I have had the ZuneHD for about a week now so I think it's fitting that I finally put my review up.
ZuneHD general
The ZuneHD was released on September 15th and in short, it's amazing. As a matter of fact I'm typing this while listening to it and being taken off task by the Tegra powered screen saver. The ZuneHD is the closest that you will get to an Ipod Touch competitor. It has a capacitive 3.3" 480x720 16:9 ratio OLED screen and it uses that to its full potential. The most intresting thing about the ZuneHD is how it utilizes Nvidia's Tegra APX 2600 chip. For people who don't know what that is it's Nvidias mobile cpu chip which allows for advanced 3d graphic, longer battery life, and what gives the ZuneHD the HD part of its name. It lets the Zune output HD videos from the device. Basically not only is the ZuneHD a beautiful looking device it also allows you to do some pretty amazing things.
Zune UI
Now this is going to be the hardest part of this review, trying to explain the UI because seriously you just need to touch it and hold it yourself to understand what it is. But I will explain it the best I can. The UI is amazing, it uses this zoom in zoom out feature when your going in and out of different menus. When you start up your ZuneHD you see the regular list of options like on the other Zunes(Music, Pictures, Videos, Radio, Podcast, and Settings) with the added internet and apps option.(More on that in a little) If you make a swiping gesture to your right then your taken to a sidebar which displays what your now playing, Pins(more on that in a few), History, and New. This sidebar will become your best friend for quick access to your favorite stuff. Just choose what you want and your taken directly to it. Now Pins, if you press and hold down on anything from an album to an app you can pin it. When you hold down on it the Zune gives you and option of either pin to quickplay(which is that sidebar on the left I told you about), add to now playing or surprisingly delete from the Zune. I say surprisingly because you have never been able to delete files from your Zune directly. You would have to plug it up to the computer and delete it from the Zune Software.
Music
Majority of the people who buy PMP's have the same question, how does it play my music? My answer to that question is phenomenally. Straight from the home menu there is a play button to the left of the music option, if you press this then it will automatically shuffle all of your music. If you don't do that then the ZuneHD allows you to go and dive very deep into your music catalog. Just like Ipods the ZuneHD allows you to search through the normal album, artist, playlist, songs, and genre options and no matter which you choose you will be able to find your music easily. An example of the Zune at work is when you find the artist you were looking for it displays the albums and songs from that artist. But what not normal for PMP's is when the Zune shows you other pictures of your artist along with a Biography and a list of other related artist. Where I believe the ZuneHD outdoes the Ipods is the presentation of your music. When your playing your artist songs make a quick gesture to the right or left across the albums picture and your switching tracks. To go back to the list of albums from that artist just highlight their name, or you can go into the list of songs on the album your listening to by highlighting the song that's playing. Now while that is amazing what continues to catch me off-guard is what happens when you just let your music play. It takes the photos of the artist and goes into screen saver mode and displays by scrolling the title of the song, album cover/name, time remaining of the song and the name of the artist. This looks amazing on the ZuneHD's screen, if you were to connect the Zune to a HD t.v then it will continue that display style onto the t.v which looks brilliant.
Zune Video
The device itself doesn't play HD video(but it gets pretty damn close), it outputs them. The player shows videos in 480X720. The untrained eye wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and full 1080p video because the Tegra makes it look that good. When I put a non HD video from Youtube on it though I think the Tegra chip upscaled it because I swear the video never looked that beautiful.
Internet and Apps
This is where my issues with the device come in but this is also the area where the ZuneHD can catch up and destroy the Ipod if its done right. The internet feels like they just threw it in and didn't have enough time to properly work on it. The onscreen keyboard is good but the browser itself is without flash video support, and tab support. The browser renders stuff amazingly and the pinch in and out to zoom works extremely well. Now apps on the ZuneHD has a lot of potential if done right. As of right now there are a few apps but it takes a while to get into them and when you start them up there are ads. (WTH Microsoft?) But when Microsoft allows other people to create apps is when the ZuneHD is going to get an huge spark in users. Tegra has so much potential to have amazing apps that will out perform anything on the current Ipod touch/phone.
The Marketplace
The Zune marketplace is better for customers than the itunes marketplace. Simply because of one thing, the Zune pass. This pass allows people to download as many songs that they want for $15 a month. Also at the end of the month you can keep 10 songs. The ZuneHD was built for this purpose. If you have a WiFi connection you can access the marketplace from your Zune and with this Zune pass you can download whatever you want straight to your Zune. This works amazingly with the whole related artist I spoke about earlier. If you like somebody you can just go and download their album.
Wrap-up
I could go on talking about this device for a while because there are just that many intricate things that are going on in this device that make it stand out. Overall the ZuneHD is setting itself up to attack the Ipod touch head on. I have used both devices for at least the same period of time of me writing this review and personally I think the ZuneHD has more to offer users. If Microsoft does the apps right and allows people to utilize the Tegra chip in their apps the the ZuneHD could be a hot product by the time Christmas comes. I'm glad that I jumped on this train when I did.
Zune Video
The device itself doesn't play HD video(but it gets pretty damn close), it outputs them. The player shows videos in 480X720. The untrained eye wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and full 1080p video because the Tegra makes it look that good. When I put a non HD video from Youtube on it though I think the Tegra chip upscaled it because I swear the video never looked that beautiful.
Internet and Apps
This is where my issues with the device come in but this is also the area where the ZuneHD can catch up and destroy the Ipod if its done right. The internet feels like they just threw it in and didn't have enough time to properly work on it. The onscreen keyboard is good but the browser itself is without flash video support, and tab support. The browser renders stuff amazingly and the pinch in and out to zoom works extremely well. Now apps on the ZuneHD has a lot of potential if done right. As of right now there are a few apps but it takes a while to get into them and when you start them up there are ads. (WTH Microsoft?) But when Microsoft allows other people to create apps is when the ZuneHD is going to get an huge spark in users. Tegra has so much potential to have amazing apps that will out perform anything on the current Ipod touch/phone.
The Marketplace
The Zune marketplace is better for customers than the itunes marketplace. Simply because of one thing, the Zune pass. This pass allows people to download as many songs that they want for $15 a month. Also at the end of the month you can keep 10 songs. The ZuneHD was built for this purpose. If you have a WiFi connection you can access the marketplace from your Zune and with this Zune pass you can download whatever you want straight to your Zune. This works amazingly with the whole related artist I spoke about earlier. If you like somebody you can just go and download their album.
Wrap-up
I could go on talking about this device for a while because there are just that many intricate things that are going on in this device that make it stand out. Overall the ZuneHD is setting itself up to attack the Ipod touch head on. I have used both devices for at least the same period of time of me writing this review and personally I think the ZuneHD has more to offer users. If Microsoft does the apps right and allows people to utilize the Tegra chip in their apps the the ZuneHD could be a hot product by the time Christmas comes. I'm glad that I jumped on this train when I did.
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