Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player (Red)
by Zune
|
List Price: Our Price: $159.81 You Save: $89.19 (36%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player (Red)
Customer Review: Gave it a shot but returned for Nano
Summary: 4 Stars
Long story short. The Zune 80 GB (Red) is feature rich but after purchasing and using one for two days I returned it and purchased 16 GB Nano (4th Gen) instead.
This is only my second MP3 player purchase. I am replacing a 4 GB iPod Mini that is still working reasonably well (but no color screen). I rip my own CDs so actually do not care if I use Zune Music management Software or iTunes. I find them both unintuitive.
It is possible the touchpad on my Zune was defective or I was just not using it right but I could not get the "clicking" down right. I would scroll to Music or Video and then "click" in the center but half the time I would end up scrolling up or down instead. Within the Music section I had trouble getting the left to right scrolling working all the time as well (playlist, songs, etc). One time after I held it down for about 10 seconds, its started scrolling like crazy and I had to turn off the Zune.
The radio and scanning the channels did not seem that user friendly. One of the reasons I chose the Zune was to get a radio (although not to identify music to purchase as Microsoft intends).
Video was nice but really I don't see much difference between 2" and 3.2" screens (same resolution). Guess video on the Touch would be more impressive than the Zune or Classic but after playing with some videos on the Zune and watching a James Bond flick my interest in thinking I'd watch lots of movies on the Zune dissipated a lot! Not because of the quality which was fine, just the screen size. I'll still watch some videos on the Nano.
I did quite a bit of research prior to picking the 80 GB Zune and my 3 top picks were the Zune, iPod Classic and new Touch (I looked at Archos, Cowon, Creative, Sansa, Sony, etc.). The Touch is not really a competitor to the first two, but of course its very different and cool. I think of its as a PDA though and many of its features are things I just don't care about/will probably end up with on my next cell phone anyway. My coworker just got a 8 GB Touch and is having trouble with the battery life (lots of posts on the support sites about this).
One of the reasons I chose the Zune 80 GB over the 120 GB was because the former comes with the "Premium" headphones, but I was not impressed. Bass was to low for me. Once I plugged in my foldable Sennheiser PX100 headphones, the bass picked right up though (or I probably would have returned the Zune just for that reason alone).
Anyway, I decided to get the 4th Generation Nano after thinking that I should stick to a Flash based unit this time around. I did hear the hard drive clicking a few times on the Zune which I never hear on my Mini. I run with my Mini but just on the treadmill where it sits in the cupholder. I only went with the 4th Gen Nano today because Apple put out a release to take care of the Cover Flow issue (because of the accelerometer). Otherwise I probably would have looked for a previous generation Nano.
Customer Review: Zune hardware 5 stars. Zune software 0.5 stars.
Summary: 4 Stars
The Zune sounds great and seems to work great. My problem is with the software and initial setup of my Zune. What a ridiculous headache. If you have full albums ripped to your hard drive with all artist and album information, the zune software will work well for you. I have thousands of songs from different artists and some of my songs only have a number for a name. When the zune software shows my collection in alphabetical order via artist, song, album, and genre, my songs are all over the place. I can't just drag and drop my folders which contain my songs into my zune. To find my files the way they are displayed in Zune and recreate the folders would take eons. The next idea I had was to use windows media player to create my playlists but incredibly ZUNE WILL NOT READ WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER PLAYLISTS. INSANE!!!
What I had to do is create a playlist in the M3U format. Zune can read this. Why it won't accept windows media player playlists is beyond me. Zune will work with playlists in two formats: ZPL (.zpl) and M3U (.m3U). ZPL is the Zune playlist format. It apparently does not read WPL (.wpl) which is the default media player playlist format.
You can create M3U files in media player by selecting the "save as" option and selecting .m3u not .wpl. Also winamp automatically saves playlists in the m3u which is what I used.
Once you have created your playlist with an M3U extension, move or copy it to the Zune playlists folder. Hook your Zune to your pc and you should see the newly created playlist. Drag and drop to your Zune icon and it should work (sync).
It took me about 4 hours of searching the web to figure this out. The information I have presented here is not easily found in the online manual. It should not be so difficult. Zune hardware 5 stars. Zune software 0.5 stars. Hopefully this will help others with the same issue. I was about to return my Zune. I am glad I didn't.
Customer Review: Great Device
Summary: 4 Stars
I absolutely love this device. It is packed full of features and has great performance. With the latest firmware update, they have added 2 games onto the device (more games can be added by using some MS Tools).
The touch sensitive control pad makes it easy to navigate your selection, even quick movements of your finger in an up or down motion will make your selection bar move quickly, almost like a roulette wheel.
Movies are breeze to get on. I converted a number of my home movies using DVD Catalyst, and the quality was amazing on the device.
The 4 star rating is because of the quirks it has:
My only complaints are that it forces you to use the Zune Software. I would have much rather used Windows Media Player to create playlists and sync, or have the ability to copy files directly to it like a removable USB Device (my wife's Gigabeat S30 can do this function). The only thing I do like about the Zune Software, is that it makes tagging/grouping movies I've converted (I ripped my Band Of Brothers Collection, and it allowed to mark them all as being related, with episode numbers, titles, etc), as for music and playlist transfer...I still would rather have WMP
I also have noticed that the touch pad is extremly sensitive. At times, I have accidentally jumped songs, or messed with the volume not even realizing it.
An included AC Adapter would have been nice too, but the only thing included in the box is a USB cable. While it does charge quickly, this makes getting a quick recharge in an airport difficult without pulling out lots of equipment.
Battery life is ok...depending on what you are doing...for music, it'll last you a while, but for movies, I was only able to watch 1 1/2 movies before it powered off.
Overall, even with it's quirks, I would 100% recommend this device who is looking for a feature loaded mp3 player.
Customer Review: Factory Defective, or Something More...? Oh Well, i Like It
Summary: 4 Stars
First of all, i have to say that i love this device. Having such a huge space to view all of my media is so great.
i received it in great shape--as far as i could tell, there were not even any slight scratches on the back as described. The screen is clear and the headphone jack works properly. There is one minor flaw on the device body i can give, and that is that the "hold" button is somewhat flimsy. When activated, it lifts slightly and feels loose. Not sure if this is a design flaw or was merely subjected to misuse; regardless, it still works fine.
Now, speaking of flaws, there is only one that actually affects performance: the battery life. i sincerely hope that all Zunes of this generation were not manufactured with the amount of juice that mine has. On a full charge i can usually get about 2-4 hours of listening time at the recommended volume. Even when it has been turned off, sometimes it will "die" overnight. As you can see, the battery is not very strong or even consistent.
Now, as i said earlier, i maintain the possibility that this merely a design flaw responsible for by Microsoft. This is mainly because i have only been able to contact one other person who has ever owned a Zune, and they also acknowledged poor battery life experience. Besides, there has to be some reason why these things don't sell on the big market!
Overall, great product, works wonderfully for entertainment purposes--just remember to bring your power chord.
Customer Review: Love it.
Summary: 4 Stars
Much better than the 1st generation that I had. More hard disk space, look and feel are better, at pretty much the same price. However, there are two anodynes I need from Microsoft for my pain points.
1st pain point: Foreign language pack still not available. There is a hack out there, but I was hesitant to try because this hack requires admin priv of my machine and there is nothing that'd guarantee me that the language hack was the only hacking code packaged in the provided .exe. And also thanks to MS, after upgrading to Vista Premium, my Virtual PC stopped working so I cannot attempt this hack on my Virtual PC slice.
2nd pain point: Not being able to create custom favorite/play lists for my videos. And the video fast forward is not user friendly.