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
iPod Touch
Earlier we called the iPod Classic the old guard, and for good reason. The iPod line started as just an audio player and that's what the Classic does best. However it's also at an evolutionary dead end, it isn't practical to expand it to both be a more functional device and also the iPod Classic at the same time. The next step requires a clean break from the old guard and so we have the new guard, the iPod Touch.
Fundamentally the iPod Touch is a stripped down iPhone. It has the same ARM processor, the same 512MB of RAM, the same version of OS X, the same 3.5" touch screen and many of the same applications. The Touch is for all practical purposes a very small PDA/computer optimized for media use. If you've read our iPhone review then you already know what to expect, otherwise keep reading.
Whereas the iPod Classic was the natural evolution of the iPod line, the Touch is practically unrecognizable as an iPod. The large touch screen eliminates the need for all buttons except a single home button, marking the end of the iconic iPod scroll wheel. You almost can't compare the two, they're simply such different devices that it's an iPod in name only.
Besides the large touch screen, as the new guard the Touch hardware also has a few other key differences compared to the old guard. In spite of being a high-end player in the price range of hard drive based players, it's flash memory based Coming in at $299 for 8GB and $399 for 16GB, it's $50 more expensive for 1/10th the capacity of the two respective iPod Classic models. This makes the Touch a gamble for Apple, compared to other players it's ridiculously expensive for the capacity it has.
Given the space needed to support the large screen, the more powerful electronics, and a larger battery to drive all of this we can see why Apple went with a flash based player, but there will be a lot of customers who will not want the Touch due to this issue. We're left curious just how big an Touch with a hard drive would be; based on how the iPhone has been received, we could see something up to the size of the iPhone still being practical, especially since the Touch is starting out at only .31" thick.
With that said since it's an iPod and supposed to be primarily a media player, we'll jump to the more pressing question of its media player abilities, before getting in to the utilities and the subtleties of the hardware design. For playing audio, the classic iPod hierarchical navigation system is still in use, but with modifications for the touch screen. It's good to see that Apple decided to not rock the boat too much here, as the hierarchical navigation system is still every bit as good on a touch screen as it is the scroll wheel.
Unfortunately we can't say much else that's nice about the music UI, and it's not for a lack of trying on Apple's part. The touch screen just isn't a great replacement for the scroll wheel; Apple was tasked with replacing the perfect media player control and couldn't do it. A touch screen means we no longer have blind navigation and the touch screen can't offer the kind of precise controls the scroll wheel can, meanwhile the bigger screen isn't doing anything more for us.
Volume and song position are particularly bothersome, as the screen is only a good three-thumbs wide, making it easy to adjust something incorrectly or requiring more time and concentration to adjust something to precisely where you want it. It works, probably as well as Apple can ever hope to achieve, but it's definitely not as good as the scroll wheel.
We also are not very impressed with cover flow, the alternative UI that allows browsing songs by cover when the music application is open and the Touch turned on its side. It looks pretty and it's easy to use, but we're not sold on it actually being useful. On the one hand it's extremely reliant on having cover art for all of your songs, and on the other hand it's extremely reliant on you knowing the cover art for every album is to make efficient use of it. Text may not be as fancy as artwork, but in the digital age cover art just isn't as meaningful when we don't have a real copy of the art anyhow. We'd really like to have an option for a widescreen UI when the Touch is turned on its side, it would help us deal with the volume and song position issues we mentioned previously, due to the fact that we could have longer volume/position bars.
Other than these issues, the Touch is a competent audio player. The format support is the same as the Classic and the audio quality is the same (we'll have more on that later in our benchmarking section) so on a technical level it's just as good of an audio player as the Classic is. If it wasn't for the fact that the Touch used a touch screen and had to forgo the scroll wheel, it would be just as good as the Classic. The touch screen is the Achilles Heal of the device that drags it down as an audio player.
Yet on the other hand the Touch's video abilities put the Classic to shame; unlike the Classic it's clearly designed for video use. It still suffers from the general control issues brought about by the touch screen, but unlike the Classic the nearly device-sized screen makes watching videos practical and something that you'll actually want to do with the device. With a resolution of 480x320 (twice that of the Classic) and a 3.5" screen, the Touch is extremely comfortable to watch videos on. It's not quite perfect because of the control issues, but it's very close.
Incorrect formatting
Correct formatting
We did find an issue with letterboxed videos however; with one of our test videos encoded at 640x480 the touch proceeded to completely cut off the letterboxing, distorting the image. We don't have any other videos that this occurs on so we can't gauge how prevalent the issue is, but never the less it's there and bears mentioning.
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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.