Performance

What all readers should note is that unlike most reviews out there that were released in less than a week from introduction, I took my time actually playing with it in order to draw proper conclusions.  I strongly feel you should at least spend two weeks with a review sample prior to drawing final conclusions. 

Interface & Navigation

The Zune HD is, by far, the most pleasant PMP I have had the pleasure to use.  Its GUI is impressive and if you do your research, you'll find I'm just another in a long list of fans.  The player itself, despite some very minor tasks, is highly responsive and browsing your files is extremely easy and effortless.  It's hard to depict in words alone just how excellent its interface and navigation really is.  With that said, I created an HD video for you to judge for yourself...

The video above demonstrates not only how highly responsive the player is, but also how impressive and effortless it is to navigate through all menus and files.

Audio Playback

As far as audio playback goes, there's almost nothing to dislike about this product.  I say almost because a better EQ would certainly be appreciated by hardcore audiophiles like myself.  Everything else just works...and works damn well.  This includes my personal most required feature on any such product, the on-the-fly playlist support.  While a bit difficult to figure out at first, it works as it should and there are additional features that just make its use just that much more pleasant.  This includes its Quickplay feature.

Video Playback

I'm pleased to say that video playback on the Zune HD was excellent.  As a video editing enthusiasts, I threw a number of custom videos at it with no playback issues whatsoever.  This included highly tweaked videos in both the mp4 and H.264 varieties.  Most were high quality 1080p videos captured (hacked) directly from a TV source or videos taken with equipment capable of such quality captures.  Thanks to the unique NVIDIA Tegra ship found on this player, it is highly unlikely it will be unable to playback HD videos or even play all future games smoothly.

HD Radio

Unfortunately, this was the one area I was personally not impressed with.  Not only did I encounter reception issues and static with standard stations, but found I could not tune in to HD stations in certain home environments.  I tested this thoroughly and found that in some homes, I simply could not pick up the HD stations.  In addition, this feature is really not much to brag about to begin with.  My recommendation is that you visit hdradio.com and search for the local listing in your area.  You will find there aren't many, and may even find there isn't one for your particular taste in music.  After owning so many portable media players over the years, the radio on the Zune HD is far from the best in comparison.

Sound Quality

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You'll probably want to ditch those included earbuds.  They are clearly not of high quality and with a player capable of producing such great sound, you'd want to pair it with some quality headphones or earbuds.  With that said, the Zune HD was thoroughly tested with two of my favorites, the  Razer m100 and the Sure E2c earbuds.  Now, I've reviewed and also owned their hard drive based players and if you look back those reviews, you'll note I was disappointed not by the sound, but some serious flaws regarding the noise from the hard drives funneling through the earbuds.  The Zune HD is purely a flash-based player and this issue is obviously not present.  Its sound quality is impressive and one of the best I've heard to date.  Its signal-to-noise ratio, although not listed, is 98dBA and will likely reveal sounds you have never heard before in your audio and video files when paired with decent headphones.  This was more apparent in videos.  Overall, the player has excellent sound quality, provided you use higher end headphones or earbuds.  It's almost a necessity actually.

Battery Life

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Its battery life was tested thoroughly and just one of the reasons behind the delay in the release of this article.  I will say, it was certainly worth the extra effort and time.  I say this because despite just how small and thin the Zune HD is, its battery life is very impressive.  In fact, I was shocked by the results.  When you go take a look at the official specs, Microsoft claims the battery is capable of 33 hours of music playback with wireless off.  As I have found with most of these products I have reviewed, they tend to always fall short.  The Zune HD is one of the very few that doesn't, and will certainly not disappoint. 

To test its battery life, I fully conditioned and charged the battery and played back the entire music collection loaded on the player.  I maintained wireless on throughout testing and had mild to moderate interaction with the player.  The results?  An exact time of 26hrs and 8 minutes.  You will know when the player really needs charging when you encounter the screenshot taken above.  When you factor in its remarkably small form factor, this is beyond impressive and I was thoroughly pleased with the results.

Durability

While the player is extremely light, don't let this fool you in terms of overall quality.  The Zune HD is solid device with excellent build quality.  Sporting an all aluminum housing and excellent finish throughout, it should hold up quite well over time.  Note that Microsoft does list its excellent display as "scratch resistant".  Only time will tell, but I have not had a scratch on it yet.

Accessories

While the Zune HD does have some impressive genuine accessories that can actually unleash additional features, I personally think they are highly over-priced.  Starting with the most expensive, you have the Zune AV Dock.  This is pretty much like the sync cradle, except that you can playback your pictures and 720p videos on your TV.  Price for this kind of functionality will set you back a whopping $90.  The standard sync cradle is nice, but not $50 nice.  Considering you can properly configure the Zune HD for wireless syncing, the cradle is not really a necessity or better yet, a convenience.  Finally, the Zune HD Car Pack with built-in FM transmitter is nice, but it'll cost you $80.  With such overpriced accessories from Microsoft, if you're looking for any of these, I'd wait a bit for a third-party vendor to probably release comparable products.

Next: Conclusions