One of the hottest gadgets to drop this summer was the Zune HD, the latest offering from Microsoft.   Microsoft has been facing some significant criticism lately, and much of it is well founded.  Even Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has admitted the mistakes they made with Windows Mobile, as well as the Windows Vista operating system.  And that is the products they are good at.  The Zune can hardly be called a fledgling media player anymore, yet it still faces anonymity. Much of the news about previous generations has been met with comments like, “what the heck is a Zune?” or my own personal criticism, “the Zune feels like it is competing with what iPod had three years earlier.”  Not exactly ringing endorsements for a media player which pretty well blew away all comers in my recent Listen To This series.  Well now, Microsoft is back with the completely redesigned and fully updated Zune HD, and boy what a difference a few years can make.  This is the first Zune which I feel is ready to step into the ring and go head-to-head with any of today’s media players.  So, let’s get to it.  We already took a quick look and unboxing at the Zune HD, but let’s go ahead and take a closer look at the hardware before we get into the rest of what this bad boy can do.

Hardware: Since posting my quick look and unboxing, I have had a more complete opportunity to play with many of the functions, and I just wanted to go over a few of the highlights here.

I really love the skinny, sleek design of the Zune HD.  Previous generations have been described (by me) as anything from an ugly box to a brick.  The Zune’s biggest problem, in my eyes, has always been its less than attractive design.  It gave the impression that someone had dredged up a years old player and crammed today’s software and interface inside.  All of that changed with the Zune HD.  This is the first Zune which I have felt really kept pace with other media players straight out of the box.  As soon as I started using it, I was extremely impressed by how the device just felt in my hand.  It more than measured up to the feel of the iPod Touch or Cowon S9.

One disappointment I did find, however, was the lack of a camera/video camera.  I really think Microsoft missed a bet with this one, especially after the outcry against the Apple when they included a camera in the new iPod Nano, but not the iPod Touch.  A camera, especially a video camera, could have really made the Zune HD into a whole different device, with the ability to record HD video, and play it back right on the device.  Hopefully that is something we will see down the road…if it is not already too late.

As far as the controls are concerned, there are only three hard buttons on the device.  On top is the Power/sleep button.  Use this to turn off the screen or push and hold to turn off the device completely. 

On the face, beneath the screen is the Home button.  Just tap this button to go straight back to the main menu. 

Finally, the most unique button is on the side of the device.  At first, I expected this to be a volume toggle, but it is actually the player controls toggle.  One of the mysteries I had when I first started using the Zune HD was how to control the music and volume.  This button is the solution. 

From any screen on the device, press this button to open a new screen with the controls for your music.  From this popup screen, you can adjust the volume, play or pause the music, and advance to the next/previous songs. 

Obviously, these three buttons are not going to be nearly enough to navigate through the menus.  For that, you will need to use the capacitive multi-touch screen and accelerometer motion controls.  Which is the perfect segway into our next section on the interface, menus, and controls.

Interface, Menus, and Controls: I really liked the fact that Microsoft did not try to do too much with the user interface.  The Zune interface is unique and familiar to users.  It is also extremely easy to use.  Like previous generations, the main menu consists of the words for each media type (music, video, photos…) plus marketplace, apps, settings, and more.   I absolutely love the fact that Microsoft bucked the trend of a graphical icon based interface, which can become overly complicated and confusing.  The easy to read text menus are clean and simple.

The big new addition is the touch screen, which means you no longer need to the touch pad to scroll through the menus.  I loved this change.  The touch pad, to me, was far too sensitive in the previous generation of Zunes.  So, moving the controls directly to this capacitive screen was fantastic.  It made the Zune much easier to control, and eliminated the annoying problem of accidentally raising or lowering the volume.

The second new feature is the favorites menu.  Just give the screen a flick from the main menu to switch to the favorites menu.  In this space, Microsoft does use graphics to show your recent choices, as well as new media loaded on your device.  Each item is represented by a thumbnail of the album art, which gives a really nice mosaic effect.  In addition, you can also choose to pin any item in this space to create a list of favorite, again all represented by thumbnails.  This makes it quick and easy to find exactly the song, video, or even app you want most.

The one thing I found missing was the hold button.  With many media players, including the original Zune, I found that it was far too easy to bump things and skip past a song or adjust the volume accidentally.  The hold button was the lone protection against this problem.  I thought it was awfully troubling not to find a hold button on there somewhere, but I quickly found the reason.  Microsoft has replaced the traditional hold button with a screen saver.  Like a curtain signaling the end of Act I, this wallpaper descends upon the screen while your music is playing.  Anytime the screen is off, the wallpaper will be active.  When you turn the screen back on again, the screen will be protected by this wallpaper.  You must flick it up the screen to raise the curtain and access the touch screen again.

