I have been putting this off for a while but now that there's a section for this there is no real excuse in putting it off further. This review is going to be broken down into reviews of the packaging, the zune software and the zune hardware, then a nice conclusion to tie it all together.
As little as this has to do with tech, there is a real professional feel to the packaging of zune 2.0 akin to the kind of packaging associated with expensive and trendy watches. This does speak directly to the myspace type consumers that Microsoft is trying to capture as a user base along with slogans "Welcome to the social" and a hosted media sharing thing called The Social. The 80gb version comes packaged with some kick ass deep earbuds with spare replacement heads, and a USB cable to hook the device up to your computer and charge it. Notice that from the picture below there is missing a way to recharge your device without a USB 2.0 port to plug into, because what... Power receptacles are rare?
Microsoft Zune 2.0 80GB review
The zune software is much like the itunes search and destroy of your media folders. The settings are a little more nerd friendly in that you can specify multiple locations for files and it doesn't try to Nazi unify all your songs into a strict regiment of files if you don't want, but I don't recall a setting to normalize all your songs either. As far as using the software in windows, as you'd expect it's kick ass. Not a resource hog and they actually have a decent 64 bit version. Of course like Microsoft products, it does not work 100%, and an occasional obscure error message will pop up when trying to upgrade the zune software, but it does not interrupt normal use.
The big difference is that as a plain media player, it's fucking brilliant. This is a very rare occasion where Microsoft software beats Apple software in intuitiveness, while as always beating it on customization. The only thing that is not 100% intuitive and relies on somewhat an understanding of how computers work is setting up podcasts relying on RSS feeds. You need to cut and paste RSS XML document URLs into a add podcast text box. Once you get that figured out, you can then customize each individual podcast as far as how many back episodes to download and how synchronization with the zune device works. As far as the marketplace and the Social, I have no idea as both features are blocked out for Canada right now.
The hardware device itself is the cats pyjamas / the dogs bollocks depending on where you're from. It is awesomeness that is difficult to describe, but I will attempt to anyways. The controls of the device are a pressure sensitive plate at the bottom that responds in presses and sweeping actions similar to the ipod touch, but in a much more efficient small movement. skipping songs is easy enough to do without looking at the device so those joggers out there can just stick a hand in their pocket and skip a song rather then fumbling with a device. Scrolling up and down through song / artists / etc done in a couple swipes of a finger brings up an alphabetic representation of the category your skipping through. Videos, podcasts, video podcasts, etc, are all easily accessible.
Two very cool features not found on an ipod are 1) you can shuffle songs based on artist, albums, or genres each effecting what type of music you randomly get in a different way. Say you have 30 Metallica albumns and only 1 Justin Timberlake album and want them to get equal play, then you select shuffle by artist. Otherwise if there's a reason why you have 30 Metallica Albums and 1 Justin Timberlake album because you like Metalilica 30 times more, and want your randomness to reflect that, then sort by albums. Very cool and very useful for my different moods. 2) your relative path is always remembered so that you can just back out one level and scroll sideways, so say you want a different podcast from the one you're listening to, just hit to a side on the pad, or more from the same podcast, just hit up on the pad. The pad is in the middle bottom on the picture below.
Microsoft Zune 2.0 80GB review
There's a downside that there is no on-the-go equivalent, so you can't queue up a whole bunch of songs before doing a rad session in a bowl, or whatever you kids do these days, but you can customize your backgrounds. Another downside I can see in comparison with an ipod touch / iphone from a media player perspective is that there is no gyroscope inside do detect when you put it in landscape mode, so video always plays in landscape, while everything else is in portrait. As far as reliability of the device... I'm not sure that I'm a good benchmark for that as although my device froze up twice in the 1 month I've used it, it is now currently dead and going back to manufacturer. Shitty downside: I am not assured the same colour in replacement model, so my black one may come back pink. That's some poor customer handling, as is the wait time I experienced on phone with the support 2 of the 3 times I called. Finding the support number was a headache too as they try to drive all customers to FAQs and forums online. IIRC the support number is 1-800-GET-ZUNE (in Canada it's an 866 number).
Here's a little break down of the pros and cons
Pros:
+ high quality earbuds included
+ great software in windows
+ Fantastic customization
+ Highly intuitive controls and features
+ Awesome shuffle capabilities (worthy of it's own point)
Cons:
- Support is mostly peer based and phone support avoided
- No track normalization
- Complicated podcast subscription process
- No dynamic playlist creation similar to on-the-go
- Software not fully functional in Canada yet
In conclusion I would totally buy one over a standard ipod, but as far as a touch goes, it's missing the wiFi, and is a close trade-off. Feature rich, and the fact that I don't have to install iTunes is a fucking boon, but this is a media player after all and not a personal organizer or whatever else the touch pretends to be. It depends what you're ion the market for. I find the Zune more of a tight package for what it is, and probably one of the best portable media players out there.
