So I have to apologize for keeping you waiting...I actually finished my research and made my decision about a week ago and if you were paying attention to my Facebook, I actually leaked which one I chose last night, haha. But for those who were not paying attention (only one person was to my knowledge), and even for those who were, I'll officially announce the winner of the Zune HD Vs iPod Touch 8GB slug fest (and a slug fest it was...).
In this review, I'm not going to go into everything about the two devices. There are quite a few reviews online that compare the two and they all give about the same information so I'm not going to go over that again. What I am going to do is tell you all some things that got left out of most reviews that I think are very important aspects of the devices when comparing the two. Believe it or not, it came down to those obscure aspects when my decision was finally made. With that said, you can see that there was no clear K.O. where one fully dominated, not even a T.K.O., it was a win by decision based on some personal wants of my own.
And now enough with the chatter, here's A 2 Week Weeks in the Life: Part 1b (The Decision):
Vs.
Practical Use
If you remember from last time, the main thing I was trying to figure out was whether or not the added functionality of the Touch, aka, the apps, could stand up to the double hard drive space that the Zune HD offered, and vice versa. So I started with the Zune (though I had the Touch with me too). I loaded it up with podcasts, my computer's entire music library, anime, all of the apps that Zune offered that I would be slightly interested in (about 7), and took it to work with me. I stopped listening to CDs altogether in my truck, as I got addicted to listening to music through my Zune. The sound quality was phenomenal!!! For about a week, I listened to Oren Lavie; who if you haven't seen my YouTube links to, or ever heard, you should.
Oren Lavie- A Short Goodbye Lavie's music includes heavy use of strings and with the Zune, it sounded like I had gotten treated to a personal concert; and this is with $20 earbuds.
I realized that my opinion was becoming one-sided, so I started comparing, side to side. I would listen to a few seconds of Lavie on my Zune and then I would listen to the same on the Touch. Back and forth, back and forth this went on and what I decided was that there was certainly a difference between the two; especially noticeable during the strings' solo sections, G33KGirl Z (that's what I named my Zune) blew the Touch out of the water. HOWEVER, the Touch's performance wasn't so bad that I couldn't listen to it after having used the Zune. It was good too, the Zune was just excellent.
During lunch, I decided to watch some Air Gear. To continue my research, I used the same practice. The difference this time was very easy to find. The Zune had better quality. The colors of character's faces had that sort of rosy-peach look, where on the Touch, the peach looked more like beige...washed out. But once again, this wasn't something that was a deal breaker. I only noticed the deficiency because I was comparing the two side by side. If I had never seen the Zune's video display and only ever had a Touch, I would not have been disappointed with the display quality coming from the iPod. At this point, you may be thinking to yourself, "J, I thought you said that there was no K.O., it sure seems like it." Well I understand why you would think that, but actually, this is where the Touch stopped simply dodging hits and starting actually throwing some. The Touch's screen is larger than the Zune, not by much (0.2 inches), but that less than an inch difference made a HUGE difference. When I was watching Air Gear, it didn't really, because the show was dubbed in English...see where I'm going with this? I decided on a whim to play Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood on both devices and this is where the difference became a problem. FMA was not dubbed, it was subtitled, and with the Zune you had two choices (without video editing and converting on your part to get the perfect fit), either watch the video in "Fit to screen" aspect and have the subtitles and animation be very small and difficult to read/see, or watch in "Full screen" and have the subtitles cut off. The Touch's larger screen solved that problem. So if I was concerned with watching HD movies and such, then the Zune would still reign supreme, but given the fact that I wanted to watch anime, much of it being subtitled, the Touch offered the better choice. The Touch also offered small benefits that added up to one big one...ease of use. The Zune does not have speakers, if you want to listen to anything, you have to dig out your earphones and plug them in, the Touch does (not good speakers, but it has them). The Zune does not have any non-digital media controls (volume, fast forward, play, etc.), the Touch does have physical volume control, which is very helpful if you need to adjust your volume without having to look at your device.
