First Look: The Microsoft Zune HD

Microsoft Zune HD (Click to enlarge.)
[PHOTO: Courtesy of Microsoft]

This third-generation Zune is a significant, and largely successful, facelift of a media player that has ranked towards the middle of our Ratings of MP3 players, available to subscribers. The upgrade begins with its appearance; measuring 4 x 3.5 inches, the Zune HD is noticeably thinner and more elegant than the first, boxy, and drab-colored Zune models.

Available now, the Zune HD costs $220 in the 16GB version, $290 in the 32GB version.

We'll be adding the Zune HD to our Ratings in a few weeks. Meantime, here are our first impressions of the player:

The display is sharp. The 3.3-in. multi-touch-screen display was quite responsive. And with its 170-dot-per inch (dpi) resolution, it's about as sharp as the 160-dpi display on Apple’s iPod Touch, the closest counterpart to the Zune HD in Apple’s lineup.Colors on the Zune display, which uses organic light emitting diode technology, appeared vibrant.

The Zune HD also shares these other capabilities with the Touch: You can zoom in on photos by widening your fingers, or double-tap the screen to return them to original size. The screen reorients Web pages and photos when you tilt the player. And there’s a virtual keyboard to facilitate searches on its Web browser. Unlike the Touch and other players, however, the Zune HD doesn't support streaming video.

HD Radio is a plus. True to its moniker, the Zune HD is the first portable player with a built-in HD Radio. (Besides simulcasting their main signal digitally, with better sound quality than the analog broadcast, FM stations that broadcast HD Radio signals provide information on the music that’s playing and often offer additional programming through what’s called multicasting.) Like the new iPod Nano, the Zune allows you to tag songs you hear on its radio for later purchase. And, as promised, you can use the Zune’s Wi-Fi capability, a feature the Nano lacks, to download purchases directly to the player, or to wirelessly sync the player to your PC.

Navigation is fairly easy. The Zune HD's Quickplay menu makes it easy to find the music, videos, podcasts, and other content. It allows you to create shortcuts, called "pins," to any item in your collection and also displays your playback history and recent purchases additions. You can peck your way down the menu tree to find a song, album, video, etc. The display also duplicates the appearance of the Zune software on your PC desktop. But that trick can sometimes be a problem, we found, because some elements get squeezed or cut off on the display.

The music never stops. The Zune HD has a Smart DJ feature, akin to iTune's Genius, that creates an "endless playlist" of songs based on your tastes and how the songs are related musically. For $15 a month, you can add the Zune Pass service, which offers users unlimited access to many songs in the Zune Marketplace catalog.

The Zune HD packs a lot of smart, powerful features into a relatively small and sexy package, and may even turn some Zune mockers into admirers. Mac owners won’t be among them, however, since the Zune remains Windows-only, even in this new version.

Another drawback: Many of the Ssongs you buy on your Zune account can't be played on other players or unauthorized computers. And Microsoft's payment method remains batty. Instead of currency, you pay for things with "points," which you have to buy in $5 increments. And because the points don't match currency, its hard to tell how much you're spending. —Mike Gikas.

Comments

[Emille]

Microsoft did an outstanding job with this media device. It is far sleeker than my iPod touch. Having used an ipod touch, the interface and the features on the Zune HD are far better. You get impressive features on the Zune. HD radio sounds great. OLED Screen is fantastic. The device is extremely light and very well built. Battery life is great as well. I have no complaints about this device. I purchased it with the dock, and man does the picture look great on my TV. The Zune outputs videos without any problems or hesitation. Truly a great device. I highly recommend and definitely recommend that you play around with it for yourself, because pictures truly don't do it justice.

[John S.]

@Ross Nicholson. You say "Microsoft should bite the bullet and make the deal to make Zune Apple iTunes compatible." That's not a Microsoft decision. That's an Apple decision. Zunes, since they first launched, have always been able to play unprotected .aac files from iTunes, but Apple has never licenced a non-Apple mp3 player to work with iTunes. On the contrary, Apple has quite deliberately tied iTunes exclusively to iPods and fought efforts by third parties to develop unauthorized compatibility. iPhone's another story.

