The Zune HD is a very nice media player and better looking then the iPod Touch. On Wednesday I took a little day trip to the US to look at the iPad and do some shopping. The Canadian dollar is at par with the US dollar and makes it worth the trip. Holding the iPad in my hands and playing with it I now realize I want one. The iPad was a very neat size and surfing the web would be easy while watching TV. The unit is very light weight and has one of the nicest displays I have seen. With my temptation to buy an iPad I decided to leave the Apple store. Went over to Wal-Mart and was looking around the electronics when I spotted the Microsoft Zune HD media player. The unit has a very sexy look and the designers did a great job on the Zune HD. Since we do not have this Zune model in Canada I decided to buy one.
The price was a little high I could have bought an iPod Touch, but the Zune HD had 16G compared to the iPod with only 8G. With my cell phone contract up soon I might get an iPhone which would be kind of silly to have both a Touch and iPhone. The Zune HD fit my needs as a MP3 player and video player. It’s also nice to be able to surf the web and get a few apps. Now the apps are where the iPod wins, but I know that Zune HD would not have many apps and I was alright with that. As a music player the sound is crisp and clear a real pleasure to listen and hooked up to the car I can hear the difference a good MP3 makes.
As soon as I got the Zune HD out of the box I was busy adding music videos and podcasts. The Wi-Fi also worked very well I got a signal from a good distance. The web browser built in works very well and I was able to view all my favourite sites with ease. The only trouble was typing with the touch screen. The trick was to flip the Zune and type in the other position the keyboard was much more responsive.
One problem I has was getting my own movies into the Zune HD it seems the unit want to convert my files to play on Zune and it take forever for the file to convert. That made me give up trying to use my own files. The best way to get free videos was to download video podcasts. Many podcasts now film in HD and the programs look very sharp on the Zune HD screen.
Now if I were to recommend the Zune HD I would say it’s a great media player. If you are looking for apps and want more of a small computer then the iPod Touch ore iPhone are better choices. As for what the Zune HD can do it does it very well. The next trip I take will be a real test for what I can do with the browser. If you buy the Zune HD you might also want the HD docking station to connect the player to an HDTV.
Now I just need to wait for the iPad and my gadget buying crave will be over for awhile.