Music and Radio: When I wrote my Listen To This series earlier this year, I tested quite a few media players, comparing the audio with several different songs head-to-head-to…well, you get the point.  At the end of the day, the Zune had far better sound quality than any of the other players, including the iPod Nano.  So, I had some pretty high expectations for the Zune HD.  Expectations, which I am pretty excited to say, were more than well met.  The sound quality of the Zune HD continued the trend of exceptional audio processing. 

Aside from how things sound, though, let’s take a look at how easy or difficult it is to access your music, and what you will see when you get there.  The music menu has five separate sub-menus: artists, playlists, songs, genres, and albums.  These are pretty standard, and the menus looks fantastic, featuring plenty of album art thumbnails whenever appropriate.  The only problem I had here was that there was a lot of finger scrolling involved.  It would have been nice if there had been a way to search or jump to a specific letter.

Once you choose the song you want to hear, this is what you will see.  It is very clean screen, featuring the album art as well as information (artist, album name, song title), and a nice little timer which shows both the amount of time remaining in the song and how much time has already played.  At the bottom of this screen are three buttons:

• Shuffle will toggle the shuffle on or off.  I love this because I generally listen to my music shuffled randomly and I get easily annoyed when the Shuffle function is buried in the menus.
• Repeat, which lets you repeat indefinitely or just once. 
• Favorites, which allows you to mark a song as a favorite or (if you really do not like it) you can mark it as a dislike.

I thought it would have been nice if you could mark a song with a pin, which would allow you to include it on the main screen menu, but that was no big deal.

My favorite part of the interface is the screen saver which will appear after your Zune sits idle for a few seconds playing a song.  It takes all of the information on the song’s screen (album art, song information, even time remaining) resizes all of it and sends it randomly scrolling across the screen.  For some artists, when it is available, the Zune will even provide a portrait of the artist in the background while this is all playing.  Now that is pretty cool.

What impressed me even more than the music was the HD radio.  As high as my expectations were for the music, radio has never been my favorite feature in portable media players.  The reception is often relatively poor, and hardly worth it in the end.  The Zune HD turned out to be a whole different story.  Using your earphone cord like an antenna, it had exceptional reception and sound quality.  I was really quite impressed.   That being said, I was sorry to see that there was no identification of the song currently playing on the radio, though they did keep the ability to purchase songs you hear on the radio via the Zune Marketplace with just the push of a single button.  This was one of the staple features which really made previous generations of the Zune unique, and it was nice to find it here.

The Zune also comes with the ability to download almost unlimited music via Zune Pass.  Using Zune Pass, you can listen to any songs in the extensive library, and also permanently download up to ten songs a month.  You get all that for about $15/month.  I did not sign up for Zune Pass, so I cannot tell you how it works, though other people have reported that they have been pretty satisfied with it.

Videos: The Zune HD is one of the first portable media players to be able to handle high definition digital video.  But what does that mean exactly?  The answer to that question unveils what I feel is one of the biggest bits of misdirection I have seen from a portable device.  Let’s be perfectly clear, the Zune HD can download, store, and utilize HD video with an external monitor.  What it cannot do is play HD video content on its own screen…which kind of seems to defeat the purpose to me.   The problem here lies in the resolution of the monitor.  The Zune HD’s monitor can only display in 480×272, hardly enough to handle the HD video’s 720 dpi. 

To test this, I downloaded a standard definition video (Mythbusters) and a high definition video (Apollo 13) and played them both on my Zune HD.  The screen resolution on both videos, when played on the Zune HD looked virtually identical.  On the other hand, the HD content costs approximately 50% more than the SD video, and takes up significantly more space on your device (up to 6 GB for a two hour movie).  With your available storage limited to just 32 GB, I am not sure why you would want to pay extra to store a 6 GB video on your device when the playback on the Zune HD screen is identical to its SD counterpart.  There are far better options available for storing and replaying HD video on an external monitor.

Just by way of comparison, above is a shot from Apollo 13 in full HD video.

Here is a shot from Mythbusters in SD.

Finally, a shot from Indiana Jones, which I ripped to my device from a DVD (sorry for the fingerprint smudge there).

As you can see, there is little difference between the three, so unless you are planning to play videos for a large audience on your HD TV, it hardly seems worth the extra expense and space on your device to download HD videos rather than SD.

In order to play the HD video content on an external monitor you will also need to purchase the Zune HD AV dock, which costs an additional $90.  I was pretty disappointed by this.   The whole thing felt somewhat dishonest to me.  Although Microsoft is clear about the fact that the Zune cannot display HD video on its small screen, the term “HD” in the name would seem to imply otherwise.

