x 480 resolution - there’s no option to turn this conversion off.

Photos are organized by the folder they’re contained in on the desktop PC, and you can also view them by date. Thumbnails of each grouping are displayed, and clicking on a folder or month brings up thumbnails of all the photos. A “Play Slideshow” button presents each picture sequentially, with a simple fade transition. In the Settings, the transition time can be changed (default of 5 seconds), and you can also turn on Shuffle. There isn’t an option to specify a particular album, playlist or track to play alongside a slideshow, but if you’ve got music playing when you start a slideshow, this will continue to play.

The audio jack is a standard 3.5mm, but it can also pump out composite video and left and right audio for connection to a stereo or television. This cable doesn�t come in the box, but the iPod A/V cable I’ve got from Belkin worked perfectly.

I have tried a cheap iPod AV cable I picked up off eBay for a few dollars and it works great. While video is only 320×240 it doesn’t look too bad!

User interface

Navigating the Zune is done by manipulating one of the three input methods on the front of the device. From left to right, there is a back button, the four-way directional pad with center select button, and the play /pause button.

Obviously anyone coming from another digital music player is going to notice that the Zune is different than what they are used to, but it is certainly easy to navigate and operate once you familiarize yourself with the GUI.

This is the main screen that is seen when the Zune is turned on. Choices include Music, Videos, Pictures, Radio, Community, and Settings.

Selecting Music gives the option of playing selections based on artists, playlists, songs, genres, or albums.

Playlists includes a feature called ‘quick lists’, which are basically on-the-fly lists created when listening to tracks. Playlists can be created through the Zune desktop software or downloaded specifically - as was the Tarantino Soundtracks Playlist shown here.

With just a little bit of clicking and hitting the back button, one can easily become a pro at operating the Zune. I won’t say that it is necessarily intuitive, but it is certainly not klunky or difficult to learn.

Like mobile phones, portable media players are personal devices, so it’s good to see that Microsoft has catered for this with a certain level of customizability. Any picture can be used as the wallpaper, which is visible on every screen other than music, video and photo playback. Three themes are available from the Settings: haze, night and amber, but it appears that this only changes the background. In a future firmware upgrade, it would be great to see themes that apply more changes to the user interface, namely typeface, font colour and highlight colour.

The Zune definitely took some UI design cues from Media Center. The zooms and fades are all Media Center traits, and I think they work quite well on the Zune. It looks a heck of a lot better than the iPod interface, which while simple is just plain old these days.

Desktop software and Zune Marketplace

The Zune desktop software is essentially a scaled down version of Windows Media Player 11. Funnily enough, you don’t have the option of using WMP11 if you prefer it  - only the Zune application will recognize and sync with the player. Even Windows Explorer won’t acknowledge the connected player, although there’s a registry workaround you can apply to get it mounting as a mass storage device. Unlike Windows Media Player 11, you don’t have to grapple with multiple tabs to sort through your content. Just one main view, with playlists, library, marketplace and the Zune content on the left (which is split up into music, video and picture views), itemized content in the middle, and the sync/playlist/burn listing on the right.

Frankly, I’m not a fan of the Zune software. At all. I tried installing it on two separate machines, and they both hung at 95%. Not a huge deal - cancelling the installation and restarting it solved the problem both times, but even more of a bother is the amount of resources it consumes. I use a fairly lightweight laptop as my main machine (1.2GHz Pentium M), and it struggles when I’ve got the Zune application open and all of my other usual apps (Word, FireFox, Outlook, Messenger, etc) - not something I have to contend with on other music programs.

I understand that Microsoft has tried to simplify the experience by providing a cut-down version of WMP, but it’s still got a steep learning curve. The need to input a lot of personal information before being able to use the Zune, as well as create a Zune tag and Windows Live account, is another hassle. I can understand that this is designed to make it easier to sign in and use the Zune Marketplace, but for those who don’t use it (like me), it’s an unnecessary hurdle that I need to jump through before I can get to loading content onto the player.

Update: I’m now running Zune Marketplace on a 2GHz Core 2 Duo system with Vista Ultimate, and I have to say that I’ve changed my mind about the software. It’s still not as intuitive as it could be (I think iTunes takes the cake for that), but it’s grown on me - I no longer shudder with fear whenever I have to use it.

