On paper, this one is the real deal for a portable media player.  its specs just sing out to you.  A nice 3.2 inch screen.  Fancy new touch controls.  120 GB (yes, that is GB) hard drive to store all of your videos, photos, music, and other media.  Wireless connectivity.  FM radio…The list of features just goes on and on.  Like I said, on paper, this one is the best player I have ever seen.  But if we only relied on what we saw on paper, then the Redskins would be winning Super Bowls, and the Yankees would be heading toward their 53rd World Series Championship.  They all looked great on paper, but that is not why we are here.  What you really care about is the field performance.  To see how well these specs and features translate into a workable media player, and whether this one offers true competition for the iPod Touch and other media players, hit the jump and keep reading.

What’s in the box: Well, of course you do not think that the media player is all you get in this box.  You also get all of the accessories you need to get up and running right away.  In the box, you will find:

• earphones, which you will promptly throw away if you have anything else at all to use.  These are your standard junk headphones which are included in every media player box.  The only twist here are the foam earpiece covers, which are a fun pink and orange color.

• a USB sync/charge cable.  This is the one which is going to connect your Zune to your computer.  You can use it to sync your media or to charge the battery.  I was disappointed, as I usually am, not to find an AC adaptor in the box.  In this case, that was an extremely large omission.  When I tried to plug the sync/charge cable into my AC adaptor, I found I was not getting enough power to charge it.  This meant I could only charge it through my computer.  a bit of a frustration, but nothing we could not work around.

Quick Look: OK.  Now that we have seen what else you get, let’s take a look at the Zune itself.  The first thing you will notice is that this one does not include the sexy stylings of the iPod Touch.  In fact, it would not be completely inaccurate to call this thing a brick.  It is a sleek rectangle, complete with sharply angled corners.  I really wish Microsoft had done a better job with the design on this one.  I think a lot of people are going to take one look at this thing and move on without a second glance.  Which is a shame.  Because once you get past its touch exterior, there is some real beauty on the inside.

But before we peek beneath that tough exterior, let’s take a closer look, not that there is much to see at all.   All of your attention at this point should be focused on that massive screen on the face.  At well over 3 inches, it is only slightly smaller than the one on the iPod Touch.  Could this be the player that can finally compete with the iPod Touch?  Maybe so. 

Beneath the screen are the controls.  The Zune did a great job designing the controls.  Here you can see a central directional pad, with a back button on one side and a play/pause button on the other.  That is all you will need.

Oh sure, there is a hold switch and earphone jack on top, and the sync cable port on the bottom.  But that is it.  Pretty much everything you need is right there on the face, which is really pretty cool.

The final thing you are noticing is how thick this is.  Like I said, it is a real brick.  But, I suppose you need a bigger case when it is holding a 120GB hard drive.  That will take a little more space than a 16GB flash drive like the iPod Touch.

Well, I think we have seen all we can for now.  You go ahead and plug in the battery for an initial charge.  we have a few things to go look at on your desktop, so I will meet you there.

Loading your media (the Zune software): The first thing you are going to need to do is load the Zune software onto your computer.  It will not sync without this software.  Unfortunately, the box did not include a CD, so you will need to download it from the Internet,.  I was not looking forward to doing this after downloading and installing a massive 70MB iTunes file.  So, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Zune software weighs in at a meager 28 MB.   It downloaded in minutes and was quickly installed on my computer.

Now, I am not going to get into a full review of the Zune software here.  We can save that for another time.  I do want to say, however, how much I liked this package.  It is small and slick.  I found it extremely easy to use, by simply selecting which drives and folders should be automatically synced.  The best part for me, though, was that unlike Windows Media Player, the Zune software is able to sync your Zune to an external drive.  Considering how much music I keep on my 1TB drive, this was a welcome feature, indeed!

Like iTunes, it includes a store, called the Zune Marketplace.  It is not quite as robust as the iTunes Store, but it contains more than enough for the average user.  Along with plenty of free stuff!

Menus, interface, and controls: I was really impressed by the improved user interface which the Zune offers.  It makes it easy to locate and control your media.  Onscreen, you are going to see the same main menu which the Zune has always featured.  It is not graphical, but it uses words in a way which makes them appear to be graphical.  Essentially, this main menu is just a list.  The whole thing does not quite fit on a single screen, but it is pretty close, so there is not a lot of scrolling required.  I found this menu to be easy and intuitive.  It places the items you want most – ie: media functions – right near the top, and saves little used items like wireless setup and settings for the bottom.  The other nice thing here is that the list is infinite.  If you hit the top or bottom and keep scrolling, and it will flip around to the other end. Really, a very nice feature. 