Software
Here, there was no competition. I hate, let me say again, I HATE iTunes. I am the type of person that puts together a desk from Ikea and never reads any of the directions. I simply look at the pictures and follow. I had to do
research to figure out simple things like how to sync my own audio and video to my iPod. Once I finally did figure it out, it took forever for iTunes to take my music files and convert them to whatever type it wanted and add them to my library. Then another eternity to add the files in my library to my actual device. This is not to mention the fact that my iTunes installation was corrupt and I had to call Apple and make an appointment for them to call me back the next day, which they did, but I had to spend an hour and a half on the phone troubleshooting the issue and ended up having to download a 3rd party program in order to clean my hard drive of the corrupted file so that I could install a proper copy of iTunes.
I had a problem with my Zune software too. I could not get connected to the Zune Marketplace for some reason. I called Microsoft, got an agent in a very reasonable amount of time, and she swiftly diagnosed my problem (which had nothing to do with my device or software, the location on my computer was wrong), and got me set up correctly. That was the only problem I had while using the Zune software. Adding my files was a breeze and syncing was a tornado...it was fast. I found myself filling my 16GB with ease and pleasure, which actually leads us very well into the next category.
Hard drive
Well we already know that the Touch has half the hard drive space that the Zune has. But something I figured out is that 16GB isn't a lot of space either. I found that I couldn't go crazy and just add whatever media I wanted to my Zune. With my audio library taking up 5GB, it wasn't long before G33KGirl Z was telling me that she couldn't hold anymore. So one might think that if I couldn't fit all of my media onto my Zune with double the space, then I certainly it would be impossible with the iPod. Actually though, it just made me think. Did I really need to have 10 days of songs with me all of the time? Did I really even like all of those songs, would I ever listen to them? My point is that if I was going to have to pick and choose what I added anyway, I may as well sift through my music and add only what I would actually listen to on a regular basis, which comes to about 1GB. Now that makes a huge difference in the decision at hand. Because now the question can be asked, "Do I really need a 16GB hard drive?"
Applications/Internet
See, with the 16GB that the Zune offers, the only thing I could do with the extra space is add more videos; which is not necessarily a bad thing. I love anime and would love to carry around a collection of it. However, at some point it will run out and if I'm on a trip or otherwise have no access to my computer, what then? That's where the apps come in. The iTunes store is chock full of applications that have to do with pretty much anything, most of you already know that. When I first entered the store, I was absolutely lost! But I went ahead and downloaded the apps that iTunes recommended for beginners and then found my way from there. There were cool apps there that meant something to me, like the WoW Armory app, where you can even buy things off of the auction house from your pod. There was an app called MangaDL, where you could search and download onto your device, manga from all of the major digital manga sites (and you can read the manga you download offline!). Then there were simple, basic apps like notepads, alarm clocks, and not to mention, games. What I'm saying is that the applications available to the iPod Touch truly do transform it from a MP3/video player, to a micro-computer, and the cool thing is that most apps take up very little space and are free/inexpensive. So to answer the question of what would I do when I run out of video to watch and I can't access my computer? With the Touch, it's read manga, or play games, or if I have a Wi-Fi connection, watch YouTube, listen to Pandora radio, write the next chapter in my digital journal...the list goes on.
The Zune had about seven applications, mostly consisting of games I would never play. It did offer Twitter and Facebook though, which are the primary essentials, so that's not too bad. However, it did not have a notepad, which I found really annoying, but I think I understand why. Given the size of the screen, the keys on the keyboard are very small and close together. It is a PAIN to type on the Zune. I found myself taking minutes to write simple phrases, let alone messages. Ultimately, it made me not want to use the internet application at all, which was very slow compared to Safari, and doesn't allow you to watch YouTube or any other media content online.
The Champion
Deep down inside, I was rooting for one to come out of the fight victorious, and it was a somber occasion when I was forced to erase all memory of me from her database and return her to the store. I wish I could have kept both devices, as they brought different qualities to the table and were great at what it was that they did best. But alas, I could only have one; and given the fact that one of the devices even did fairly well on the things it wasn't all that great at and the other was totally lacking in some areas, it became clear that the iPod Touch was the champion.
It's been almost 2 weeks since I took the Zune back to the store and I have not regretted it. I take my Touch with me everywhere and I have yet to find it lacking. I also now have something to do during raid "smoke breaks" besides twiddling my thumbs and checking out hot Draenei women. I browse the App Store! $0.99 apps FTW.
*Footnote: I should mention that although I chose the iPod, if you are a music enthusiast or film buff and want a portable device to play them on (and that's all), then I think the Zune HD would be the device for you.
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