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Zune HD

Jason Cross — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:30:40 -0500

If at first you don't succeed...

Try as it might, Microsoft has never been able to put a dent in Apple's marketshare for portable media players. The previous Zune players were pretty good, and the Zune desktop software finally got there after a few revisions, but neither one had the "wow factor" necessary to pull the masses away from the iPod juggernaut. With the Zune HD (and accompanying Zune 4.0 software), Microsoft has finally delivered the kind of truly exciting device that should make even the most ardent iPod fan take notice. It's sleek, small, thin, and surprisingly light with the rare quality of looking as good as Apple's products without looking just like Apple's products. There are only three buttons: power/sleep on top, a home button beneath the screen on the front, and a "media button" on the upper left edge.

It's also the first product to hit the market with Nvidia's Tegra APX 2600 system-on-chip, which packs a pair of ARM11 cores with lots of individual processors for audio and video encoding and decoding, 2D graphics, 3D graphics (with OpenGL ES 2.0 support), etc. This is paired with an 3.3" OLED screen that conforms to the 16:9 ratio of HD movies with a resolution of 480x272 (the same as the PSP, only smaller). The multi-touch display is as accurate and responsive as any we've used, and downright gorgeous. Blacks are perfectly black, colors are bright and vibrant, and there's no smearing or ghosting effect. It's the first mainstream portable with support for HD radio, at a time when many other portable media players aren't even including an FM tuner. You can, as with previous Zunes, tag a radio song and put it in your cart, so you can download it later. With the HD AV dock (sold separately) it can output 720p video to your TV over HDMI, which looks pretty darn great. You can, of course, also play all your music, podcasts, and HD radio through the dock as well. If anything, we could complain that this slick little gizmo is actually too small. With a screen so pretty, you want to something a tad larger to watch movies and play games on.

This is an impressive and surprisingly energy-efficient hardware package. The specs say 33 hours of music or 8.5 hours of video, but like all battery specs, this is a pipe dream that don't reflect real usage scenarios. Our battery lasted for just over 10 hours of heavy and varied use with Wi-Fi enabled, which is better than most devices of this type.

If the modern gadget market has taught us anything, it's that the most amazing hardware in the world is useless without a great interface. Fortunately, the Zune developers have hit a home run with the Zune HD's touch UI. The home screen shows a simple list of categories (music, videos, pictures, radio, marketplace, social, podcasts, internet, apps, and settings). Drilling down into each of these is clear and intuitive, with left and right finger-swipes to swap to different categories, and vertical swipes to fly up and down the list of content. Long lists (artists and albums) have an alphabet jump-menu that can take you right to a specific letter. The real magic happens when you tap the left edge of the home screen, swipe to the right, or press the home button to "flip" it over to the Quickplay menu that shows your recent history, new stuff, and "pinned" content. You can pin anything there - apps, podcasts, albums, artists, songs, playlists, even web bookmarks - by holding down your finger on the item and choosing "pin to quickplay." It's a simple and elegant solution a big problem with mutli-funtion portable devices: getting to your most frequently used stuff quickly. There are a few niggling issues, like a slight inconsistency in the way one backs out of different screens. The "back" arrow present in some places should simply always be there, and always take you back one level.

The web browser is surprisingly good, too. It's not quite as fast as Safari on the iPhone or iPod Touch, and it doesn't support Flash, but it works great with even complex websites and all the expected zoom and pinch and drag gestures work. It's based on Internet Explorer, but you'd never know it, especially if you're used to the abomination that is IE for Windows Mobile. It's another reason why we find the device perhaps a touch too small; the on-screen keyboard works well, but is a bit cramped when you hold the 16:9 screen vertically. Text scaling could be a little bit smoother, and it would be easier to read some sites on a slightly larger screen.

If you're within range of Wi-Fi, the Zune HD gets a bit more useful. Browse any artist in your music collection and a little down arrow at the bottom of the screen will extend the page with a discography of that artist's work on the marketplace. You can stream or purchase tracks and albums right there on the device. Of course, you can browse the music and apps marketplace in the traditional manner, by choosing "marketplace" from the main menu. Interestingly, the "squirting" function of previous Zune models is now gone. You used to be able to send tracks to any other Zune in physical proximity over Wi-Fi, with the stipulation that they can only listen to it three times without buying it. It its place is perhaps a better feature. You can send what is effectively a link to any artist or album to any Zune Tag or email address you want, wherever they are. If they don't have Zune software or an account, they can listen to a 30-second clip on Zune.net. Still a feather in Zune's cap is Wi-Fi syncing - once you link your Zune to a PC on your home wireless network, you can sync it without cables.

