I was recently able to acquire a Zune HD media player. I have been using it for about 5 days. I am going to share my thoughts in a way you can hopefully understand.
Hardware
When I first opened the Zune HD, the first thing I thought about it was how light and small it is. It’s all metal case feels great. There are only three physical buttons on the device: power, home, and a quick menu button that brings up controls to go to the next/prev track and control the volume. One minor annoyance is, no physical volume button.
The OLED screen is gorgeous. Pictures look vivid, movies are fluid, and the minimalist UI looks great on it….and its very very sensitive. This is the first device I have owned that has a capacitive touch screen.
If I could change the hardware, I would definitely make the screen bigger and add an external speaker.
Software
The Zune HD software is outstanding. It’s not just focused on playing the tracks you select, its makes it a point to engulf you in the type of music you listen to. When the Zune recognizes an artist it automatically downloads album art, artist pictures, artist biography, discography, and related artists. For example, my favorite Hip Hop group, Little Brother was instantly recognized. It downloaded about 6 LB pictures, biography, discography, and related artist. The presentation of the information was very very fluid and natural.
If you get a Zune HD, I wholeheartedly recommend looking into getting the Zune Pass for $14.99/month. It allows you to download and listen to as much music as you want. I’ve already downloaded entire discographies of well known and not so well known artist. It also allows me to explore new music without having to download it illegally (lol) or forking out money for a potentially terrible album. It has really great value.
Audio quality is excellent although I wish the ability to tweak the EQ manually instead of having to use the presets.
Some other notes, the internet browser is okay. There were a couple times where the browser didn’t do anything, even though I was clicking on links. The available apps are okay (I can’t get the Facebook app to work). I wish there were more as the hardware of the Zune HD (nVidia Tegra chipset) is capable of running some nice 3D games. The radio works, when I was able to get a signal. This has always been the case with any radio that was built into a portable device…terrible reception…or maybe its just me. I played a few movies just to see what that was about. I haven’t really been in a situation where I’d rather watch movies on the Zune HD (been at work, we don’t watch movies at work…lol or at home where I’d rather watch movies/video on my HDTV).
Let me do some forward thinking real quick. If the Zune software is remotely similar to what is expected in Windows Phone 7, then I think the user experience will blow the doors off of the current versions of Android, Blackberry, and iPhone OSes. The thing the Zune is great at is making you feel less like you are going from app to app or track to track and just enjoying music. The entire experience is really seamless and engaging.
I give the Zune HD 4.5/5.
Categories: Gadgets, Windows Mobile
Tags: windows media, windows phone, zune hd
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