[rick]

This sounds pretty biased for consumer reports. Itunes took a pretty long time to go all unprotected, and some of the songs cost more, and they have a lot more clout when it comes to online music. Microsoft is catching up, doesn't matter how much of a leading corporation they are, they are not leaders in this area.

This is a zune article, you don't have to use the zune store, you can use itunes (or amazon, the best one in my experience).

[Michael Gikas]

Steve,

Thanks for your thoughtful post.

Sorry my post didn't make it clear I was referring to the songs one wanted to purchase. But the fact remains that WMA songs available for purchase on the Zune Marketplace ARE copy-protected. These include songs from Beyonce, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, and other leading artists. And you're right about iTunes not having the equivalent of a Zune Pass. But Touch (and iPhone) owners DO have access to Rhapsody service, which is very similar to Zune Pass.

Not to rub it in, but it's difficult to sympathize with Microsoft on this matter. One of the world's leading corporations should have enough clout to handle this DRM issue pronto. Also, remember when Microsoft abandoned Play for Sure for Zune? All those poor customers of MusicMatch, BuyMusic, and other Microsoft music stores suddenly found themselves with "locked" music that wouldn't play anymore. (Some of them were smart enough to burn audio CDs, then re-rip them as MP3s.) Adding insult to injury, the Zunes wouldn't play those songs either--even though Zune and Plays for Sure are both WMA formats.--Mike Gikas, Senior Editor, Electronics

[rick]

Ok, itunes does have it all drm free, I didn't realize they finally hit that mark. But I wouldn't say many are protected, they claim the majority aren't and I've found that to be true.

Also talk about the zune store (and itunes when reviewing those) is a bit moot because songs from one play on the other anyway! As far as the zune software for syncing, it's a lot better this version, last version was extremely unstable. Itunes on the other hand is still pretty awful in my own experience (stability and speed mainly).

[Steve]

Continuing the "let me correct you" string between Mike and Rick:

Mike: Your statement comparing Apple and Microsoft's use of DRM is somewhat inaccurate, in that you neglect to distinguish between subscription music DRM vs. purchased music DRM. Pardon the pun, but it's apples vs. oranges. Both Apple and Microsoft had the same goal to migrate all their purchased music from DRM-protected to unprotected MP3 format. Apple completed their contract negotiations, and thus, their migration, as you point out. Microsoft hasn't finished, but I assume they will get there, as soon as they can deal with their recording company contracts (it's the recording companies who fought this, after all). On the "oranges" side, only Microsoft also offers subscription music (all you want for one monthly fee, via Zune Pass), which is DRM protected. Apple does not offer this type of service, so criticizing Microsoft for protecting this type of music compared to Apple is meaningless -- Apple doesn't offer it.

Zune users who have a Zune Pass can listen to any available music in the catalog as long as they keep paying the fee. If they like the music and want to keep it forever, they can purchase it (or use their 10 free tracks/month), now mostly as MP3 format files. This makes Zune Pass a great deal, even if you don't like DRM.

[Dany]

80 Microsoft points = 1$

CR, I hope you will highly rate the Zune HD, hopefully better than the ordinary Zunes!

[Ross Nicholson]

Microsoft should bite the bullet and make the deal to make Zune Apple iTunes compatible. Otherwise, they are just wasting their time and money in a futile attempt to reinvent the wheel.

[Michael Gikas]

Dear Rick,

Thanks for pointing out additional features of the Zune Marketplace. Zune Pass is really cool. But you're incorrect about iTunes and DRM. In April, iTunes began dropping copy protection on 8 million of its songs (in exchange for tiered pricing). Apple eliminated DRM for all of its music by the end of the last quarter. It's time for Microsoft to join the party.--Mike Gikas, Senior Electronics Editor.

[rick]

A few mistakes here. They are just like apple, a lot of the songs are now clear mp3 formatted files, no protection. That's all I will buy. So they are not all tied to your computer.

Also, the zune pass is a lot better than I thought and you may realize. Included in the $15 fee are 10 downloads of any songs you would normally buy. So I get 10 mp3's a month, effectively making the playing fee $5.

One other feature that's kind of nice is you can stream all of the pass service songs on any computer you want to log in from with a browser. Firefox and ie work, I can't say if mac would.

I also hate the points, I hate them on the Nintendo Wii also. Truly inconvenient, it causes me to buy most of my paid music downloads from Amazon.