iPod vs. Zune: January 2008 High End MP3 Player Roundup

Closing Thoughts

There are a lot of factors that go in to weighing the value of an MP3 player, so it should come as no surprise that is has taken us several pages to spell everything out and that there is no single conclusion we can draw. All of the MP3 players we have looked at today are great, they're built well and are very usable; most buyers would likely be happy with any of them. But then again none of them are perfect, they all have weaknesses if not an outright flaw in some way. Because today's MP3 players do more than just play MP3s, we have to break down our conclusions based on what whether the primary use of the device is going to be audio or video.

Audio Player

If you're looking at a device for playing audio, then look no further than the iPod Classic. Apple has had 6 product generations to refine the original iPod and it shows in every way. The battery life of the Classic is unmatched by anything else we've looked at, even the iPod Touch can't close to within 75% of the battery life of the Classic. Meanwhile the combination of the legendary click wheel and the iPod UI is effectively as close to perfection as anyone is going to get for usability; the wheel is sensitive enough to allow for minor adjustments while still allowing for anything to be done in one complete motion. Our only problem with the Classic are the earbuds: they're terrible, if you're buying a Classic make sure to buy some real earbuds to go with them.

Beyond the Classic we have the Touch. The Touch isn't a bad audio player, but if the Classic is perfection for an audio player then the Touch is the result of the compromises you have to reach in breaking away from perfection to do something new. The touch screen just can't make up for the click wheel, the flash memory is just too small for the price, the battery life is more than acceptable but the Classic does better. It's a good audio player, but we're looking for the best.

And finally there's the Zune. The Zune has the UI and the audio fidelity it needs to be a winner, it just doesn't have much else. The battery life is just acceptable and could stand to be a lot more. The Zune pad is an interesting concept but when it screws up it's frustrating. The Zune marketplace's payment scheme is awful should you need to purchase something you can't get DRM-free. It's never a bad audio player if you stay away from the Zune Marketplace, but in either case the Classic clearly surpasses it.

Video Player

When it comes to videos, we find ourselves favoring the iPod Touch above all else. The touch screen interface allows for the biggest screen among all of the devices we're reviewing today and the payoff is a high resolution screen with greater clarity than the Zune can offer. Furthermore the iTunes store is effectively the only game in town for TV shows and movies, so there's plenty of content to work with. The Touch isn't perfect, besides the earbuds (again) the 8GB/16GB limits of the device are problematic: although the battery life means you'll never be able to watch 8GB worth of video anyhow, you won't be able to carry a large selection of video. And the viewing angles are extremely harsh.

This is followed very closely by the Zune. Microsoft went in the right direction with the general Zune design (a hard drive based device with a large screen) but came up short in too many areas. The bright, vivid screen is fantastic but the resolution of the screen should have been greater; the screen door effect is there and you will probably notice it. The hard drive means there's plenty of space for video content, but the battery drain from powering the vivid screen and the hard drive means you won't even get in two movies on a single charge. And the Zune marketplace doesn't have any video content beyond music videos, so you don't have many legal options for filling your Zune. Ultimately if we had the higher resolution screen or a longer battery life, we'd be talking about the Zune being the best video player.

Last and certainly the least then is the iPod Classic. It carries over numerous strengths that we noted about it as an audio player but none of this matters when the screen is so small. The excellent UI and best battery life can't offset the strain caused by such a small screen. Its video abilities may as well not exist; if you buy a Classic it's going to be for the music.

iPod Touch: The Future of Integration

Beyond the audio and beyond the video we have the iPod Touch, a device we'd like to say a few more words on due to its unique nature. It's our belief that the Touch is the future and the writing is on the wall for simpler devices like the Zune and the Classic, they will be replaced by devices with functionality like the Touch's. The same drive towards integration that put video on the iPod Classic and results in today's smartphones is pushing the MP3 player market in the same direction. There will always be a market for devices sans cellular abilities due to issues with recurring costs, but will there be a market for a device that doesn't do everything else?

Today the Touch requires some compromises, primarily that of capacity and control. But Apple has already killed a line of hard drive based MP3 players once (the iPod Mini) with a flash-based device and we can't rule out the possibility of them being able to do it again in the future (and if they can't, they'll find a way to add a hard drive to the Touch). Over the years we've used a number of PDAs and the Touch is better than any of them, once the application SDK comes next month Apple will have everything it needs to kill the ailing stand-alone PDA market. They may not be targeting the Touch towards that market but they're going to take it anyhow.

We suspect that the Touch and its successors will never be as good of an audio player as the Classic is today due to the compromises required in having a touch screen, but the drive towards integration means that customers will accept this and move on. The slight loss in precision is unfortunate, but it will be overcome by the additional features offered by such integrated devices. Apple proved they could avoid the pitfalls of feature creep with the iPhone, and the iPod Touch has managed to bridge the same gap.

Today the iPod Touch is a first-generation Apple product; out of the MP3 players we have reviewed today if we had to recommend just one the Touch would be it due to its balanced audio/video feature set (good at audio, great at video) and PDA functionality, but the pitfalls are there, it could use some refining. Meanwhile Apple will go through the motions of polishing and refining and like the iPod Classic end up with a device that takes control of a market and changes it forever. If the iPhone is the future of the smartphone market, then some day in the future the iPod Touch is going to be the future of the PDA and MP3 player markets.