I have been using it on a Core 2 Duo as I said above and conversion performance is great!! These processors really know how to crunch video

One of the less user friendly things to contend with when purchasing music from the Zune Marketplace is Microsoft’s bizarre points system. Yes, I am going to put myself ‘out there’ and say that the system is bizarre because I’m not a gamer, I’m not used to banking money in exchange for “points”, and I’ll bet that most people buying a Zune aren’t either. So anyway, from what I understand this system is just like the convoluted one used with X-Box Live, where users can purchase a certain number of points per dollar. So while it might be tempting to see the “79″ next to any song in the Zune Marketplace, or “880″ next to an album, and think that you are getting a 20% price break over the prices on iTunes, that simply isn’t so. You’re paying full price, and the prices don’t always make sense. The Zune Marketplace always leaves you with leftover points because of their weird pricing structure, so in effect you have to buy more points to spend your leftover points. No thanks! I am not sure why they couldn’t just price the songs at 99� and be done with it…but since I have the $15 a month Zune pass - which is charged in dollars, not points (thank you very much), it doesn’t really matter to me one way or the other - but I still don’t like it.

Zune Marketplace isn’t yet available in Australia, but I was able to get a US-based friend to buy me a 3-month Zune Pass. And mate - it’s totally changed my music listening habits. I’ve downloaded loads of music that I wouldn’t normally have, and my musical horizons have expanded because of it. Searching for new music is easy, as is downloading and transferring to the Zune. I’ll definitely be renewing this pass after 3-months.

I haven’t tried the Zune Marketplace yet, but I think a subscription service is a great idea. And for the price of one CD for unlimited music? Bargain!

Battery life

Microsoft advertises up to 14 hours of battery life with the wireless turned off. I tested this using a mixture of 128kbps and 192kbps MP3s, with the library set to shuffle, backlight off and without skipping any tracks, and I achieved 13 hours of playback time. For a player of this size, I expected a longer run-time, like, say 20 hours? At least enough to get me to London!

Well, I don’t think anything will ever get the 27 hours of battery life I got with my Sony NW-HD1, but then that was just a music player, too. When playing videos, I’ve found the Zune’s battery life to run roughly half of that while listening to music. I think it helps a bit to turn off the WiFi, but the best I have got so far has been almost four hours - or one and a half movies worth. Not great, but not a deal-breaker either.

I haven’t don’t any scientific tests on my Zune, but I think I get close to 4hrs as well. I am quite happy with that, as it is plenty for my daily use. I haven’t ever used it with the WiFi on as there are maybe 50 Zunes in Australia

Included accessories

The Zune comes with the standard mix of accessories: a pair of black earphones…

…a soft pouch…

…that matches the colour of the player…

…and a USB cable for charging and syncing.

You can’t actually use the Zune while the software is running on your PC, but exiting the program allows you to use the device while it’s charging off a USB port.

The Zune also comes with a 14-day trial to the Zune subscription service, where you can try the “all-you-can-eat” downloads to your hearts content. No credit card necessary, but if you don�t sign up for a subscription, the content expires after two weeks.

Conclusion

So is the Zune a perfect first generation device? Absolutely not, but then neither was the iPod until perhaps the 4th generation (which is ho long I waited before buying one). There are caveats and small annoyances to be found in several places, but there are also several redeeming factors: the Zune has a beautiful screen, an easy to navigate interface, and it delivers great sound. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. Will Microsoft get it right? I’m willing to wait and see.

I am very happy with my Zune, and glad I made the purchase. For me the video playback is what I wanted, and the Zune does a great job. Syncing new video is easy, and playback times are quite good at full brightness. I am really glad MS added an FM Radio as I use this frequently on the train. My only complaints are that it is too thick for the 30GB capacity, and a higher and wider resolution screen would have been nice (480×272 would be perfect). If they slim it down and upgrade the screen you will see my current Zune on eBay Until then though, it’s a keeper.

As everyone knows, Microsoft usually takes three goes to get something right. The Zune is very much a first-generation device - with all the quirks and hiccups this usually entails - but it’s a decent first effort. I’m very much looking forward to what comes next from the Zune team - hopefully it’ll include a larger-capacity drive, a more sophisticated interface, a sexier hardware design, longer battery life, a larger screen with a higher resolution (while still keeping the current footprint) and direct downloads from the Zune Marketplace using Wi-Fi (like like SanDisk Sansa Connect). No, I don’t ask for much

The Microsoft Zune is available from just about every internet or brick and mortar electronics retailer.
MSRP: $249
What I Like: Scratch-resistant case, unique glowing edges for the different colours, excellent sound quality, nice display, FM Radio, video playback, slick modern interface, good battery life, Zune Unlimited Subscription service.
What Needs Improvement: Quite large and bulky for a 30GB player, navigation pad may scratch easily, rather awkward Zune desktop software, WiFi isn’t used to its full potential and imposes annoying restrictions.



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