The Zune desktop software gets a host of refinements and a few extra features in the 4.0 release, too. There's a new Quickplay intro screen that mirrors the functionality on the portable device with pinned content, new stuff, and your recent history. You can choose to go right to your collection, the marketplace, or the social upon launch, if you want. The software now supports Windows 7 features like jumplists and a mouseover taskbar player that has the little heart-rating added. The library and marketplace interfaces have been touched up, and are cleaner and better organized than iTunes 9. The best new feature is something Microsoft calls "Smart DJ." There's a new Smart DJ icon on every album and artist in your collection or the marketplace. Click this to get a custom playlist of that artist and similar ones. It's a bit like Pandora, only it generates a playlist about 30 items long instead of a continuous stream. Unlike iTunes 9's new Genius Mix feature, it includes both local content and streaming music from the marketplace (you can turn that off if you like). You can even save any Smart DJ mix as a playlist, and then adjust how long it should be (in songs or minutes) and how often (in days) it should be refreshed, if at all. You can then sync these Smart DJ playlists to your Zune device, and it'll be refreshed when you sync.

Features like these add tremendous value to the Zune Pass, Microsoft's $15 a month all-you-can-eat music subscription service. Smart DJ is a great way to discover and download new music. Zune Pass subscribers also get unlimited streaming of full songs, not just preview clips, from any web browser on any PC or Mac by going to Zune.net. Yeah, the Zune Pass content is laden with DRM (how else would it expire if you don't renew your subscription?), but they even give you 10 song credits a month you can use to download totally DRM-free MP3s that you'll own forever. The marketplace's tight integration between device, desktop, and web make the Zune Pass a seriously good deal for music fans.

If there's an Achilles' heel to the Zune HD, it's apps. There are only nine apps in the marketplace, all of them free and seven of them games. They're nothing special, really. You'd have paid a couple bucks for some of them when the iPhone App Store launched, but they pale in comparison to what you can get today. Others are coming this fall, including Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition, Vans SK8: Pool Service, and Audiosurf Tilt in addition to Facebook and Twitter. That's good, but this is a device that desperately needs a real app marketplace. Perhaps it isn't too far away - Microsoft just updated the XNA development framework to version 3.1, adding support for the Zune HD's accelerometer and multi-touch screen.

So is the Zune HD better than the iPod Touch against which it competes? That all depends on what you're looking for. If you want a portable player primarily for media, the Zune HD trounces the iPod Touch. Music, video, and podcast offerings are similar, but the Zune has FM and HD radio, marginally better sound quality, 720p video output, the optional Zune Pass subscription service for music, and an honest-to-goodness superior interface. The software on both desktop and device is designed to be vastly better for discovering new music. If you want a pocket computer to run apps and play games, with music and video playing as a second-tier function, the incredibly robust App Store on the iPod Touch make it still the obvious choice.

Microsoft still has work to do, of course. With all that hi-def video and subscription music, we desperately need a 64GB model. The hardware and software service aren't available outside the U.S., and really needs to be expanded internationally. The required Zune software is Windows-only, which leaves Mac users out in the cold, or at the very least requires Boot Camp or virtualization of them. Most of all, a truly robust app marketplace needs to be built, and fast. For those looking to buy a portable media player for, you know, media, the Zune HD is a truly awesome little device. Microsoft has a product that has captured the enthusiasm of gadget geeks across the web, and it doesn't disappoint.

Cambridge SoundWorks SoundWorks i765

Michael Brown — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:46:33 -0500

The tabletop radio made a major comeback a few years ago when Tom DeVesto, cofounder of Cambridge SoundWorks, left that company to form Tivoli Audio. But Tom’s old company hasn’t lost its knack for building great-sounding audio gear either, and the Cambridge SoundWorks’ SoundWorks i765 is a tabletop radio on steroids.

The i765 includes not only an AM/FM radio but also a slot-fed CD/DVD player (capable of playing burned MP3 and WMA files, as well as CDs and DVDs), an alarm clock, and an iPod dock, too. So the i765 has you covered whether you want to wake up to your favorite tune, a specific radio station, or even a movie on DVD. All this functionality comes at a price, however; the i765 retails for the princely sum of $500—that’s a lot of lettuce for an alarm clock.

But if you’re a heavy sleeper envisioning yourself waking to Al Pacino on the TV inviting you to say hello to his little friend (you know, the line from Scarface), be aware that if the alarm is set to DVD, it will simply play the disc from the beginning—there’s no way to cue up a specific scene. A docked iPod will play whatever song you set it to play before you go to bed, but you can’t do this with a CD. And of course, the two independent alarm clocks can play any preset AM or FM radio station, too.

