I bought a Zune 80 in early December this year and a AV Pack v2 about a week ago. Now I have portable gear, lots of it in fact but I wanted the capacity of the 80gb Zune. I also liked the big 3.2” screen it came with. I have both an iAudio M5 with 20gb, and a Flashtrax XT with a 40 GB for video and decided it would be nice to have a single unit to do what both of them do and take up less space in my bag when I travel and I travel a LOT. Both units combined, have less storage space than the the Zune 80. I’ve currently loaded up the zune 80 with my vast music collection and a few GB of  video’s and podcasts and theres still something like 25gb free. Wow.

    I’ll break this review up into the Zune hardware and user interface, the software, then the AV pack, and then final thoughts on the whole package.

The Zune Hardware.

    The zune is a bit bigger than my M5 and slightly larger than the hated iPud. The Zune 80 comes with the “Premium” headphones and I admit they sound fantastic. The screen is covered by a beautiful glass plate which is great for avoiding the scratches you get on plastic screens. Following the trend of metal case backs started by the ipud it has a metal back suitable for laser etching if your so inclined. The big difference is the metal has a nice satin finish instead of chrome. Satin finish mean no fingerprints and better feel.

    The controls on the face are limited to 2 buttons and a combo tough/d-pad. I originally thought this would be gimmicky and not all that useful but I was pleasantly surprised. It really made a lot of sense. The touchpad can interpret velocity so the faster you swipe your thumb on the pad the faster it scrolls the screen. Very intuitive to use. The other buttons are a simple back button, and a play pause button. There is also a slider on the top for keylock which I find really handy when its in my jacket pocket since it will turn on when you press one of the buttons and consequently run the battery down. Since I hate going to use a device only to find its battery is dead this is a great feature.



    The Zune has built in WiFi for using the social aspect or wireless syncing. The syncing is the best part, no need to plug it in to sync walk in the door and hit Sync now in settings and walk away. Great idea. The wifi can also be used for transferring files back and forth between zunes with the caveat that music files transferred this way have a restriction of 3 plays and it gets deleted. Given the limitation sucks but the ipod doesn’t do that so score one more for the zune.

    One last thing. The Zune also has a nice built in FM Radio that utilizes the headphones as the antenna. The reception is quite good and its handy if you like to listen to talk radio, sports etc…

The Zune Interface

    The software on the zune is really pretty nice. The main menu has all the expected functions (Music, Videos, Pictures, Social, Radio, Podcasts, Settings).

Music -The Music section is split into Several sections that all relate back to each other.



Artists-  Lists all the artists from your music. If you select Rob Zombie for example The next screen will show All the albums of the songs you have and the songs not associated with an album. From there you can select the album, song, etc, and play it right then or add it to your quick playlist.

Playlists- Lists all the playlists you have created. Duh.

Songs-  Lists your songs by filename (if no ID3 tags) or Title.

Genres-  Lists the available genre’s of music you have if they are tagged with it.

Albums- Lists all the Albums or partial Albums you have based on your tags

    The music play screen is nicely implemented showing both the song information, time elapsed, album art etc. Very solid methodology for dealing with music on the whole. 



    Given though if you have never dealt with music in that respect you may be a bit befuddled at first. I came from the iAudio and various mp3 players where I organized things they way I wanted in explorer with no real need for ID3 tags. Rude awakening and it was and still is a painful experience getting the song info correct so it can be indexed correctly. However I have found that most mp3 files you find/purchase have the necessary tags already. Its basically just my  older files that need massaging.

    The video section is dirt simple. It gives you a list of videos and the options to play them each with a thumbnail of a frame in the video.



    Pictures is sorted most like I know, into folders each folder has a thumbnail preview and each individual photo is also thumb-nailed. The touch pad makes selecting a specific photo simple. If I had to spin my thumb around to get through my collection it would be tedious. You have an option in each folder to show as a slide show. 



    The social is an inbox for messages sent from the Zune.net website and its also where your received files live. I’ve never had a use for it so I can’t attest to how well it works.

    Podcasts are split between video and audio podcasts by subscription. It lists each subscription and once selected it will show each episode. If you have finished an episode it is displayed in a darker grey and unviewed are a lighter grey so you don’t listen to the same one twice. Simple paradigm but it works well.



    The radio is where your tuner is located and it shows nicely on the screen and tuning is done by either swiping the touchpad left or right or clicking left or right. In the settings you can change the tuning preferences to either North America, Europe, or Japan. Convenient I thought. Especially with my upcoming Japan trip.



    Setting is where you adjust settings etc… They are self explanatory and I really don’t feel like going into great detail.

    The Zune 80 supports wmv files up to 720 x 480, mp4 support up to the same resolution, as well as H.264 support. Sadly there is no Divx/Xvid support or even support for standard mpeg1/2 or FLV (a standard that is growing as far as I can tell). Fortunately Super media converter is too the rescue modifying the files I have in the wrong format to ones that are compliant with the Zune. The latest version of Super even has a Zune profile already so conversion is a snap, if a bit time consuming.

