[Amblin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EsthetiX /img/forum/go_quote.gif another thing I like about zune is I have dropped it about 50 times. Sometimes from HIGH locations. There is not even any cosmetic damage. I dropped my ipod [size=medium]1 time[/size] and it never worked again. ZUNE is waaaaay more sturdy.

That sucks.

Ive heard similar stories, having the ipod being dropped once and the Zune blowing off falls as though it was dust.

Puzzling, they both use the same Toshiba hard drives, the component most likely to be damaged by trauma caused by a fall, yet one fails and the other doesn't.

Maybe it is all down to ascetics like the apple fanbois say, so if it looks fragile, its going to break, if it looks tough, it will keep truckin'.

 

[zip22]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sandys /img/forum/go_quote.gif Cos' I have opened em up both... Ipod Mini and Zune. And all the king's men could not make ipod work the same ever again. Microsoft Zune Generation 1 30GB Tear Down (stop at step 4)

ipod mini and a zune 30GB? this thread is about the 80GB zune and ipod models. in that case, both come apart very similar. the difference is that the zune has a battery that is soldered onto the board and the ipod uses a connector.
iFixit — iPod Classic
Zune 2 80GB Disassembly Guide

 

[antonyfirst]

Hey guys, can you tell me how much output power (mW) the Zune80 has?

Tstarn,
How does your Zune sound compared to an amped player?

 

[EsthetiX]

I converted a friend of mine (an ipod user) to ZUNE. The next day after he purchased it, I talked to him and his exact words were "why the **** would anyone buy an iPod?". lol

 

[jarrett]

Battery life thing is pretty significant too. Ipod has twice the battery life of Zune apparently o_O

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

 

[Ricardo Dawkins]

WiFi turned on while testing battery rundown. Read the comments there.
Quote:

The battery life on the Zune I find better than mentioned here. Turn off the WiFi if you don't use it. On the touch if you use the web features it's necessary, but mostly for the Zune you don't need it. It's not ment to do the functions the iPod Touch does via wifi so having it on is unfair in the comparison. The zune has flaws too like the screen not being very high rez for it's size, and inability to put videos into a playlist. The latter of which is easily fixed via software update.

 

[jarrett]

I'm bringing some CDs to an Apple store today. I assume they can transfer them to an iPod so I can have a listen. I have Ety ER6i

I'll be very interested to have a listen. I've got a Bryston B60 and an Arcam CD player at home. I've been using a Sony portable CD player D-NE330. I've never been happy with the SQ. I owned the DE-401 (8 years old or more!) previously which was marvelous IMO, but not in any working order to be portable anymore.

 

[zip22]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ricardo Dawkins /img/forum/go_quote.gif WiFi turned on while testing battery rundown. Read the comments there.

the ipod still gets more than double
Quote:

Originally Posted by cnet Our CNET Labs found that the Microsoft Zune 80 is realistically capable of 22 hours of audio-only playback with the Wi-Fi feature turned off,

Zune (second generation, 80GB, black) MP3 player reviews - CNET Reviews
Quote:

Originally Posted by cnet Our CNET labs team found the 80GB iPod Classic is capable of 45 hours of audio playback and nearly 9 hours of video playback under realistic conditions.

Apple iPod Classic (80GB, silver) Portable Video Player (PVP) reviews - CNET Reviews

EsthetiX, i had just the opposite experience

 

[jarrett]

Few impressions not versus Zune...

It did have a more electronic timbre to it than 'acoustical'. I'd agree with the comment I read somewhere that the music plays in your ears and not 'in your head' (the spaciousness). Detail was alright, less noise than my Sony D-NE330, and extension was better in both areas. I don't feel it had a powerful sound in the bass...what I'm used to hearing (ER6i). I'm starting to see what people mean by it lacking in airyness and openness...I noticed this in vocals where it sounded a bit boxed in in the top range. Overall it is definitely better than my Sony player, but I was hoping for something a little more satisfying given the $250 tag.

