iPod vs. Zune: January 2008 High End MP3 Player Roundup
by Ryan Smith on January 21, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
iPod Touch
Earlier we called the iPod Classic the old guard, and for good reason. The iPod line started as just an audio player and that's what the Classic does best. However it's also at an evolutionary dead end, it isn't practical to expand it to both be a more functional device and also the iPod Classic at the same time. The next step requires a clean break from the old guard and so we have the new guard, the iPod Touch.
Fundamentally the iPod Touch is a stripped down iPhone. It has the same ARM processor, the same 512MB of RAM, the same version of OS X, the same 3.5" touch screen and many of the same applications. The Touch is for all practical purposes a very small PDA/computer optimized for media use. If you've read our iPhone review then you already know what to expect, otherwise keep reading.
Whereas the iPod Classic was the natural evolution of the iPod line, the Touch is practically unrecognizable as an iPod. The large touch screen eliminates the need for all buttons except a single home button, marking the end of the iconic iPod scroll wheel. You almost can't compare the two, they're simply such different devices that it's an iPod in name only.
Besides the large touch screen, as the new guard the Touch hardware also has a few other key differences compared to the old guard. In spite of being a high-end player in the price range of hard drive based players, it's flash memory based Coming in at $299 for 8GB and $399 for 16GB, it's $50 more expensive for 1/10th the capacity of the two respective iPod Classic models. This makes the Touch a gamble for Apple, compared to other players it's ridiculously expensive for the capacity it has.
Given the space needed to support the large screen, the more powerful electronics, and a larger battery to drive all of this we can see why Apple went with a flash based player, but there will be a lot of customers who will not want the Touch due to this issue. We're left curious just how big an Touch with a hard drive would be; based on how the iPhone has been received, we could see something up to the size of the iPhone still being practical, especially since the Touch is starting out at only .31" thick.
With that said since it's an iPod and supposed to be primarily a media player, we'll jump to the more pressing question of its media player abilities, before getting in to the utilities and the subtleties of the hardware design. For playing audio, the classic iPod hierarchical navigation system is still in use, but with modifications for the touch screen. It's good to see that Apple decided to not rock the boat too much here, as the hierarchical navigation system is still every bit as good on a touch screen as it is the scroll wheel.
Unfortunately we can't say much else that's nice about the music UI, and it's not for a lack of trying on Apple's part. The touch screen just isn't a great replacement for the scroll wheel; Apple was tasked with replacing the perfect media player control and couldn't do it. A touch screen means we no longer have blind navigation and the touch screen can't offer the kind of precise controls the scroll wheel can, meanwhile the bigger screen isn't doing anything more for us.
Volume and song position are particularly bothersome, as the screen is only a good three-thumbs wide, making it easy to adjust something incorrectly or requiring more time and concentration to adjust something to precisely where you want it. It works, probably as well as Apple can ever hope to achieve, but it's definitely not as good as the scroll wheel.
We also are not very impressed with cover flow, the alternative UI that allows browsing songs by cover when the music application is open and the Touch turned on its side. It looks pretty and it's easy to use, but we're not sold on it actually being useful. On the one hand it's extremely reliant on having cover art for all of your songs, and on the other hand it's extremely reliant on you knowing the cover art for every album is to make efficient use of it. Text may not be as fancy as artwork, but in the digital age cover art just isn't as meaningful when we don't have a real copy of the art anyhow. We'd really like to have an option for a widescreen UI when the Touch is turned on its side, it would help us deal with the volume and song position issues we mentioned previously, due to the fact that we could have longer volume/position bars.
Other than these issues, the Touch is a competent audio player. The format support is the same as the Classic and the audio quality is the same (we'll have more on that later in our benchmarking section) so on a technical level it's just as good of an audio player as the Classic is. If it wasn't for the fact that the Touch used a touch screen and had to forgo the scroll wheel, it would be just as good as the Classic. The touch screen is the Achilles Heal of the device that drags it down as an audio player.
Yet on the other hand the Touch's video abilities put the Classic to shame; unlike the Classic it's clearly designed for video use. It still suffers from the general control issues brought about by the touch screen, but unlike the Classic the nearly device-sized screen makes watching videos practical and something that you'll actually want to do with the device. With a resolution of 480x320 (twice that of the Classic) and a 3.5" screen, the Touch is extremely comfortable to watch videos on. It's not quite perfect because of the control issues, but it's very close.
Incorrect formatting
Correct formatting
We did find an issue with letterboxed videos however; with one of our test videos encoded at 640x480 the touch proceeded to completely cut off the letterboxing, distorting the image. We don't have any other videos that this occurs on so we can't gauge how prevalent the issue is, but never the less it's there and bears mentioning.
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TedKord - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
A mac IS a PC these days, only with fewer hardware choices and OSX instead of Windows/Linux, etc...Dennis Travis - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
Interesting. I really like the Zune but use Macs for my everyday computing. Go figure! I do have Windows machines also but it would be nice if MS made the Zune work with OSX. I know many with Macs who like the Zune.madoka - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
I know I'm not alone in this and as wrong as it maybe, everytime I see someone with a Zune, I think that that person could either not afford or was too cheap to pay for an ipod.marybear423 - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
Riight...zune 80gb $249.99
ipod 80gb $249.00
Looks like all those "poor people" had to go cheap and shell out an extra $0.99 for their zune...
