Great iPod Alternative

Having three daughters getting close (or at) their teenage years means getting them the new version of what I used the use when I was their age. In my day, it was the Sony Walkman with Mega Bass. Nothing beat my Walkman with it's deep bass sounds.

Now, they all want is the iPod or the Zune. My oldest has a iPod Nano, and my second daughter wanted a pink Zune. We got her the pink Zune for Christmas at Toys R Us on sale the friday before Christmas. Score.

The first thing I noticed even as I was leaving the store is how small is really is. The box, with the included syncing cable and earbuds, is small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. This allowed me to hide it when I brought it home.

Out of the box, the Zune itself looks similar to the Apple iPod Nano. It has the pad on the front that allows you to go through the various selections (video, music, podcasts, radio, etc.) Click the one you want with the same button, and it goes down another level so you can choose the music you want. Pretty basic for your standard MP3 player controls. If you've used an iPod, this is familiar ground. The big difference is how the menus are laid out.

The player supports MP3, MP4, WMA audio files among others. (AAC and some other lesser known formats are included in this. It also supports MOV and WMV, as well as the MPEG-4 video files.

As you scroll through the music selections, the image of the album the song is from appears with the song selection. Nothing spectacular about this, since Apple has been doing it as well.

The one feature that stands out from the iPod is the FM radio tuner. Now I'd be happy with the the basic digital tuner to find my favorite station. This tuner goes two steps better. Not only does it display the call letters of the radio station, it also lists the song that is currently playing if the radio station supports a protocol that the Zune understands. I saw what the name of the protocol was at one time, and if I find it, I'll update this review with it's name. It's a cool feature if you hear a song on the radio you like, and want to know what it is. Beats waiting for the DJ to tell you what the song and artist is.

The earbuds are nothing spectacular. They come with little ear "sponges", for lack of a better word that you can use to cover the ear pieces. They came with a pair of three different colors (pink,black and blue). My daughter mixed two of the color just to be funny. To each their own.

It does come with a sync cable that doubles as the charger. Once you install the Zune software, which you have to download, each time you plug in the Zune, the software to sync your Zune pops up. This is similar to what the iPod and iTunes do with each other. It does charge the Zune from your USB port within a couple of hours if nothing else is being done with the Zune while it's plugged in. If you are syncing, it still charges, but it will take a little longer to get a complete charge.

The software itself is a 30mb download from the Zune.net site. Not a long download if you have a broadband connection. It sets itself up nicely on the computer. Once you get it setup, it will ask you to plug in your Zune. It will guide you through the steps necessary to get your Zune up and running. It will even help you add songs and videos to your Zune to show you how to do it.

Syncing does have a slight learning curve. It did take me a few tries to get something on the Zune that I had ripped from my collection to test out. I have it set up on my Windows Vista Machine, so it defaults to my user directories. You can change this (as I did) in the sync menu.

The sync process itself is fairly quick. You tell it which items you want, and it uploads the files to your Zune. The time it takes to upload depends on how much you have to transfer. I uploaded one album (about 60mb or so) and it took under a minute to sync.

However, when syncing a .mov file (the Apple Quicktime format) it does do a conversion process, which slows down the sync process. It took about an hour to do a 1.75GB file to sync to the Zune. While the official Zune site says it's compatible, it doesn't say that it had to tweak the file to make it readable. They should be a little more forthcoming with that information. Otherwise, I'd convert it on the computer before syncing the file.


Music sound quality is superb on this player. The volume does go above 10, although you probably wouldn't want to go that high if listening to the ear buds. 5-6 seemed to be the comfort level for me. Video looked really good as well on the smallish 1.8" screen, as I did watch two movies on the zune that I had put on the Zune to test it with. Even with the small screen, watching the video was easy on the eyes. It will take some getting used to, but it's nice to have that to take on long trips.

One the Zune, you can also customize the background with various pictures from either your collection, the Zune Marketplace (which I haven't tried yet), or the pre-installed images on the Zune. A nice way to customize the Zune for your personal tastes.

You can also broadcast your zune info to others in the area and see what others have on their zune. You can also beam songs to other zunes and listen to them for a short period of time. We haven't had a chance to try that out as of yet.

On the Zune site, there is a social network that you can join with other Zune users. It's similar to Myspace, Facebook, and other similar social networking sites. You can also purchase music on the site (which I haven't yet, but plan to), as well as videos, podcasts and even tv shows.

Battery life is good. I've only had to charge it twice for my daughter. Battery life is all dependent on how you use it. If you are listening to just music, it can last up to 24 hours, with the wireless off. Watching video, will drastically shorten the life. I watched all of one movie and close to 75% of the other, which was about 3 1/2 hours. Not bad, but drastically drain the batter compared to just listening to music.

It takes about 3 hours to charge. According to the Zune site, it gets to 90% in two hours. My two charges tend to agree with the three hour assesment, charging in just under 3 hours both times.

I do recommend this player as a great alternative to the Apple iPod. It behaves similar to the iPod with regards to the menu and physical features. Where it bests the iPod is with the radio tuner with the ability to see the name of songs on the radio. This is a great feature that Apple should try to get into their music players.