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Microsoft Zune
Testing: Hardware
Now that I've finally got some music on this thing let's have a listen. Thankfully the Zune player makes up for the slack in the software and Marketplace. Powering up the unit takes about 11 seconds from a full boot up, but is less than a second if the player hasn't sat for too long and gone into hibernation. The large screen sparks to life with a pleasing glow and is instantly impressive. Menus are easy to read and navigating with the directional pad and middle button takes just a few minutes to master. I personally prefer the button clicking action of a d-pad to a touch wheel as I find it more accurate when trying to navigate menus, which the Zune has no shortage of. To play a song select the Music menu from the start screen and press the middle button. Then choose your artist/album/genre and hit the middle button again. Then choose the album or track OR play all, middle button once more. If you choose a full album another menu appears with play all, add to a quick list or send as options on top of selecting individual tracks. Play all will start the album playing in full. The quick list feature builds a dynamic playlist and send will wirelessly transmit the album to one of your Zune-toting buddies, presuming you have any. Prepare to have those wi-fied songs wrapped in some pretty annoying DRM by the way. Your Zune pals will have 3 days or 3 plays of the song to enjoy your generosity before the songs become little more than bookmarks for the Zune Marketplace. Not terribly social, is it? Despite the 5-clicks-to-hear-a-track navigation, the menu system is actually quite simple and made much easier to navigate with the large screen. Occasionally I could feel the internal hard drive spin up. And often there will be just a bit of menu lag as the Zune catches up to your clicking. The included earbuds do a respectable job of delivering sound and they are cleverly embedded with magnets on their outer casings. The magnets let you wind the earbuds around the Zune with no dangling cord leftovers. I'm not fond of the pre-set equalizer settings on the Zune or any MP3 player for that matter. Sadly it's getting harder and harder to find players that let you set your own EQ preferences. Navigating a large cache of music can be difficult with a handheld device. I've never liked the iPod solution which requires scrolling that wheel repeatedly until you hit the general area of where you think your song or artist might be in the list. In this respect the Microsoft interface is actually easier to use and more precise when looking for one tune amongst thousands. Simply press and hold the d-pad button and so the scrolling begins. The list moves slowly at first but quickly starts to move along at a fast pace all the while making a subtle clicking sound, not unlike the iPod. A large capital letter will pop up on screen indicating alphabetically where in the list the highlighted menu cursor is scanning. Clever. Normally I end up overshooting the artist I'm looking for by one or two clicks but I find it considerably easier than having to continually roll my thumb around only to end up overshooting the track by the same margin. The Zune's large screen does have one drawback: battery life isn't phenomenal. But it isn't terrible either considering the size of the screen and the fact that there is a wi-fi chip lurking inside. I routinely got around 11-12 hours of music playback with a little video watching thrown in. A bone dry battery takes 2-3 hours to charge back up to full strength using the USB cable. But the battery drain is worth it if you are a PMP video junkie. You can watch movies and listen to music while the player is charging as long as you aren't syncing anything to the device, i.e. when the Zune software isn't running and your Zune is connected. A Zune software installation is not required to charge the player, just a free USB port. The Zune is the first MP3 player I've used with video capability on which I would actually consider watching a TV show or movie (I'm excluding the larger format players meant specifically for videos rather than music in that statement). Screen resolution isn't hi-def by any means, but I found the display to be completely adequate. The limits of the screen are tested when viewing album art, however. The Zune software will automatically find and sync album cover art for most artists but the lower resolution of many of these images is painfully apparent when viewed on screen. Sadly the Zune only plays .wmv files. The Zune software will convert some movie types for you but others like DivX are left out. My video library contained no .wmv files to speak of and I ended up downloading one for testing purposes. But I had no problems converting a .mov file and syncing it to the device. Videos are displayed in landscape format requiring the user to hold the player lengthwise. This creates a bit of an interface problem as now the buttons that once acted as volume for music suddenly become seek/scan and vice versa. An easy problem to decipher but somehow it always takes me a second to remember.
Page 1: Introduction & First Looks
Page 2: Testing: Software Page 3: Testing: Hardware Page 4: Testing: Daily Usage Page 5: Conclusion 
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