Brilliant. A+ for you.
kmmatney - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
I want to commend you on nailing a huge issue in your introduction - gift cards. I was thnking about getting one of the lasser known MP3 brands - but I had to by my plasyer with BestBuy gift cards, so that ruled out a lot of my choices. I ended up going with the 8G Ipod Nano, since I liked that out of my choices at BestBuy. When your stuck with BestBuy, to really only have a few choices for a high end MP3 player.rhangman - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
The only reason I bought an iPod was because at the time they were the only players that could be controlled by car head units. Just did a quick search and I couldn't really see anything for Zune's. Since I bought my head unit (Alpine) the number of iPod compatible decks (after market and stock) has increased significantly too.rcbm1970 - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
Almost every review I have read that compares the zune 80 to the Ipod classic points out one very import feature: the superior sound quality if the zune. It isn't the earbuds its the sound quality of the base components. I took my the earbuds that came with my zune 80 and listened to many of the competition, and there is no comparison; the zune 80 is superior. As with the Iphone and its horrible call quality, the marketing of the cult and its design ignores the purpose of the device. This should be about sound quality being the primary concern. The fact that you were craving for an equalizers shows how little you understand about the sound quality issue. Did you understand that you are to fully place the zune earbuds into your ear to get the proper bass sound? I also question if you gave yourself enough time to get used to the zunes control features. It was into the third week before I started to get used to the short cuts. I will stick with cnet and pcmag if you produce reviews such as this.rcbm1970 - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
I should clarify. By competition, I mean apple products. The creative products produce great sound. I haven't been able to compare to iriver devices, but the cnet folks have. This is really simple when shopping for these devices do look at the reviews, but then take your favorite set of headphones or buds (apple buds the exception) and listen to each device in the store. You will find the listening difference between the apple products and many of the others is analogous to dragging your hand across raw cardboard compared to fine finished wood. We have become so used to bad quality that we don't realize how good it can be.darkswordsman17 - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
People,d the reason you shouldn't include stuff like the Zen and the Karma is that they are discontinued (in the case of the Karmas for a few years now). The Zen Vision: M is the closes to a direct competitor that Creative made to these two, and it is discontinued. We can throw the Cowon X5 in there as well. The new Zen I don't find comparable because it is flash based. It would be nice to see a flash comparison (where the Zune and iPods would get handed to it in price/performance and features, although the Touch would do well but it costs put it out of most people's consideration). There is a reason why there isn't any company making a music focused HDD based player, trying to compete with Microsoft and Apple is asking to lose money, and neither of those two are really competitive in the flash based players (at least on features and price), which allows them to actually compete. Of course that doesn't stop the iPods and Zunes from outselling them still.As for the slowdown on the Classic, have you tried using one with the updated firmware? The launch units did have some very bad slowdown, but it has since been resolved and is now much speedier.
On the sound quality side, I was a bit unimpressed, as hooking them up to machines to check their sound quality doesn't tell the whole story. I have not seen a single person who has heard both the Classic or recent iPods (which many say sound better than the Classic although some say the Classic is better as well) and the Zunes who did not say the Zunes sound much better to their ears. The Zune 80 especially is known to have an execptionally clean headphone out (most people don't recognize noise in the signal when they hear it, mostly because they aren't used to using higher quality audio components, and no I'm not talking $50,000 speakers here either).
Thats not to say the author's findings aren't valid, they just don't tell the whole story. I suggest checking out one of the many DAP/PMP review sites (such as DAPReview, AnythingbutiPod) and also forums such as the portable audio one on Head-Fi if you want more user consensus and in depth testing.
Bottom line, if you need the storage and don't want to spend to get into the PMP category, then the iPod Classic or Zune are both quite good, each with its own strenghts. For flash players, the new Zen is very nice but has issues with the SD expansion slot (it doesn't integrate its music and other files with that of those on the players internal memory). The Cowon D2 is very good, although I'd wait because I think they're probably going to up capacity on them fairly soon. In that same vein the iRiver Clix 2 is pretty nice as is the Meizu M6 I think its called. The Sandisk Sansas are ok, but they are targeted more at packing features in than actually being that good at anything (sound quality, interface, etc). Lastly, there is the new Sony players, which although they lack the expansion slots that have become defacto, they have gotten rid of needing software for use and all the DRM crap that hurt Sony so badly. Also they compete well with the iPod and Zunes in price and features, all the while having some of if not the best sound from a portable music player. Personally, I wouldn't even consider the flash based iPods or Zunes at all as they're high on price and low on features compared to the competition. Couple that with Amazon being a better place to get music online than either iTunes or the Zune marketplace (no DRM at all, not just on some music, competitive price with better quality) and there's no reason to tie yourself to a setup like that (Amazon has a utility that will sync your downloads from them with iTunes so thats a non-issue).
Odeen - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
Any "high-end" MP3 player comparisons should also include the Rio Karma for a few reasons:The Karma is the de-facto standard in sound quality for MP3 files, and includes a dock that allows one to output line-level audio, bypassing the internal amplifier
The Karma includes a 5-band parametric equalizer. Not only can you individually adjust any of the five bands, but you can also change the scope of the adjustment, as the "width" of the band is customizable
The Karma is the only player that supports proper gapless playback with regular MP3 files. I don't know about you, but pauses and clicks where the music should be seamless is a huge reduction in sound quality.
The Karma is the only player that supports free codecs of both lossy and lossless variety. If MP3 suddenly goes the way of the GIF (i.e. the format creator starts pursuing royalties more aggressively) and your mp3's are outlawed, the Karma will still play OGG and FLAC files, formats that cannot be patented or restricted.
Basically, if you are comparing "MP3 Players", first and foremost judge them on how well they PLAY MP3's. I consider that any player wishing for itself to be considered "high end" should produce good sound quality without skipping or popping between tracks - which neither the iPod or Zune can. Everything else is pretty much gravy - whether it's a user interface that's not steeped in heavy geek, whether it's tight integration with a media management suite or music store, whether it's the ability to play videos or squirt. A high-end MP3 player should play MP3's better than anything else, and that's not what the iPod or the Zune offer.