Okay, lemme get this right out there now: I *DESPISE* iPods. I never liked their silly shiny white cases and their silly little wheels (and, until recently, their silly little DRM), vastly preferring Creative Labs' line of Zen/Jukebox/Extra/etc. players with actual buttons and a rocker switch that didn't require swirling your finger like a doofus for a full minute to get to the middle of the alphabet without overshooting. Never mind my Creative's relative durability vs. many of my friends' iPods that didn't get through their first year. Oh, and the 40 GB Creative was $100 cheaper than the 30 GB iPod at the time.
But progress is progress, and my music collection finally outgrew its 40 GB allocation about 4 years later. Imagine my disappointment to learn that Creative no longer built players larger than 32 GB; even with the optional 16 GB SD card in the expansion slot, it would really only be a stopgap measure while I shopped for an even larger player to last me in the long term. I was crushed that the only manufacturers of portable media players with more than 32 GB of storage capacity were Apple (120 GB iPod Classic), Microsoft (80 and 120 GB Zune), and Archos (32-500 GB, in 2 screen sizes), a relatively unknown French company that boasted more than its share of service- and reliability-related horror stories. Since the iPod Classic was out of the question for me, that left Microsoft's Zune and the Archos "Internet Media Tablet."
After months of agonizing consideration, I finally settled on the Zune over the Archos for several reasons. First and foremost, none of the North American retail outlets that Archos claimed sold Archos devices at the time were anywhere near me, so I would've had to order it from Amazon (Best Buy has since started stocking the 16 GB version, but this obviously would have been much too small for me). While this obviously isn't a problem in-and-of-itself, I was not comfortable buying a device with such a terrible service reputation as the Archos from a seller I could not return it to in-person. I know Amazon's return policies are good, but I wasn't taking any chances with a $300 piece of electronics. Second, while the credible technical reviews I read of the Zune were almost overwhelmingly positive, those for the Archos devices were largely mixed. Most said the internet was painfully slow, the audio quality was simply "acceptable," battery life was abysmal, the touch-screen interface was (quite literally) hit-and-miss, the OS was bug-ridden and only metastable, build quality wasn't up to industry standards, etc. Plus, the company "nickel-and-dimes" users to death by selling video codecs, accessories, etc. that really should have been included in its $300 purchase price (like a wall-charger).
I bought my Zune at Best Buy almost exactly 2 months ago today, and I'm extremely happy with it. While it's true that the Zune doesn't come with a wall-charger either, the Microsoft-branded ones for sale at Best Buy are about half the price of Archos'. The player itself is also substantially cheaper than the 120 GB Archos: it was selling for about $250 at Best Buy when I got it, but I had a store coupon for 12% off, so I only actually paid about $220 (putting it to within $5 of Target's even lower price). The "squircle" control, which functions very much like a laptop touchpad, is much easier to use than that blasted iPod wheel. It will scroll directly proportionally to the force of your stroke, and exhibits inertia so you don't have to keep stroking/swirling. I'm also much more comfortable with dedicated "back" and "play/pause" buttons separate from the rest of the controls. The OS/user interface blends graphical flair more typically associated with iPods with the ease-of-use I was accustomed to after 5 years with my Creative. One particularly noteworthy example is the easy ability to queue music in an impermanent "Now Playing" playlist. Several of my friends have tried to claim that their iPods have such capability, citing the "on-the-go" playlist feature, but these people are obviously mistaking the act of creating a playlist with simply queuing something up. iTunes also lacks this feature, which is the main reason I don't use it.
I have yet to deeply probe the limits of battery life, as I'm one of those people who is in the habit of keeping all of his electronic devices charged whenever they're not in use. I realize this isn't strictly the best thing for battery longevity, but realistically, we're also talking about a device with a product cycle of 4-5 years anyway. I have no reason to believe battery life to be much under the claimed 30 hours of audio playback. Audio quality itself is perfectly fine to my relatively undiscerning ears, but is obviously dependent more upon the quality of the source media. I also haven't spent any time poking around the Zune Store. If you're anything like me, and still get 95% of their music on actual plastic discs or from Amazon's awesomely user-friendly mp3 store, you likely won't either. One caveat about this point, however, is that Microsoft only allows Zune devices to sync with the proprietary Zune desktop software. Some people love it, but I'm not one of them; I use Windows Media Player as my primary music software, and really wish they'd add Zune support for it since they're obviously both MS products. Having said this, however, the sync feature of the Zune desktop software is superb, fast, and virtually seamless.
Don't listen to the people complaining about how it's "not an iPod." Of course it's not. And I don't wish to rail against the idiocy of this sentiment, but it does the person expressing it a disservice by betraying said idiocy. If you're one of those people who reeeeeeaaaaally *has* to have an iPod, you probably shouldn't even be reading this. For people like that, iPods are more a fashion statement and a means of belonging than a functional piece of equipment, so nothing I can say about the virtues of this product could persuade them to consider something else. What it boils down to is this: if you don't like iPods but want a player larger than 32 GB, this (or the 80 GB version) is the ONLY player for you. Until they've vastly improved the firmware and durability, built a bit more market share, and set up more corporate infrastructure here in North America, don't waste your time looking at Archos devices unless you want to run the risk of blowing $300+ on a brick you may or may not ever get fixed. Even if you don't hate iPods, I strongly urge you to seriously consider the Zune. It is very much a competent and credible competitor to the iPod. I, for one, am extremely satisfied with mine despite being prepared not to be so thoroughly thrilled.Get more detail about Zune 120 GB Video MP3 Player (Black).
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