Intro to the Zune
The Zune is a digital media player created by Microsoft. The Zune allows its users to play a variety of audio and video files as well as pictures and podcasts. The Zune comes with a variety of unique features such as the touch sensitive touchpad, FM radio, and wireless sync with Windows PCs. The Zune comes in a 4GB and 8GB flash player as well as a 30GB (first generation) and 80GB (second generation) hard disk player. This review is based on the new second generation Zune 80GB version as shown in the image below. This holiday season, technology seems to be the finest gifts to give with gifts ranging from digital picture frames, iPod Touch, Zune, XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii, Sony PS3, and of course computers.

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What’s in the Box?
My Zune 80GB (with preloaded content), premium headphones, USB sync/charger cable, and of course a product manual and quick start guide. Unfortunately, there was no CD of the software, so users must download it off Microsoft’s website. This not only saves them money, but also insures users install the latest version of the Zune software available. I both agree and disagree with this approach. I know this is the digital age, but there are those users who still unfortunately run dial-up, so downloading this might be difficult and time consuming. In addition, you can’t even use the Zune player without registering it first! Not even the preloaded content! So an internet is definitely required to use this product initially. Why must it be registered first to listen to the preloaded content and the radio?!

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Zune 2.3 Firmware
After I received my Zune 80 through Amazon.com at a small discounted price of $240 (excluding S&H), it ran on firmware 2.0. I had previously installed the Zune software prior to ordering it, so I was quite familiar with its capabilities and how to use it. I then connected my Zune 80 to my computer using the provided USB cable Windows XP SP2 along with the Zune software quickly installed the drivers for it and updated the firmware of the Zune to version 2.2 without any problems. I then synced my 24GB of music, videos, pictures, and podcasts to the Zune that took approximately 25 minutes. On December 19, 2007 the Zune team released a 2.3 firmware update to correct battery issues some users were experiencing as well as improving the sync performance which I am glad to report has sped up a little (both via USB and wireless).

Zune Navigation and Experience
After the sync completed, I was up and running listening to music, watching video podcasts, flipping through pictures, and listening to the radio. The Zune navigation is very intuitive with the touch sensitive navigation. It was very easy to navigate up and down, and left and right with precision. Some touch sensitive navigations I have experienced have trouble moving up one line or moving down one line to get to the item you want, but the Zune navigation is quite accurate. The Zune pad also makes it easy to fast forward/rewind and adjust the volume either higher or lower.

Music
In the music menu, you can choose from a variety of views to view your music such as artist, genre, album, songs, and playlists. When you view albums, the Zune will display a nice setup of the album art next the album name to give it a nice visual touch. Once you select an album, you have the option to play all songs in the album, add the album or selected songs to a “quick list”. You can navigate through albums by either scrolling up/down or to the left/right to see the songs in each album. When you play a song or album, the album art displays vibrantly with the song information below. In addition, you can still navigate around your Zune without having to stop the music which is a nice touch if you are in the mood to view photos.

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Videos
The quality of videos played is quite crisp and clear and even for me as someone who likes to watch anime (Bleach and Naruto) with subtitles, it is easily to read (assuming you convert the AVI’s properly and with good quality settings). Videos are only played in landscape which isn’t bad because it maximizes the visible viewing area. Unlike how music is categorized in various views such as artist, genre, songs, playlists, and album; videos are only categorized in two groups—all videos and music videos. Unfortunately there is no way to add your own category yet. I would love to see the ability for users to create their own category such as movies, anime, and TV shows for example. So there is not much organization with videos as I would like.

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Pictures
Pictures are organized relatively straightforward—either by date or folder. The quality your pictures are displayed are in fairly good quality. Although you can tell a little that photos are a little pixilated when the Zune resizes them to fit on the screen, but it is subtle and not annoying as you can just zoom in with the touchpad and navigate around your picture. In addition, photos are only displayed in landscape, so if you have photos taken in a portrait style, you have a lot of black spaces on the left and right of the photo. The Zune isn’t quite “smart” enough to recognize the style of the picture to adjust, so you will have to rotate your photo manually if you want it to fit right.

Social
I have not yet used the Zune Social as there is no one around me yet with the Zune. But when the New Year starts, a lot of my friends and colleagues will have the Zune so I can test it out then. I will update this section once I give it a try in the 2008 year.

Radio
I love the radio feature. Unfortunately where I love, the radio station I listen to does not have RBDS (Radio Broadcast Data System), so I am not able to pick up the station name along with the currently playing song. But the radio still works great.

Podcasts
The podcasts are organized into video and audio podcasts. They play like any video and audio file and sync seamlessly with the Zune.

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Settings
There are several options under the settings menu. They include wireless, display, music, pictures, sounds, touch, radio, language, and about. The wireless setting allows you to sync your media library wirelessly which the Zune’s iPod competitor lacks in this area.

Battery Life
The battery life varies from user to user, but with my volume set to 5 and with wireless off, listening/watching a mixture of music, radio, and videos, I receive about 23 hours of battery life. The battery life is quite good as I switch through songs a lot and watch some video podcasts. Charging it is a breeze and easy—simply hook it up via USB and it begins charging. One thing that perplexes me is why Microsoft does not include an electric charger—one that you plug-in to an electrical outlet? I know you can purchase it separately, but why pay another $30 for a $250+ product? I think including some sort of extension of the USB cable to be able to plug- into a wall should be included as we don’t always carry our computers around with us. Having a wall charger makes it ideal to take the Zune with you when you travel.

Conclusion
The Bad
Although with the recent 2.3 firmware update, there are still quite a few bugs present in the Zune device such as not being able to turn on the wireless feature through the social menu, random restarts, and the same media being re-synced on every connect, the Zune team still has many improvements to make to the Zune device through firmware updates. Since the holiday season is here and millions will be getting the Zune, I predict that Microsoft will push another Zune firmware update by the third week of January or early weeks of February in 2008 to correct these popular issues.

Unfortunately, the Zune does not support some free license codecs such as DivX/XviD, FLAC, OGG, so AVI media files will need to be converted along with a few other unsupported media file types.

The Good
Regardless of the bugs as I stated above (and those listed on the Zune Community Forum), the Zune player is a very good media player for music, pictures, videos, podcasts and radio. I definitely recommend purchasing the Zune if you are looking for an iPod alternative or can’t afford the $400 price tag of the iPod Touch. This Zune 80 is a light weight and compact player (although not as light and compact as the Zune 4GB and 8GB flash drive models) still fits in your pants or shirt pockets. This player is the ultimate media player that plays videos, music, radio and podcasts.

Another reason why I purchased the Zune is because I am getting a little tired of seeing everyone with the white iPods, so with the Zune, I get the same functionality and a little more. This will definitely be a head turner as people ponder at what media player I have and how large and clear the 3.2 inch screen size is. The Zune firmware is still a work in progress, but the Zune team seems to keep their hand on the pulse by releasing the much needed 2.3 firmware update this past week and I have no doubt that they will release some more good updates in the future. This is unquestionably a media player that will be a head turner this holiday season and into the next year.

Rating: 84 out of 100

My Zune.net profile: http://social.zune.net/member/JulianV86
Source (my blog): http://www.shadowsillusion.com/blog/