OK, now that we are clear on exactly what the Zune HD can and cannot do, let’s take a look at how well it actually handled video playback.  Even though the Zune HD’s screen cannot accommodate a 720 dpi resolution, it does utilize Organic LED (OLED) technology to provide a simply fantastic video quality.  I was impressed just watching the demo video by the depth of field the screen provides.  It has an almost 3D quality, which makes you feel as though you are looking into the display.   I thought the screen was just about as crystal clear as anything I have seen.  The display was crisp, bright, and easy to view.  I did find, however, that the screen was extremely difficult to watch in direct sunlight.  Like many computer screens, the direct sun causes a reflective glare which will interfere with your viewing enjoyment.

That being said, all of the controls are now in the touch screen.  To access them, just tap the screen or use the handy toggle button on the side.  From here, just as with music, you can control the volume, scroll through the video, or pause playback.  Of course, the problem with this system should be pretty obvious.  Touch screen controls mean fingerprints galore.  I recommend keeping a microfiber cloth handy. 

I do not normally enjoy watching video in the palm of my hand.  To be honest, I tend to subscribe to the bigger is better philosophy when it comes to watching videos.  Some days, I think my 56 inch HDTV is too small.  But even I have to admit how impressed I was by this device as a video player.  As long as you do not need to download HD video, then you can store quite a few feature length movies on the Zune HD.  The menus and controls make it easy to enjoy your videos, though I will say I could have done without the fingerprints.

Pictures:  For me, the ability to store and display photos tends to be a happy afterthought on many media players.  I have never bought one with the intent of watching photos on it.  One the other hand, I am often happy to find this feature to make it easy to grab a few photos to carry with me anywhere I go.

The Zune handles photos well, but I did not find anything here that really set it apart from any other media player I have used for photos.  One nice thing about the Zune is that it syncs your photos using their original folder structure, or, if you prefer, you can view your photos organized by date.  This makes it easy to search for and find exactly the photos you need.

In addition to simply viewing photos, you can also play them as a slideshow, however, I did find this feature to be somewhat limited.  You cannot shuffle your photos, or even play photos from a different folder (or date depending upon which mode you select) in the same slideshow.  I would have liked a bit more control here. 

Finally, I really liked the fact that you could use any photo on your Zune as the background on your device.  This will make it the wallpaper which appears anytime you lock the screen.  Just select the Apply As Background feature from any picture.  The Zune will handle the rest.  a great feature for anyone who wants to enjoy that one fantastic picture of the kids, or your last vacation, or anything else; and a great way to personalize your Zune.

Apps: So far, the games and apps on the Zune HD seem to be more proof of concept than an actual app store.  There are only two apps, and not many more games, and they are all pretty simple.  Still, the fact that they are present at all shows the direction this should go.  I am really excited to see third party apps come to the Zune HD. 

I don’t know whether it will ever compete with the iTunes App Store, but I think down the road there could be enough to greatly enhance the functions of the device.

One other note here, I have heard a lot of criticism of the ads in the apps.  I was not significantly bothered by them.  The ads appear while the app is loading, and can be a still picture or video.  While this does delay slightly the amount of time the app takes to load, it was not a significant delay (I don’t think it ever took more than ten seconds to load) and that is the end of the ads the whole time the app or game is active.  I prefer this system to in-app ads, which can be obtrusive while you are trying to play the game or use the app.

Marketplace: Like the iPod Touch, Zune features a marketplace.  This one is connected to your Live ID.  I liked the integration between the Zune software, Zune Marketplace, and Live ID account.  But it was clear that this was not the Apple iTunes Store.  As much as I hate iTunes, I have to give Apple credit for the incredible amount of content they have added to their store.  The Zune Marketplace noticeably lags far behind in this area, with a pretty limited collection of content.  That being said, the content which was present (including music, movies, TV shows, and more) was well organized and easy to search.

My biggest complaint about the Marketplace, however, was Microsoft’s choice of currency.  You never actually use money in this store.  Instead, you use Zune points (which can be purchased through the Marketplace).  This makes purchasing a multi-step and somewhat frustrating process.  First, you need to purchase points (which generally cost $5.00 for 400 points) then, head back to the media you wished to purchase to purchase and download using your points.  Additionally, I hope you were not expecting to link your PayPal account to the Zune Marketplace.  This one is – perplexingly – credit card only.  I really hope they add PayPal soon as that is a far preferable means of purchasing online.

I tested out the marketplace by buying a TV Show and renting a few movies.  One thing I noticed was that while there were many movies available for rental, few were available for purchase (a rental gives you the content for 14 days, or 24 hours from the first view).  I would have liked to have found more video content available for purchase.

Finally, in addition to surfing the Marketplace on your computer, you can also check out the music and apps (but not videos) directly from the Zune.  This is really a nice addition.  Some of you may complain about not being able to download video directly to your Zune.  The truth is, however, that it take so long to download video content (especially HD content) that it would rarely be worth downloading video without using your computer. 