    My only real gripe is the limited video format support. Given if you go through a bit of research you’ll find the tools you need to reencode your video for free. The encoding process can take a while, make no mistake, but once it’s done you don’t have to do it again. The only possible downside I see is perhaps having to keep multiple formats of the same file if you have multiple media players like me. However that isn’t really an issue with the dropping price of storage. I have 580 GB’s of external storage and really, if I need more I have more ports on my USB 2.0 hub.

The Zune Management software.

    The software is nicely laid out and very easy on the eyes unlike iTunes. The top lists Collection, Device, and Marketplace. Below that you have your links to Music, Pictures, Video, Podcasts, and based on what you have selected up top the buttons below it link to the correct place. For example if device is selected then the pictures button will display the pictures on your Zune. Stupid simple.

    The market place is where you purchase music and videos, and from what I’ve seen is much nicer than the layout in itunes music store. Since I have never purchased music from either I can’t comment on the ease of use etc.

    The market place itself uses a proprietary currency –Microsoft Points. These are the same points from the xbox live marketplace. Since I haven’t purchased from there either I’ll leave it alone.

    My biggest gripe with the software is how resource heavy it is. Running on my laptop that I purchased last year it runs ok but a little slowly. Running on my desktop which is a few years old it’s a dog. Given its only a 1700 or so I expect it to run slower than my laptop 3200 but not that slow. I type faster than the software can keep up and it’s a bit of a drag. Otherwise its nice enough. I run songbird and have messed with other media managers and they ran beautifully and I can’t believe that this software runs so slow.

    Seriously, its only files. Maybe it runs faster for those with smaller collections because I imagine its jumping through hoops trying to analyze about 100,000 tracks but damn.

    An interesting feature of the Zune software is it allows you to share your media with your Xbox360 over a network connection. You no longer need to have Media Center Edition on your PC to share. It’s included in the Zune Software. A very nice touch I might add.

The Zune AV Pack

    The Zune AV Pack and Dock is a handy bit of kit and really enhances the way I use my Zune. I have a very decent home theatre setup with 5.1 surround and like 550 watts. A 46” HD tv and when that isn’t enough I have a projector that gives me a 70 inch screen on demand.



    Basically the AV Pack is a nifty little dock that is compatible with all versions of zune including the 80, 30 and the flash players. It comes with a AC adapter to charge it while in the cradle, an AV cable to plug into the TV/Home Theatre, and a dandy little remote control. Once the zune is docked I simply set my receiver to use that particular input, then using the remote I navigate to settings>display>and then set TV out to ON.



    Now all my videos, music, podcasts, photos, etc, are available on my big screen and surround sound. The remote has exactly 2 buttons on it and a D-Pad. The old one I believe had volume controls also but with the new software volume is adjusted by simply clicking up and down on the D-Pad, completely intuitive.







    The dock comes with the Zune av cable that terminate in the standard yellow, red, and white RCA style composite connectors. But the back of the dock has, under a removable panel, component outputs but does not include cables for them. These are only usefull for the new 80 GB model. The 30 doesn’t support component out and the 4 and 8 flash players don’t support video out at all.

    The AV dock was much more expensive (at around $99.00 from Walmart) than I thought it should be for essentially a breakout box but I admit the remote is handy. All in all I can’t complain about anything except the software and that’s a necessary evil I guess. Though the fact that without hacks it’s not just recognized as a USB drive in explorer does Irk me, its something I’m getting used to.

Final Thoughts.

    All in all the Zune 80 is an excellent piece of equipment. It’s sturdy and feels like quality. The wireless syncing is an excellent feature that honestly I’m surprised has never been implemented before. The combination of the zune software on my desktop, the AV dock, and my Zune 80 with my Xbox360 combine to have all my media available on my theatre system at the touch of a button. I can access my media by using the Xbox360 media manager connected through the network to the Zune software, on my Xbox360 by plugging the Zune Directly into the Xbox where it shows up as a portable player, or most easily by sticking the zune in the dock.

    It ends up being a very robust system to access my media and show off my photos from my latest trip. The Zune cost me $269 with tax at Target in El Paso TX, and the AV Pack cost $106 with tak at Walmart in Neptune NJ.

    I have to admit its was perhaps the best $375 I have spent on this type of device and peripherals. Add to the fact that it is by a major company and that the major company isn’t Apple, it was a no brainer. The Archos units were always on my radar but they were just too damn expensive.

    With the Zune 80 Microsoft may very well have the iPod killer on their hands. The combination of the software, hardware, and compatability with the Xbox360 is very compelling and really led me to buy this piece. The flexibility of using this system (zune,software,av pack, xbox360) to view my digital media on my home theatre changes how I use my theatre and greatly expands the value of digital media in my opinion. Your mileage may vary and you Mac Fanboys may hate me but this is in my opinion the best optin for getting the most from your digital media.