I'm going to give it another go with a different selection of music tomorrow.

 

[tstarn06]

Quote:

Originally Posted by antonyfirst /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hey guys, can you tell me how much output power (mW) the Zune80 has? Tstarn, How does your Zune sound compared to an amped player?

Can't find the output power anywhere, but I did see one that says 28 watts as output. I tried Googling the phrase "Zune 80 output rating" and no luck.

Unamped, the Zune compares favorably to my ZVM amped via line out. In fact, I prefer the Zune sound signature. I also use an amp with the Zune, since I need to with my 716s. I sort of like the no EQ thing, cause it removes any temptation to mess with the SQ. On the other hand, I read today on a forum that MS released a new software version to (2.3) and it has eliminated the tagging and album art problems (we'll see). The same post said that MS is going to include an EQ in an upcoming firmware. We'll see about that too.

 

[opiumden34]

I've been reading this thread since I'm facing the same question for myself. I've owned iPods in the past. Whichever I get, it's to replace a 5g which was stolen.
I'm not fond of either ui really. Both have small text. I'd use my player in the car and at work, so I'd like text larger than it is now on the now playing screen. The zune is almost completely filled with album art. I also prefer the older ipod ui. Another thing leading me to ipod is the belkin car line out/charging cable which i already have.

 

[Cheule]

This is my first post at head-fi, I've simply been lurking for months and putting off getting a head-fi login until I just had to PM someone last week. Anyhow I post this preamble because it's debates like this one that hold my interest and they're what have sucked my in to spending an hour or more a day reading the site!

Now on to the topic at hand: I find the opinions contained in this thread really interesting. You'll notice that there isn't really a solid consensus on which is better (the Zune80 or iPod Classic). In fact, and this is the more telling part; the reasoning one responder might use to pick one player over another is exactly the same reasons another user is picking the opposite.

I've read a lot of "I prefer the zune, it's interface is better" only to be followed by "you're crazy, the ipod interface is better!" Or just replace "interface" with "SQ" or "value."

What does this mean to me? Two things.
1) the differences between the two are most likely imperceptibly small.

2) The fact that one player is made by MS, and one Apple is coloring users impressions of the players more than actual differences in the players themselves.

When I was in college as a fine arts student, I was tasked with reading John Berger's "Ways of Seeing." While quite dated, this treatise makes some points about how we view art that still hold up today. It turns out that a viewer cannot separate the experience they have with a particular work of art from the frame that it is in. The frame, this context that the artwork is presented in, is forever woven into the experience you have with the art itself.

I suspect that some users are choosing one player over the other based on their love for one company or their disdain for the other. And interestingly enough, while Apple products usually get a strong "underdog vote," it's actually the Zune that is the underdog in this category. I suspect that users such as we, who are willing spend hours debating about two fine products, and willing to extoll imperceptibly small nuances as a deal breaker are probably also the kind of people that prefer to march to the beat of a different drummer.

It's this attribute that a lot of us probably share that might actually be giving the Zune more of an underdog vote than the iPod. While MS is anything but a small, struggling, start up company, their player is perceived as the odd-man out in an iPod dominated market.

Well it may seem that I have said a lot here without actually saying anything, but in reality this is all supporting data to support a claim that many have echoed here at head-hi many times:

A prospective buyer of one of these players is much more likely to learn which player is right for them by demoing a sample of both, than reading a thread such as this. But don't let that stop us from debating about it; I love the debate!

 

[tstarn06]

Interesting point. But many of us have had the chance to see both sides (we have had iPods in our household for 4 years, since teens overwhelmingly choose the iPod as their DAP), and after trying the iPod on many occasions, I voted on real-world preferences. First, after much research, I bought a Creative ZVM because it represented a better value for several reasons (and first I checked out the iPod my daughter had at the time). Then, I chose the Zune for pretty much the same type of reasoning.