The front-panel LCD shows the time, but it also comes in handy when you’re programming the alarm clock, storing radio stations in the 24 presets (eight for FM1, eight for FM2, and eight for AM), or displaying song titles from a disc, a connected iPod, or broadcast Radio Data Text (if your favorite FM station supports that feature).

There’s a large, programmable snooze bar on top of the cabinet, so you can postpone the inevitable from between five and 22 minutes. The placement of the iPod dock, however (and the lack of any substantial support for a docked player), leaves us concerned that an awakening sleeper might damage the i765, the iPod, or both if he or she gets too aggressive while reaching out for that snooze bar.

But with all its features, the i765 is obviously much more than an alarm clock. In fact, we had to study the manual for 15 minutes to figure out how to set it to wake us up. And it’s a good thing we used our familiar box as a backup; because for all that, we didn’t get it right the first time. If you’re living in a small apartment or want something for a vacation cabin, this little box connected to a TV can serve all your audio and visual entertainment needs (apart from gaming, that is). There are composite and S-video outputs in back, so you can connect the system to a TV, a front-panel headphone output, an auxiliary input (in case you don’t have an iPod), and a rear-panel audio out (in the unlikely event you’d like to connect to a larger amplified speaker system). The remote control, which has no fewer than 43 buttons, can manage every one of the i765’s functions as well as those of a docked iPod.

Although we’re getting to this last, sound quality is one of the most important features when you consider any audio device, and the i765 doesn’t disappoint. The amp delivers 4.5 watts to each of the stereo speakers, and 13 watts to the down-firing, ported subwoofer. The box delivers huge sound with bass to spare—no complaints there—but there’s one other thing you should be aware of: The i765 is pretty small for a multifunction device, but as an alarm clock, it’s a behemoth that will dwarf anything else on your nightstand.

Correction, 4/14: This story has been updated with the correct retail price. --mb

Cowon iAudio 7 Digital Media Player

Michael Brown — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:19:11 -0500

Cowon makes some of the most interesting digital media players we’ve laid hands on. The iAudio 7 is no exception, although it won’t earn a place in our pantheon of favorites.

It’s not for lack of unique features, fabulous sound, or broad codec support; it’s just that we didn’t find ourselves groovin’ on its primitive user interface, chunky formfactor, postage-stamp screen, and odd touch-sensitive control surface. So why are we rating it as high as “7?” Because of its unique features, great sound, and broad codec support.

Let’s start with the features: The iAudio 7 not only has a built-in mic—rendering it handy for recording voice messages or recording a lecture—it also has a 1/8-inch line-level input. Plug in a better-quality mic, or any other audio source, and you can record to the player’s 4GB of flash RAM. You can do the same with the built-in FM radio. The device can also display video (AVI, MPEG-4, and Xvid), photo (JPEG), and even text (TXT) on its 1.3-inch LCD. An alarm clock that can also be used to make scheduled recordings rounds out the player’s long list of features.

We don’t usually talk about the EQ software in media players because it typically sucks; that’s not the case here. If you can’t be bothering dialing-in the five-band graphic equalizer you’ll be cheating yourself if you don’t at least activate the “MP3 Enhance” setting. The effect isn’t nearly as pronounced as Creative’s X-Fi Crystalizer, but the improvement in audio quality is amazing considering the limited hardware that Cowon’s engineers must have to work with. We don’t think we’ve ever heard Emilylou Harris’ voice ever sound as heartbreakingly beautiful on an MP3 player as it did when we heard her sing the opening lines to “If This is Goodbye” (from All the Roadrunning, her amazing collaborative effort with Mark Knopfler). The iAudio 7’s Mach3Bass bass-enhancement features is equally strong—and best deployed in small doses, unless you’re using particularly tinny earbuds.

The iAudio 7 delivered fabulous sound with the broad range of formats and codecs it supports. We listened to tracks in WAV, FLAC, protected WMA, and 320Kb/s MP3 formats and were impressed with the player’s audio fidelity across the board. There’s support for OGG and ASF, too; it’s too bad they didn’t throw WMA Lossless into the mix.

Now for the downside: We appreciate the good ol’ fashioned buttons for volume, power/lock, and mode selection, but the touch-sensitive surface used to control the player’s other aspects droves us a bit batty. It scores high on its technical merits: Using just three movements along the surface, you can play/pause, skip forward and back one track at a time, scrub back and forth within a track, and even loop a segment of a track. (Exactly why you would want to do some of the latter things is a whole other question.)