Once you make a selection, the sub-menus are also fantastic, using album art and thumbnails to help you navigate through your media quicker.   You can also use the options across the top of each submenu to determine how you wish to organize your media. 

The only thing I did not like here was that each organizational menu (songs, albums, artists…) are displayed in an alphabetical list for you to scroll through.  It would be nice if there were a way to jump to a particular letter.  I have over 4000 songs, arranged in something like 400 albums and representing probably 100 artists.  Scrolling through that alphabetical list can be a bit of a chore.

OK, so with menus this easy, there must be a pretty good system for interacting with them, and the Zune really excels here.  It does not have a touch screen (which would have been nice) but it does feature the next best thing: touch sensitive controls. 

That control pad in the middle is touch sensitive.  Which means you can flick it to scroll through the menus, just like a touch screen.  And I thought it worked great.  It is like having a touch screen, without all of the smudgy fingerprints blocking your view.  When you are playing media, just flick your finger right or left to scroll to the next item.  Up or down will control the volume.  One word of caution here.  I like to use the hold button when I am listening to music.  On more than one occasion, I have dropped the Zune in my pocket, only to have it slide around.  This can cause some surprising effects as the fabric from my pocket sends music skipping around or…more disturbing…spikes the volume straight up.  So, please, make sure to use the hold button on top.

The other thing the Zune does well is take your most frequently used controls and pull them into their own buttons.  In this case, that means there is a separate button for play/pause and a separate button for back.  Push the back button to go back to the previous screen.  Push and hold it to go all the way back to the main menu.

Playing Media: Making  it easy to access your media is one thing, making it sound good is quite another.  Now, I am on record as saying that there are a lot of factors, including the headphones you choose, the quality of the recording, and more on the road to sound quality.  So, what  I did was isolate as many of these factors as I could.  I wrote this review using my Ultimate super.fi 5 (review coming soon) headphones.  I also made  a playlist which crossed as many different eras and genres as possible.  I have a pretty eclectic music library, and it shows.

So, what did I find?  The Zune did an amazing job of translating  my music.  Virtually every song I played was crisp and clear.  The only flaw I found was that some deep bass tones sounded a bit muffled.  But really, unless you are an audiophile or really listening for flaws, there is not going to be much in the way of disappointment.  The Zune simply sounds fantastic.

The other cool thing I found on the Zune was the share feature.  When you select a song, not only can you choose to play it, but you can also choose to send it to a nearby Zune user.  Assuming there is a nearby Zune user. 

I also liked the fact that you can scroll back through your menus without interrupting the song.  So, while you are plotting your next move, you can keep listening to your music.  This also means that you can play a photo slide show with your music shuffling in the background.

Now, I am kind of a nut about knowing what song I am listening to.  I am constantly checking to see the artist, album, or song title.  You would think I would be better at remembering that information by now…but I am not.  Fortunately, the Zune did a great job of displaying this, with a large image of the album art taking up most of the screen.  Beneath that is the song title, album title, and artist.  You will also find a counter showing how much time is left in the song. 

While you are listening to music, the Zune also has a very nice FM radio built into it.  Now, I know what you are thinking, and yes, every music player on the market does have a nice FM radio.  No AM radios, which I always find to be a bit odd.  I would like an AM radio for news and sports.  But that is neither here nor there.  What I liked about this radio is that it ties into the online Zune marketplace. 

If you are listening to a song you like, just select Add song to cart, and you can purchase it instantly…even those old ‘80s tunes that you are no longer able to identify.  Now that is a pretty cool feature.

All right, let’s face it.  You did not buy that giant screen to listen to music or the radio.  I mean, you could have done that with a smaller screened device or no screen at all.  No, you bought that 3.2 inch screen to watch video.  And one of the nice things here is that this 120 GB hard drive gives you plenty of room for all of your favorite movies and videos.

The first thing I noticed here was that the screen was almost, but not quite as large as the iPod Touch (that is the Zune on top).  This difference, however, became insignificant.  In order to maintain the aspect ratio, most of my videos do not use the whole screen anyway.  so, unless you miss those black bars on the top and bottom of the screen, the picture ends up being about the same size on both the Zune 120 and ipod Touch.

Unfortunately, size aside, the Zune screen did not compare well to that of the ipod Touch.  When they are viewed side-by-side (Zune on the left, iPod Touch on the right), you can see that the Zune screen appears to be darker and a bit less crisp than the iPod Touch.  To be fair, if you did not see the two right next to each other then the Zune screen would appear to be perfectly acceptable.  In other words, the Zune screen was good and did a great job for those who want to watch videos…but there is room for improvement.

