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Microsoft Zune 8GB Review

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  1. Adam •  November 16, 2007
    Rating: 4/5

    The premium earphones provided areiIn ear monitors, and you’ll have to push it quite deep into your ear canals to utilize it PROPERLY. If you fail to do so, it will produce the exact effect you have described, shrill high treble, no bass and very bad middle.

    I’m surprised as a reviewer; you don’t know how to use an IEM.

    Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

  2. Mike •  December 1, 2007
    Rating: 5/5

    How is it 1.5 points worse than the Pod 8gb? The headphones are better, even the stock ones, it has an all you can eat subscription service… try to fill your ipod with 8,000 dollars worth of songs! The marketplace isnt great yet but iTunes on the PC is bad. Plus, people with a mac are likely to have an iPod, and the songs they bought on iTunes cant be used on the zune, so the Zune is pointless for them. The pod doesnt have a mic or recording ability…so? Also, too bad there isnt an EQ. Maybe for the next firmware update.

    The iPod looks a little nicer, but why again is it better? Thats what i want to know.

    Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

  3. Steven •  February 7, 2008
    Rating: 3/5

    I heard plenty of hype about the 1st gen. Zune being better than then I-Pods, so I was really excited to get the new 2nd Gen. 8GB. After my $200 purchase and 2 months of play, I realize I should have gotten the new I-Pod Nano. *Took away good features to make user-friendly *Touch-Scroll isn’t accurate*

    Rating: 6 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

  4. RJ •  March 28, 2008
    Rating: 4/5

    My 3 teenage kids have ipods. When I bought myself the Zune they laughed at me at first, telling me how unhip it was. After playing with it they discovered they liked it more then theirs and the two older ones bought Zunes when their iPods died. However the 13 year old won’t as all his friends have the iPod and he doesn’t want to be the “outsider”.

    Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

  5. Josh •  March 31, 2008
    Rating: 4.5/5

    I liked the first generation but it had some obvious flaws, the biggest being that it was a little too bulky. They have slimmed down the 80G and the 4/8G is about as small as I would ever want my player to be. The scroll pad is a big upgrade and I it is more logical than going in a circle to scroll up or down as in the IPod. There are a lot of small improvements that just help to improve the experience. The new hardware is friendlier to the eyes. Also like the customizable backgrounds that the IPods don’t have. The wireless function would be a lot better if they could somehow do away with the 3 play rule (unfortunately I don’t think copyright laws would allow that). It’s still an interesting feature to play with. As far as shortcomings, I don’t really see any when compared to its competition. For features that stand out, I would say the wireless feature is the most obvious. The possibilities are endless and I’m sure will be improved upon and emulated in future generations. Overall, I haven’t had a problem with it since I got it six months ago and I’m so happy with it that I got the 80G which I love even more. Definitely recommend it to everyone!

    Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

  6. Mike •  May 5, 2008
    Rating: 2.5/5

    I love the device itself. It has many features not found on the ipod, such as fm radio, and wireless capabilities. Navigation is simple and easy to use.

    The problem lies with the software. It is a nightmare to download and get it to work. When I installed it took me several hours, and Its still screwing up. I am not the only one, There is a help forum on the zune webpage and there are many many people who have similar problems. I would recomend this product to anyone who has already downloaded the software and can make sure it will work.

    Rating: 5 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

  7. dave •  August 11, 2008
    Rating: 5/5

    I got one imported to the UK because I like to be a little different.

    I was blown away when it arrived as it simple stunning and far superior to both the ipods i owned.

    I’m getting 2 more for my daughters now.

    well done Microsoft.

    Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

  8. Zune •  July 21, 2009
    Rating: 2/5

    The basic physical design is good, similar to iPod Nano. Buffed case is better, less scratches, but I prefer the iPod scroll wheel, especially as capacity increases into the thousands on these players.

    Zune software is clunky, and very hard to use to organize songs as your collection passes a few hundred songs. Playlists are hard to setup, and you cannot change how the songs are displayed or organized (date added, alphabetical, it varies depending on the screen you are on :( ). By far the worst thing about the software is ‘monitored’ folders and automated album art and metadata finding. Make sure to turn both off, and only add a few of your existing MP3′s to test before giving it your whole collection. The automated metadata/art function is so annoying, it will continuously search the internet and update your files w/o telling you, and will keep trying, even if it cannot find the info, which means it will never stop grinding your HDD and internet connection until you stop it. Also, just allowing it to access my My Music folder caused it to damage the metadata of my entire music collection, it took off the album art and total track data from 1 of every 10 tracks, hundreds were damaged in under a minute. Backup your iPod mp3′s, and/or keep them separate from the ones the Zune software can access, trust me on this :(

    Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

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