Flash players should be thin, unless there’s a very good reason for them to be otherwise. Sansa’s Connect is thick around the middle (0.63 inches), but it has a Wi-Fi radio inside (albeit it a soon-to-be--useless Wi-Fi radio, thanks to the demise of Yahoo Music). Microsoft’s Zune has a Wi-Fi radio, too, and it’s just 0.33 inches thick. The iAudio 7 measures a portly 0.7 inches thick. But to be fair to Cowon, Sansa’s and Microsoft’s players aren’t nearly as format friendly (they don’t support FLAC, OGG, or ASF, for instance).

Cowon dedicated more surface area to the iAudio 7’s touch-sensitive control surface than they did for its display. The screen is surprisingly legible for its size, but our eyes tired quickly while browsing folders displayed at a resolution of just 160x128 pixels. Videos and photos look bright and colorful, but they’re so small that we don’t think anyone will spend much time viewing them on this player. To sum up: File support good; touch interface problematic; display much too small.

Archos 605 WiFi

Michael Brown — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:51:39 -0600

The Archos 604 has been one of our favorite digital media players since its introduction late last year. Our opinion of the new Archos 605 WiFi—which adds a high-resolution touch screen and wireless networking capabilities—isn’t as lofty.

Although the 605 offers a screen with the same dimensions as the 604 (4.3 inches, 16:9 aspect ratio), we fully expected its enhanced resolution (800x480 pixels compared to 480x272) to knock our socks off. After repeated viewings of slightly washed out digital photos and videos, our metatarsals remain firmly ensconced in argyle.

The touch screen works great—it’s a much easier means of navigating the player’s menus than the column of buttons on the right side of the device—so we can overlook the need to use a stylus. But if the touch screen is to blame for the screen’s vaguely hazy look, the trade-off isn’t worth it.

The same goes for the 605’s wireless-networking capabilities, which we assume are responsible for causing the new player to burn through a battery charge even faster than its off-line predecessor. We got less than four hours of play time while watching videos and making moderate use of the wireless network feature (despite the fact that the player drops its connection after just a few minutes of inactivity in order to go into battery-conservation mode).

Actually, the wireless feature isn’t terribly useful unless you also purchase a special version of Opera, which adds a full 10 percent to the purchase price. Right. When’s the last time you contemplated buying a web browser? That and the connectivity issue aside, Opera proved to be a solid fit for the Archos player. We had a good experience visiting many of our favorite sites without having to rely on web pages that were optimized for use with portable devices.

We’re also not impressed with the 605’s stingy storage capacity (30GB, just like the 604) and Archos’s insistence on using a proprietary USB cable (they tell us this is a necessary evil, but that doesn’t make it any less of a pain in the caboose).

Microsoft Zune 8GB

Michael Brown — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:50:54 -0600

Microsoft, seeing the futility in polishing turds, went back to the drawing board to design the second rev of the Zune. (If only they’d do the same for Vista!) Fortunately for early adopters, many of the new features and desktop software will be made available for the first-gen Zune via a firmware update.

The new player features a much-improved control mechanism consisting of a touch-sensitive pad atop four buttons. You can navigate menus by either dragging your thumb up and down (or back and forth, depending on the screen’s current orientation) or pushing down on the pad to depress the buttons. Depressing the center of the pad selects whatever menu item is highlighted. If you don’t like the touchpad, you can turn this feature off and rely solely on the buttons.

The Zune’s wireless features have undergone significant improvements, including the ability to manually sync your Zune to your PC when in range of a wireless network (the Zune must be connected to an optional AC adapter or charging dock to sync automatically). The much-touted but virtually useless wireless song-sharing feature remains just as useless, but at least the three-day play-it-or-lose-it limitation has been eliminated (the recipient, however, remains limited to three plays).

The Zune Marketplace has also undergone a much-needed retooling, adding podcast support, one million DRM-free MP3s, and a $15-per-month all-you-can-eat subscription model called Zune Pass. This compensates for the fact that the hardware ties you exclusively to Microsoft’s service (there’s no support for Rhapsody or other subscription services). The notion of buying music with points instead of dollars and cents (which you, of course, use to buy points in order to buy music), on the other hand, still leaves us cold.

The Zune 8GB sounds every bit as good as the first Zune, and Microsoft has added support for tracks encoded in WMA Lossless. The 1.8-inch glass screen looks very sharp, but it’s also very small—especially when you’re watching videos—and the flash player can’t be connected to your TV (both new and previous hard-drive models do support this feature).

Toshiba Gigabeat T400 Media Player

Michael Brown — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:17:51 -0600

It’s taken many a year, but Microsoft is finally figuring out how to build operating systems for handheld devices. Windows Mobile Portable Media Center 2.0, embedded in Toshiba’s Gigabeat T400 4GB digital media player, is better than anything Apple has to offer.