Overall, I thought the Zune Marketplace offered a very good user experience.  It was easy to surf through the available media, or search to jump directly to what you need.  That being said, I was disappointed by the available content, which left a lot to be desired.  but really, I had high hopes that Microsoft would finally ditch the annoying and confusing Zune points. 

Social and Internet: One of the staple features of the original Zune was the social.  This is the ability to connect to your Zune using friends, and share music.  I have to be honest and tell you that I never really understood this feature.  I only really have two Zune HD using friends (Wayne Shulz from Gear Diary and Clinton Fitch from Clinton Fitch(dot)com).   I connected with them through the Zune, and now I can tell you what they are listening to at any given time…not that I need to know that information.  to be honest, I cannot find many other uses for this feature, and have almost never used it.  I think Microsoft needs to find a way to really give users some added benefit from connecting with one another, or give up on this function.

In addition to connecting to your friends, you can also use the Zune HD to connect to the Internet, anytime you are in the vicinity of a wireless network.  Lately, almost every mobile device I have used seems to have the ability to connect to the Internet.  So much so, that this almost has become an expected feature, which is noticeable only in its absence, rather than its inclusion.

The browser on the Zune worked passably well.  I can’t really complain about it, though there was also nothing which really set it apart from the myriad of other browsers out there.  That being said, it does pick up some of the really nice features from other modern mobile browsers, such as the pinch to zoom feature, and displaying only the last character entered in a password screen. 

I did really like the onscreen keyboard featured in the Zune’s browser and thought that worked very well.  I especially appreciated the special browsing keys, such as “.com”, “/” and others.  You can also toggle between the standard keyboard and numbers/special characters.  It may not be rocket science, but it did work well.

Wireless: We have already talked a bit about the Wifi radio included in the Zune, and I found this worked just as well as previous generations.  Like previous Zune generations, however, I was disappointed to find no ability to listen to my music wirelessly.  There was no Bluetooth connection available.  Even better would have been a Kleer connection.  Kleer is a relatively new means of connecting wirelessly, and provides a far superior wireless connection when compared to Bluetooth.  That being said, the comparison between Bluetooth and Kleer is quite irrelevant here since neither are included in the Zune HD.  What a disappointment that was.

Memory: The Zune HD comes in two flavors, 16 GB and 32 GB.  These work just fine if you are sticking with primarily music, which does not take up a lot of space on your device.  Toss in some video, especially HD video, however, and you will find your resources quickly.  I was really disappointed to find that there was not an expansion slot for additional memory.  If the Zune HD is intended to store HD quality videos for playback on an external monitor, then it needs to be better equipped to handle those videos.  A memory card would offer virtually unlimited storage space.

Battery: In the past, I have always been impressed by the Zune’s battery, which far outlasted any other media players.  So, I was happy to find the Zune HD did not let me down.  I played it for a full day (7:00 am to 5:00 pm or so), and it still had plenty of life left.  The Zune HD’s battery is just as good, if not better than the previous generations.  I will say, however, that I tested the battery only with music and apps, not video.  Certainly video, and especially HD video, would have had a significant impact on the battery life.

Conclusion: All I can say is “WOW”.  As much as Microsoft may have missed the mark with previous generations of the Zune, they really nailed it this time.  The Zune HD looks and sounds fantastic.  Toss in that bright, vibrant screen for videos, along with the easy navigation, and this ranks among the top media players I have used.  Many will try to compare the Zune HD with the iPod Touch, but I think that comparison is a bit premature, given the limited number of apps which are currently available.  So, if you are looking for games and apps, then you should hold off for now or look elsewhere.  But if you are looking for a device which will flawlessly play all any media you can toss its way, then Microsoft has exactly what you need with the Zune HD.

What I Liked:

• Skinny shape and design
• No “button clutter”
• Intuitive and easily navigable menus
• touch screen
• great use of thumbnail images in navigation
• music interface is fantastic
• music screen saver is also great
• HD radio
• Incredibly bright and crisp OLED screen
• Great video playback
• Did I mention that fantastic screen?
• App, apps, apps!
• Marketplace is well integrated into the device
• Wi-fi wireless offers wireless access to download music and apps directly
• Fantastic battery
• Good memory (16 or 32 GB)
• Price!

What Needs Improvement:

• No camera or video camera
• No way to search for content or skip through menus.  This can lead to a lot of scrolling and flicking
• No way to pin items on main menu directly from playing the media
• Fingerprints on the screen make video a pain to watch
• Direct sun causes reflective glare
• Can’t playback HD video on the device
• Apps are pretty limited for now
• Can’t buy video directly from the device
• Not great selection in the Marketplace
• Most videos are rental only
• Zune Points as currency
• No external memory card
• No Bluetooth or other wireless stereo music

Price: $289.99

Where to Buy: Zune and electronics stores everywhere

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4. Zune HD: Unboxing and Quick First Look
5. Zune Pass – 10 Free Songs Every Month!!!