Zune / iPod Side by Shots

[Wayde]

Jake Ludington’s MediaBlab has some photos of the two portable MP3 players that are entering into a death-match this winter. We expected the iPod was a little smaller than Zune but Jake reports the iPod is actually heavier. The iPod is an 80Gig of the latest iteration just picked up days ago.

For that size difference you’re getting wi-fi and a full 3” screen out of a 30Gig Zune. The iPod Video is 80Gigs a 25” screen and no wi-fi.

It’s not that I’m an iPod fanboy. Oh, I own one and love it but I’m also sick of the iPod-mania and endless peripherals out there. The absolute coolest iPod peripheral is the Fatman iTube Dock.
But in light of exactly how Zune’s wi-fi is to be used it’s just not going to cut it. It looks like you’ll be able to locate and share DRMed music samples with other Zune users. But you won’t be able to connect directly to Zune’s music service for downloading through Wi-Fi. So, what good is that? A little gadget called MusicGremlin has been doing that little bit for months which makes it one groundbreaking device that not even Microsoft has been able to top. But to be fair, this is only the first generation Zune, in the future maybe they’ll get it right. More about MusicGremlin and Zune features in a later post.
For my money I’ll stick with my year old 20Gig iPod with the fourth gen Wolfson DACs.


Link to Article

[Josuah]

IIRC, the 3" screen on the Zune is the same resolution as the 2.5" iPod screen. So it's physically better but you might argue looks worse since the pixels are no longer the correct aspect ratio.