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
Battery Life
Kicking off our objective benchmarking we have the battery life benchmarks for our MP3 players. Skimping on battery life is one way manufacturers can make a product thinner through a smaller battery, but if the battery life is too low then it works against a device by requiring it to be tethered to a charger too much.
For our tests, we ran each device from a full charge until it stopped playing, recording how long it took. The volume was at a moderate volume, and the device went untouched the entire time. This has a slight bias effect because it results in the screen being turned on less often than under normal usage for music, but the effect should be fairly consistent among the players.
For both the Zune and iPod Touch, WiFi was enabled. For movie playback we used a movie encoded in H.264 at 1.5Mbps 640x480, which is the average resolution and bitrate for a video purchased from Apple's store.
Because the iPod Classic is built primarily as an audio player, this is one of the areas where it shines the most. With 34 hours of playing time (4 hours over spec), it lasts for a ridiculous amount of time that neither the iPod Touch nor Zune can touch. We're confident that 34 hours should be enough for anyone, and if that's not enough the 160GB version has a spec of 40 hours play time.
The original Zune was a power hog, and while Microsoft has improved on it some with the Zune 80, it still fails to break 20 hours, when the specifications for the Zune 80 call for 29 hours. Given that the screen is off for music playback and the WiFi implementation should not be drawing a lot of power, we're left to wonder if it's just an inefficient design, an undersized battery, or if something else is going on. Microsoft has access to the same hard drives as Apple so there aren't many potential candidates to explain the limited run time compared to the Classic.
Finally the Touch performs well enough but still can't touch the iPod Classic. At nearly 22 hours it provides enough run time if all you're doing is listening to music, but 22 hours is probably going to be an overestimate of actual run time due to all of the other (power sucking) functionality of the Touch. We had expected a bit more out of the Touch given that it is a flash based player.
For video, screen size becomes a matter of importance. It should be unsurprising that the iPod Classic, the device with the smallest screen is the winner here with 6 hours. But as we feel the screen size is too small to be practical, we'd consider this a hollow victory for Apple.
We follow this with the Touch, which is definitely not a hollow victory for Apple at 5 hours and 30 minutes. The Touch has the biggest screen of all of these devices, so to come in so close to the Classic is a very good situation for the Touch. We suspect what it loses due to the screen is picked up from being a flash based device.
And finally we have the Zune, which has the worst of both worlds with a large screen and a hard drive. While the Zune could claim to trail the Touch in audio, it's nowhere close in video. 3 hours and 15 minutes will get you a movie and some music time, but we'd call anything under 4 hours uncomfortably short.
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TedKord - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
I have a bunch of mp3, ogg and flac tunes already on my computer. With my A2, I just highlighted them all, drag and drop. MUCH simpler than reencoding for the Ipod, which has crapier sound quality anyway.BigLan - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
I think the biggest use of an fm tuner today is for watching TV at the gym. Sure, you could listen to your own music but a lot of people want to watch the TV as well. This alone was the reason I got my wife a Sansa last year instead of a nano.TedKord - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
TV with an FM tuner?strikeback03 - Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - link
I'd imagine the sound for the TV stations is broadcast over short range with FM. Same thing is used at drive-in movies.Locutus465 - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
this is exactly what I was looking for in a mp3 player review... I actually had a lot to say, but my router decided to take a dive right when I was going to submit it, and now it is gone :(Basically, I'm torn by the coolness of the touch and the superiority (IMHO) of Zune softare as compared to iTunes (particularly it's preformance on 32 & 64 bit Vista). In the end, for me the superiority of Zune is kind of winning out. At the end of the day, buying mp3's and getting them on my iPod and burnt CD all needs to just work and not be a pain.
The one thing MS lacks and needs to get into Zune is a good video store. IMO they should make XBL video store 100% accessable to Zune, and movies should be playable not only on zune, but also over your network to an x-box 360 and other media extender. If they did this the would be in a very strong position against both sony and apple at the same time with a single vendor solution that competes with iPod, PS3 and Apple TV all at the same time.
Tegeril - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
The latest version of iTunes (7.6), works quite well in both 32 and 64 bit.Locutus465 - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
I suppose that I'm a bit wary since versions 7.0-7.5 didn't work and eventually after repeated upgrades iTunes on the desktop has gotten to the point of displaying an error on start up saying cd-burning and some other function are broke. I have 7.6 on my laptop and it seems to work though, so we'll see.Locutus465 - Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - link
Just needed to post back an update on this...Holy toledo!!!! iTunes *FINALLY* works as advertised on Vista, though I noticed it (very sadly) installed the Bojour service on my vista 64 machine (probably 32 as well though I did not notice). I dislike the bundling over which I had no control, leaves a very bad taste in my mouth...
That said, at least iTunes *FINALLY* does work!!! I'm not sure though if that's enough to push me back towards iPod touch (as cool as it is) though... I've already discovered the conviniance of a flat monthly fee allowing me to download as much music as I want through Zune. Apple would need a similar set up to kill off Zune in my book. But at least it works, now I just need to take a closer look at Mp3 players once I'm a better position to be buying tech again.
Baked - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
Did you read what you wrote? You actually think an Apple Fanboy, who bought a Mac, would go out and buy a Zune, and not an iPod. Why would anybody w/ a Mac, go out and buy a Zune instead of an iPod? >_<
Market share? What market share? There are still far more people using PC notebook than Apple notebooks.
michael2k - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
Last count in the US was 6 to 7 percent, or 1/12 of the population.In other words, there are more Mac users, out of PC users, than there are Zune users out of iPod users.
And if you look ONLY at notebooks, I think the number rises to something like 12%. As of last March it was 10%:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=519">http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=519
Or 1 in 10 people in the US who own notebooks own a Mac notebook. Which puts it in good company alongside Dell and HP.