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.
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cmdrdredd - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
The Zune skips and pops? when? prove that to me? hell even the iPod doesn't skip or pop...that's in your recording and your piss poor 128kbps limewire bootleg downloads.Odeen - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
I am referring to Zune and iPod's inability to seamlessly transition from one song to the next (such as for a live concert recording, classical music, or a techno mix album).Since MP3's are composed of a fixed number of "frames" of approximately 418 bytes, any song has some amount of silence at the last frame. The Karma detects this silence and begins to decode the next track in the playlist before the previous track ends. As a result, the seamless transition from the CD (or live) source is preserved.
On the other hand, the iPod and Zune dumbly play the ENTIRE mp3 file. The sudden transition to silence, and beginning to play again sounds like a "pop". It has nothing to do with the bitrate or source of mp3 files.
Other file formats, like OGG and FLAC have metadata that tell the player the exact length of the recording. As a result, the player doesn't have to analyze the file for trailing silence, and this works even better in eliminating gaps. However, without 3rd party hacks, the iPod and Zune can't play those file formats either.
http://www.pretentiousname.com/mp3players/">http://www.pretentiousname.com/mp3players/
Tegeril - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
Perhaps you haven't used an iPod in a while, but the gapless playback feature works perfectly. Please try again.Odeen - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
It works for recent MP3's with proper song length metadata.It doesn't work for older MP3's without that information. The Karma can still play the older MP3's gaplessly by actually analyzing the audio data, whereas the iPod needs to have the song length tags spoon-fed to it.
Roffles - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
I currently own a Zune80. Although I watched an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" at lunch today, I use it 90% for listening to music.All these gimmicky features with new mp3 players are nice, but this review (and the designers of Zune and Ipod) lost focus of what an MP3 player is all about. It's about listening to mp3's right?
The main factors that should decide which player is best are:
1. GUI responsiveness, GUI design and GUI navigation.
2. Audio fidelity and customization.
3. Battery life
4. A higher level of customization
Everything else should be a distant second as they are the features more akin to PMP (personal media players). If it were not for the 80GB drive size, I would have stayed with a tried and true Korean mp3 player from Iriver or Cowon.
I would rather compare the Zune to my Cowon i7 and a2 as far as features are concerned. The Zune is a major firmware update away from being the ultimate mp3 player.
1. Cowon gives me a graphic equalizer (custom and several presets)
and lots of audio tweaking options such as jeteffect, BBE, Mach3Bass, MP Enhance, 3D surround, Pan and Play speed.
2. Cowon gives me more shuffle options
3. Cowon gives me a sleep timer and a wakeup timer so I can lullabye myself into an afternoon nap if I choose.
4. Cowon lets me customize text scroll speeds and other gui enhancements.
5. Cowon also gives me an FM player, and then lets me record FM radio with custom bit rates.
6. Cowon gives me a voice recorder with custom bit rates
7. Cowon gives me a text viewer
8. Cowon lets me adjust scan speed (good for very long recorded talk shows or joined albums and mixes that can be hours long)
9. Cowon gives me the option to use id3 tag browsing or filename browsing
All these options with exception to a few of the obvious ones on the list make listening to mp3's easier and more enjoyable...hence making it a better mp3 player.
There are DOZENS of other smaller tweaks and customization that I won't bother getting into, but I hope I'm making a good point here. Also, the audio output (power and fidelity at normal equalization) is amazing compared to anything I've heard from an Ipod or Zune.
VashHT - Thursday, January 31, 2008 - link
I have thought about replacing my Cowon X5 for a while, the mainr eason I won't buy an Ipod is because I don't want to use itunes or reformat all of my music into itunes format. One thing that I hate about all of these mainstream playes is they won't support .wav files. I back up all of my CD's in .wav format on my PC, and with my X5 I can just put them on there and not worry about converting anything. Sure the extra fidelity is pretty much lost when using most earbuds or headphones, but if I use the AUX output to hook them up to speakers or use decent headphones with it then the wav files obviously sound a lot better. Also with 80Gb of space or more the much larger file size of wav files becomes practically a non-point. Also, besides wav it supports a lot of other open formats, and for compressed format I would much rather use OGG than mp3.Ripvanwinkle - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
Cowon all the way! My only complaint with my D2 is that itrefuses to make my coffee in the morning.
ThePooBurner - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
How can you do a High End MP3 player round up and not include the Creative Zen series? A Player that is technologically superior to both the Icrap and the Zripoff? That is all.Ryan Smith - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
I actually agree with you on the matter. We wanted to include a Zen and a couple other players, but we weren't able to acquire anything more than what we have today. As is the case when you're relaunching some kind of product coverage, we hope we'll be able to get players from additional vendors for future articles.michael2k - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
How do you define "technologically superior"? The UI of the iPod (with the scrollwheel) can be seen as technologically superior (at least since it's introduction in 2001), though you can argue that since 2004 with the introduction of the Zen that Creative caught up. The hard drive of the iPod (which has been 1.8" since 2001) can also be noted as technologically superior, though again Creative caught up with their 2004 Zen Micro and Zen 1" and 1.8" products.Then there is battery life and size... If you want to claim Creative Zen is technologically superior, fine, but there are multiple facets to superiority here.