We’ve grown so accustomed to the iPod’s touch wheel that we didn’t think any other type of design could be as effective for browsing. But the Gigabeat’s crossbar (Toshiba calls it a PlusPad) and four-square button configuration are remarkably effective for navigating menus on the T400’s large 2.4-inch LCD. The device is also extremely easy to use with either hand.

Media Center Mobile looks and feels just like the big-screen version of the OS. Pressing the button with the familiar Windows icon brings up the main menu from which you can choose listings for TV, music, pictures, or video. Use the crossbar to move the selector to My Music, press OK, and you get a listing of your music sorted by artist, genre, album, song, or playlist. Toshiba recommends using Windows Media Player 10 or 11 to copy music to the player and create playlists, but you can also create a “quicklist” using nothing more than the player.

Although Microsoft’s PlaysForSure program has pulled a disappearing act, we had no problem syncing the player to our Rhapsody account and copying protected subscription tracks to the player. But what’s really exciting is that the device supports Microsoft’s WMA Lossless format—a rarity among portable media players of all stripes. The T400 sounds great with tracks encoded with both lossy algorithms, but it’s utterly fantastic with losslessly encoded music.

As much as we hate accepting trade-offs, we’re going to let the T400 bump SanDisk’s Sansa Connect from our Best of the Best list. The T400 doesn’t offer Wi-Fi support, but it does provide a bigger screen, a better user interface, and support for WMA Lossless. Here’s hoping Toshiba decides to build a version with a hard disk (and adds support for FLAC while they’re at it!).

Cowon D2

Michael Brown — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:00:47 -0500

Cowon provides a wealth of choice where SanDisk sets severe limits: The D2 supports not only MP3, WMA, and secure WMA, but also OGG, FLAC, and even WAV.

But if you’re planning to fill your player with losslessly encoded tracks, drop the extra $30 for the model with 4GB of flash memory. Both players include an SD slot, which renders their storage capacity virtually unlimited, but 2GB is just not enough for a large library of tracks encoded with even a lossy codec.

The D2 doesn’t have anything as unique as wireless networking, but it does offer several features the Sansa Connect does not, including video support (320x240 resolution), voice recording, a text reader, and an FM radio tuner. The D2 also features a slick touch screen, but navigating a GUI in three square inches is awkward with the included stylus and nearly impossible with your fingertips. (The stylus can also serve as a kickstand while you’re watching videos.)

The D2 is supremely versatile, it sounds fabulous, and it’s certainly priced right. Oh, what we wouldn’t give to trade its highfalutin touch screen for a simple control wheel and a couple of buttons.

SanDisk Sansa Connect 4GB

Michael Brown — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:08:01 -0500

Update, 2/12/2008: We can no longer recommend the Sansa Connect due to Yahoo's decision to discontinue its Yahoo Music Service. Yahoo will transfer its subscribers to Real Networks' Rhapsody service, but SanDisk has informed us that the Connect's Wi-Fi will not function with Rhapsody. You'll find more details here.

Microsoft’s idea of letting people share their favorite songs using a wireless connection was as botched in execution as it was brilliant in conception. SanDisk’s Sansa Connect makes much more sense, although it requires users who want to share to cough up the $12- to $15-per-month subscription fee for Yahoo’s Music Unlimited to Go service.

Unlike the Zune’s silly wireless-sharing capability, the Sansa Connect’s networking feature is useful, even if you’re not interested in sharing or renting music. The device can join any Wi-Fi network (with support for WEP, WPA, or WPA2 security, but not Enterprise authentication) and it uses two free Yahoo services: Launchcast Internet radio and the Flickr photo-sharing service.

The Internet radio service is particularly cool because it uses the Zing Mobile Entertainment Engine to automatically create playlists based on the songs you’ve listened to. This works much like the Internet services Pandora and Last.fm do on the PC, and it’s a terrific way to discover new artists.

Although the Sansa Connect sounds very good, we do wish SanDisk hadn’t limited the player to just MP3, WMA, and secure WMA audio formats at maximum bitrates of 320Kb/s VBR. We find ourselves increasingly enamored with the pristine quality of losslessly encoded music (FLAC, WMA lossless, etc.), which it doesn’t support at all. We do understand the file-size drawbacks: The Tower of Power tune “What Is Hip?” requires about 8MB of storage when encoded (using EAC and LAME) in MP3 format at 320Kb/s VBR, compared to nearly 36MB when encoded using EAC and FLAC.