Reviw Of The Microsoft Zune HD MP3 Player

MP3 Players — on September 21, 2009 at 2:45 pm | Comment Now

Sum ‘n’ substance:

Thumbs up: Neat design; attractive OLED display; good battery life; HD radio; movie rentals; subscription music integration.

Thumbs Down: No MAC compatibility; limited video format support; audio lacks controls; separate dock accessory is necessary for HD video output, the subscription music plan works out more expensive than the ipod.

Inside the trunk: 3.3 inch OLED touch-screen display with resolution of 480 x 272 pixels; digital player/ HD radio; flash memory installed is 32/16 GB; supported digital audio standards: AAC, MP3, WMA, WMA Pro; also supports, MPEG-4 playback, JPEG photo playback, Variable bit-rate compatible Integrated Lithium ion Rechargeable battery with a battery life of 33 hours and a recharge time of 2 hours.

The whiz kid speaks: Apple biggest contender, Microsoft just can’t seem to understand how they managed to pull off the ipod, which by the way is brilliant. Since then Microsoft has been hard at work to pull its rival down. So they launched the Zune, an Mp3 player with some good qualities but could barely shake the ipods enormous popularity. The zune then became the object of scorn. Microsoft however suffered quite a loss on the zune since its launch. Now they are back with a new one, the zune HD. Let’s find out how it fares against its rivals.

Razzle-Dazzle: Well, the ipod touch has a superb design, but the Zune is tres magnifique. The 3.3 inch OLED touch screen is very attractive and definitely grabs your attention. The screen has a resolution of 480 x 272 and is a capacitive display with good response times. Besides the touch screen there are three onboard buttons; a power button on it side and the home button and volume/ playback button on its face. The volume playback button brings out the volume controls, but honestly I can’t understand why they couldn’t make a dedicated volume knob or rocker just like the ipod. The icons on the zune HD are nice and big, although for users addicted to the ipod may require some time to adjust to the user interface which is much different in the Zune. There also is a ‘Quickplay’ function that is like a messed up drawer with all the functions like history, photos, videos, radio stations or any content for that matter is made easily accessible.

Inside dope:
The zune is not the ultimate media package but as far as music and video playback is concerned it works in the finest manner. The main menu consists of options such as music, videos, pictures, radio, Marketplace and Internet. When there is enough content , then other features like the podcasts, audio books, and applications are given main page status. The zune features internet connectivity through the onboard Wi- fi connection and allows you to make use of the marketplace function where you can integrate you music and video playlists by adding the latest media and latest updates to your cart. You can download unlimited quantities of music for a monthly rental of $15. and much like the itunes store, the downloads are sold individually. Another function designed with the music aficionados is the quick play function. As I have previously mentioned it provides instant access to your music videos and ‘ just-played songs’. So all the media you pay most attention to, will be placed into this category. The zune works like a charm, when it came to do anything with music, but when videos were concerned, it doesn’t matter how pretty your 3.3 inch Oled touchscreen looks, if the video formats aren’t compatible with zune , it wont play them. To convert your videos you have to run through numerous converting formats like the AVI, DivX and MOV to meet Microsoft’s WMV standard or the MP4/H.264 video podcast standard. Once converted the zune has one the most well-defined and vivid picture quality. The other stand out feature of the zune is the high def radio which beside awesome sound quality has the advantage of HD Radio stations. These HD station offer a number of sub-channels with additional content signals providing Zune HD users to get information on the currently playing song and also tag a song for download.
There also is web browser, built on the lines of the internet explorer. It comes complete with a multi- touch onscreen keyboard and vivid icons for navigating and book-marking. An in built sensor for tilt toggles between the portrait mode and landscape mode.

The Microsoft Zune HD MP3 Player

The performance of the zune was flawless, the sound quality was great and the converted videos were bright and vivid, but the zune faltered when it came under direct sunlight. The multi- touch keyboard was very responsive and the decent equalizer presets complete the picture. The battery life, was brilliant too. On a full charge, the HD could last for 33 hours and recharge in just under 2 hours. Moving on to the software , the zune uses Version 4.0 which is similar to the ipods function and abilities.

Nitty- gritty: The zune HD makes a good MP3 player and if your considering getting one, then you are not seeing the whole picture. Not only does the zune HD fall short on features from competitors like the Cowon S9 and the Sony X-series and the Samsung P3, the features that it packs need external support which has to be bought separately, and that increases your budget. So, in the end, Microsoft still has a lot of homework to do, because the zune HD still isn’t enough to take Apple ipod down.