In addition to videos, the Zune can also serve as a great solution for storing and displaying your digital photos.  Again, with that 120GB hard drive in tow, there is no limit to the number of pictures you can store.  And I thought it did a great job with this task, allowing you to sort your pictures by folder or by date.  You can play a slide show, or jump right to the picture you wanted to view.  Heck, if you are feeling extremely adventuresome, you can even choose to shuffle your slideshow, potentially viewing photos from different eras of your life side by side.  Try not to hurt yourself with that one.

Connectivity: One area in which the Zune really moved media players forward was its wireless connectivity.  Over time, this has evolved to be…well, far less useless than before.  I mean, as much as I like the idea of being able to share a song with a nearby Zune user…I just don’t know any other Zune users. 

But the addition of the Zune marketplace has really allowed the Zune to do some great things, including the trick of purchasing songs from the radio with one simple click.  Really nice. 

Unfortunately, I had some problems with the wireless connectivity on this device.  While the Zune was able to find my wireless network, it was never able to connect.  This was unfortunate, because I was really not able to determine how the OTA Zune Marketplace compared with the Apple Itunes on the iPod Touch.  Hopefully, Zune will come out with a firmware  upgrade to fix this.

I was also disappointed to find that the Zune did not include Bluetooth connectivity.  Bluetooth speakers and headphones are making great strides.  In all honesty, I think the biggest impediment to their development is the continued refusal of most media player manufacturers to include Bluetooth in the players.  There is little incentive to improve upon this technology when there is nothing to which it can be connected.  However, a Bluetooth radio requires almost no space on a media player, and offers a host of possibilities when included.  I think Microsoft did a disservice to the Zune by not including Bluetooth with this one.

Games:  One of the fun things about the Zune is that you can play some simple games on it.  Most of these are board games, and users of a full PDA like Windows Mobile or iphone will not see much here.  However, I thought these games were enough to set the Zune a bit higher than some other media players. 

I do find it odd, however, that the Zune seems to be adopting some traditional PDA type qualities.  There have long been rumors that there may be a Zune phone.  I have always thought these rumors were a bit of a stretch.  What I do think this points at is that there could be a merger between the Zune and Windows Mobile platforms, which would really not be a bad thing at all.  Replacing the default Windows Mobile media player with the Zune interface would be an enormous step forward for that platform, and could go a long way toward putting Microsoft back in contention against the iPhone.  We’ll keep watching and let you know if this prediction comes true.  If so…you heard it here first.

Other stuff:  OK, so where does that leave us?  Just a few loose ends to wrap up.  Let’s tackle memory first.  Most portable media players top out at 16 or 32 GB.  Heck, even the iPod Touch stops at 32 GB.  Well, the Zune goes to 11.  Several times.  This one offers a whopping 120 GB of storage.  Now, unlike most of the portable media players we feature here, the Zune 120 is not flash based.  It is a hard drive based storage, which has some pros and cons.  While it allows for much larger storage, it also means a much larger storage system…in other words, a larger player.   It also means a lot more moving parts than a flash based player. 

I see a funny look on your face.  What do you mean larger?  How much larger is larger?  Well, let’s take a closer look at that.  Here it is with two 16 GB flash-based media players: the iPod Touch (right) and Zune 16 (left).  As you can see, it is roughly the same length and width as the iPod Touch.  But it is significantly thicker than the iPod Touch 

Then again, it is not much thicker than the Zune 16.  So, really, all of its dimensions are within the same ballpark as those found in various flash-based players.  Not too bad at all.  and still small enough to slide into a pocket easily.

The final thing to mention here is the battery.  As long as we have a large case to accommodate that huge hard drive, we might as well go ahead and fill a little extra space with the battery.  This one really is very nice.  In my non-scientific experiments, it lasted no fewer than 10-12 hours on average.  Roughly a day and half of continuous use.  Not too shabby.

Conclusion: I was really impressed by the Zune 120.  It features a fantastic interface, which has been significantly improved with the upgraded touch controls.  Video playback quality could have been better, but I thought it was good enough for the format.  I do think it will be interesting to see what Microsoft does from here.  They have already more or less implied that we should not expect a lot of new development in the Zune line.  But that does not need to mean the death of the Zune.  I would love to see a combination of the Zune into Windows Mobile.  Meaning the Zune software continues to move forward and develop as the music playing interface for Windows Mobile devices.  Some people may disagree with me on this one, but if Microsoft gets Windows Mobile 7 out there with a media player powered by Zune…well that might just be what we need to innovate Windows Mobile/Zune right past the iPhone.

What I Liked:

• Touch controls
• Amazing storage
• 10 hours of battery
• Really easy to use desktop software
• Great user interface

What Needs Improvement:

• Submenus need an easier way to navigate through long lists
• Screen could use better brightness and contrast controls
• Redesigned form factor to make it less “brick-like” would be nice

Where to Buy: www.zune.com

Price: $249.99

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