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
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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
50 Comments
View All Comments
Drazic - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
I have my Zune 80GB for 3 years now. It has never been broken and the screen is still in good shape! The Zune is very easy to use, has wonderful music and the quality is very good. Of Course there are not a lot of European people who have the Zune, lucky me:)So they can't compare at all. Even though the people are saying that more of the population in the VS has the Mac Note Book I most say that all the people that I know, friends, college's,either way don't even want the Mac Note Book. They rather choose for an HP or a Toshiba!:) Simple because you don't have to buy of put pro gramme's on the computer that's only from Mac. Honestly!? The Toshiba & HP's are more beautiful. What's in a name!? (careless, it's only the brand)charlie brown - Wednesday, April 2, 2008 - link
If anandtech are going to use an audio analyser, shouldn't they understand the values and equipment they are measuring? As a professional audio engineer I find their conclusions disturbing...Why haven't you published numbers for THD +noise etc - you just draw your own conclusions from some 0.0... percentage?
All players frequency response is +/-dB from 0-20kHz. These are all excellent when you understand the freq response of a headphone - even top of the range sennheisers. How can you possibly describe one player response as very good/excellent etc?! You would NOT hear the difference whatsoever.
What possible difference does -100/-110/-120 signal to noise ratio really make for an mp3 player?? (audibly - absolutely none) these are all excellent.
"Earbuds generally lack bass due to their size"
This is only half the story, they perform better with good coupling to the ear (im sure youve pushed some phones into your ear and heared the bass improve?).
Have you guys ever stopped to think that you are reviewing an MP3 player? The nature of MP3 (being an audio compression developed from the 1980's) is that it is a LOSSY compression. THE ENCODING WILL DEGRADE THE SOUND QUALITY MORE THAN THE PLAYER EVER WILL, EVEN AT HIGH BITRATES.
Why doesn't anandtech throw them on the ground and record which one breaks the easiest - i mean this is more useful than the conclusions taken in your audio test.
abpages - Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - link
Feature wise the Zune 80 kills the Ipod.Also, the ipod has video out, but can't outpid it's interface.
The Zune can. This might not seem like a big deal, but if you ever want to hook this up to a tv or in my case a LCD in my Car it is fantastic. No looking down at the device to choose song (and possible crashing j/k), everything is on the screen all the menus.
I own both and the new Zune has it this time.
Ron Stark
http://www.WebSiteDesigners.net.au">http://www.WebSiteDesigners.net.au
Heatlesssun - Sunday, January 27, 2008 - link
I bought two Zune 80’s at Christmas, one for the wife and one for me, and they are great devices. I want to address two criticisms in this review. One, the Zune Pass is very cool. At $15 a month one can get one album versus thousands. If you know what you’re doing, subscriptions models like Zune Pass offer better value.Secondly, I think this review makes too much out of the lack of TV and movies on Zune Market place. There are so many ways to get content these days that it’s funny. Heck, if you’ve cable TV, there’s a source right there, and you’re not paying for the content again, which is cool.
Really, a person just needs a good set of transcoding software, that frees a person from being tied to any one content source.
9nails - Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - link
Want an external speaker? Perhaps you need an additional USB cradle? Do you need a carry case? Or maybe you would like a car adapter kit? How about a screen protector to save that investment?All of these things are easier to find on an iPod Accessory shelf. But the Zune shelf is shockingly bare. Perhaps the case or a new set of (universal) headphones is all that you can find for the Zune. For me, more than anything, the availability of accessories was a major decision maker in the search for an MP3 player. My second major factor was cost. Third was storage capacity. And least significant was battery life.
NewBozo - Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - link
Be sure to get an Archos 605 Wi-Fi for future media player reviews. It is much less expensive than anything you reviewed here, has drag and drop capabilities and can surf the web and stream video over the built in wi-fi. It is amazing!...newbozo
rcbm1970 - Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - link
"Did you know that 60 per cent of Americans received gift vouchers for Christmas? We didn’t either, but that’s just fuel for Anand Techie’s latest Ipod vs. Zune dissertation (squeezed into 10 pages). It’s a bit of a one-sided argument with iIpod coming out smelling like roses and Zune always the close-secnd-but-never-first. Get your Apple-certified endorsement here."Nitram49 - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
Dude! I own a Iaudio X5, Ipod Shuffle(Garbage) and an Ipod Nano. Every chance I get I use the X5 because there is no comparison in sound to the Ipod's. With the ability to tweak the sound and produce some serious bass it can't be beat. I mean with my JBL reference 220 or AKG k-81 DJ I can walk around with so much bass that it is impressive, and then if needed flatten it right out with a plethora of controls(EQ,BBE,...,). Nothing beats the HDD capabilities of an X5. I heard the D2 and I can't imagine how you let a chance to review that slip through your hands in a comparison. Also my friend just got an Iaudio 7. wow. Give those dudes at Cowon a listen and you tell me if I'm wrong.TedKord - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
IMO, if you're looking for an MP3/video portable player, you shouldn't be looking at either MS or Apple. I had a Cowon A2 which blew my friend's Ipod classic away in every respect (video/sound quality, format compatibility, features) except HD size. It was also better than the Zunes I've tried, though I've not tried the newer generation extensively. Another thing that should be mentioned with the Ipod is iTunes. I hate that program, it made me load QT, and everytime I disable the autoload for QT, it reenables when my daughter uses iTunes for her Nano 3G. Plus, they made me sign up with a crdit card to enable album art. With the A2, I just dragged and dropped my existing mp3, flac and ogg music right to it - no reencode or anything. Same with the divx/xvid movies I already had - drag, drop, watch.The iPod Touch is a cool device, but more for it's interface than it's video/audio quality.
michael2k - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
Why do you hate your daughter? It sounds like you need to get her a computer of her own if you don't want her to synch her Nano (and thus re-enabling QuickTime, which is used for AAC encoding for iTunes if she's ripping music) to your PC.Besides which, why do you want to manually load and unload your MP3 player? The whole point of computers is to do the tedious things for us (such as ripping, tagging, organizing, and synching). Your daughter, with iTunes, only has to plug and go. If she has more music than the Nano can fit, it will auto-select her favorite music, or she can select (checkbox style) her favorite playlists, or manually (if she wishes to be like dad) to drag and drop songs and playlists to her Nano.