In fact, when my daughter moved up to a larger iPod (storage wise), I actually kept her iPod Mini for a few months. Didn't like the SQ and hated using the proprietary iTunes/iPod combo. So I sold it on ebay (they do hold their value!) at a good price, and bought a Creative Zen V instead. It was a much nicer "small" DAP to me. Now, I replaced my Zen V with the Sony A816.

Go figure. Just looking for best price-to-value option, and the Zune and Sony give me that. Nothing about being biased against Apple on principle.

 

[Cheule]

You also make a very good point. It's likely that the "frame" did not color your experience enough to where it was the main reason you preferred one player over another. I'd like to stress that I don't think all listeners are overtly swayed by the "frame," but the frame is still present and does tend to color our experience of the music we hear. The question is how much?

I glossed over that part in my original post. Unless you have someone else helping you perform a single-blind test, you are aware of which brand you are using by the nature that you need to interface with the device to operate it as you listen. This observation of shape, color, interface style, brightness of the screen, weight of the device, density of the plastics, size in relationship to your particular hand (I could go on) all colors your experience. That I've already said, but how much does it affect someone's perception of the music they hear? It can vary wildly.

It turns out that the younger crowd (teenagers and children) are substantially more swayed by the context (i.e. frame) than adults are. So in your case, you probably are not swayed that much by it. But I'd argue is was still present, just maybe not the deciding factor.

And in your case you mentioned that you disliked iTunes. This is a completely valid reason to choose the Zune. And since the UI is so characteristically "Apple," calling your discomfort with the interface a "bias" against Apple could be appropriate. In this case I don't mean that you hate Apple as a company, but that you dislike their style (which is fair enough!).

To speak to the heart of the matter, it is always your money you are spending when you buy a device like this. Whatever your reasons for preferring one over another doesn't really matter as long as you are happy with your choice in the end.

In my original post I was just trying to point out that without single-blind or double-blind testing, it's a bit hard to be certain that contextual elements aren't playing a substantial role when you are using two very high quality players. When the quality gap between two devices increases, then quality becomes the dominant factor over context. Take the Apple iBuds, for example, which are universally hated.

 

[theTIMECOP]

Cheule

This is my response to you.....lol, so i have been reading this thread, and your first post inspired me to register so i could respond



imo, sq really is just plain terrible in ipod....let me explain


the first mp3 player I ever had was creative touch.....that player was a pain in the but.....the nagivation had to be the worst ever, the touch sensitivity was horrible. anyway, I had to get it replaced once, and the replacement then died, both of those incidents with 7 or 8 months.....The only reason i bought the creative touch was because i worked at brookstone, and their policy on manufacturing defect was awesome at the time (which has changed a couple years ago)

anyway, i had enough of the creative, so i thought i would switch brands. I had always, always, been jeolous of the ipod. I just though it looked awesome, the scroll wheel was fun and amazing. and now that it was available in black, it looked sleek and slick as heck. so i went out and got the 30 gb black video. got home, and synced it. I wanted it to be awesome. so, after it got done syncing, after like 8 hours, i was all excited to try it out. And boy was I dissapointed. I expected it to at least sound as good as my zen, heck, i expected it sound even better than my zen because the video ipod was newer by 2-3 years or so. I thought at the time it just sounded so incredibly bad. The hissing was just unacceptable, hissing does not happen at all with creative. It sounded tiny, fake, and extremely distorted, overall, just completely unacceptable for 250 dollars, and being the latest model. So I returned that the very next day, extremely dissapointed. Because i thought the ipod was so cool, and wanted so much for it to be good.

I replaced it with zune 30. and it immediately sounded worlds apart, for the better. To make a long story short, got bord with zune 30, sold it. bought zvm, because i realized that the touch strip on zvm was done right. but thats about to die


and so, i have been tring to make the best informed decision on which mp3 player will be replacing zvm. and after reading through countless forums, zune80 is my unbiased choice. it looks awesome, sq is claimed to be the best, the screen is big