Zune 8 GB Digital Media Player (Black)

It looks like a brick, and it is worth about that much too. PLEASE, PLEASE don't get this. The iPod nano works much better and looks better as well.

Zune 8 GB Video MP3 Player (Blue)Recieved in 3 days very fast service.Haven't used it yet as it is a Christmas gift. Hope it better than the Zune 4 GB one I have that's on its way back from being repaired after only owning it since May of this year. Only was using that 1 hour a day while walking before it stopped working.

I have owned iPods (I still have the Touch), Zens, Sony Walkmans, and Sansas, and this takes the cake. Here's what the Zune has going for it:

Pros:

1) Software (I hate having tons of duplicate songs in my iTunes library and having to import new files. Zune does this automatically. It also has a great system for downloading album art so that your musical library is very organized and colorful. It eliminates duplicates too. It's beautiful, really.

2) User-friendly. The Zune is designed for the sole purpose of playing music and videos. There's no fancy stuff like a calendar, but really, I didn't want this in a player to take up space I would rather use for music and photos.

3) Radio. The radio is great quality and a necessity for me.

4) Sleek design - I love the design of the Zune. It looks great and is very sturdy!

Cons:

1) Battery Life - I usually only get about 25 hours out of this guy, and I wish it were higher, but I'm sure Microsoft is working on this for the future generations. Apple kicks their trash in battery life.

2) Lack of color options. I really wish they offered a bunch of color options. The 120 and 16 GB only come in black. Come on!

3) Smaller selection than iPod and no movies available yet for Zune, but I don't use mine for movies anyway, but if I do purchase the 120 GB, then it might make sense to store movies on that baby.

There are other things I could mention, but that would be nit-picky. Really, the software makes all the difference for me, but I just love the device better. If I could use the software with a different player, I would probably still pick the Zune. I love the touch-pad and the size of the thing.

One last note, I've been doing a free subscription for the Zune Subscription Pass, and I may just sign-up for the $15/month deal. So much good music and you get to keep 10 songs a month permanently, even if you cancel! Awesome!

If you're trying to think of which MP3 Player to get your family or friends for Christmas, you cannot go wrong with the Zune!

I bought a Zune about half a year ago because I wanted something portable to listen to music on and have found this product to be nothing but an expensive disappointment.

For starters, the Zune is only compatible with the Zune software is came packaged with. This means even if you had downloaded music from CDs you own to your computer and stored them on other software you can not tranfer them to the Zune. Even if you are using Microsoft Windows Media Player you have to re download all your music from CDs to the Zune Software (there is no easy way to transfer them).

Next, the Zune did not come packaged with a charger. This has to be bought separately. Of course, it has been designed so that it won't work with a generic charger. You are stuck paying whatever Microsoft wants to charge for this important part of the product. Also, you can charge the Zune from your computer but its batter life is a short 20 to 30 minutes if you charge it that way.

Finally, the Zune market place is a total rip off. First of all, you buy everything in points. Things like TV shows are marked as 160 points which looks good but then you go to buy points and you can only buy 80 points for a dollar, meaning that show you wanted to buy is going to cost you two dollars. This isn't a huge difference but it adds up. Also, the market place is not available everywhere. If you're outside the U.S. they have no problem selling you points but they sure won't let you use them to buy anything.

Thanks for cheating the American public once again Microsoft.

Ok, first the good. I really, really like the way it looks and the way the navigation circle work. Much better than my Sandisk Sansa (8GB also). I would give it five stars on those two things if it weren't for what I didn't like about it.

The bad: I just like to play songs continuously so I choose that option in the play menu. But everytime I turn it off when I leave my car, when I turn it back on again, it begins playing again at the last song SELECTED, not where it left off in the list. So it could start playing 15 or 20 songs back from where I want it too. I'm always losing my place in the list. That's just plain stupid, stupid, stupid. My Sansa is awesome. When I turn it back on again, it's playing the same place in the same song as when i turned it off!

Second, if I find a song in my list that I discover I don't like, i don't think there's anyway to directly delete it from the player without hooking it up to your computer and using the Zune software. How bad is that! I could be wrong on this one but I haven't found a way yet. Nothing obvious. My Sansa once again shines. Don't like a song. Bam... Deleted!

Third, really bad battery life. I went through all but about 20 songs on my 8 GB Sansa on ONE CHARGE. I've charged my Zune twice so far and I'm only half way through the 8GB Zune.

Fourth, the random song selector is a joke - worse than an FM dj playing the same songs over and over on a playlist every hour, ignoring my favorites that will never be played.

So to sum up, this is the most beautiful of these types of devices I've seen and it's physical interface with us the users is awesome. But because of the really unusability of this device (at least for my purposes - maybe you'll like hearing the same songs over and over), I'm giving it a One star. It deserves a negative star until they correct it's deficiencies.

Too bad, because physically I like it so much better than my Sansa but the Sansa just works better and has WAY better battery life.