The Zune is a stylish little number ith a round controller - a four-way job rather than a click wheel - mounted under a plush, three-inch screen. Thats only half an inch bigger than the iPod’s, but it shades it on video playback. You turn the player through 90 degrees and watch in widescreen, although thats no boonif the footage is in 4:3 format.
It doesn’t dissapoint musically. The bundled headphones are surprisingly non-rubbish, rustling up a reasonable amount of bass. With a purchased pair of phones, sound quality is very good.
The Zune’s wireless sharing facility is cool too. Bring two units close together and you can beam tracks from one to the other. Don’t get to attached to your nw-found tunes, though; in an effort to to keep the record companies placated, they ony last three plays or three days - which come first - before self-destructing like a Mission Impossible-taped instruction.
The dark side of the Zune is that Microsoft isn’t telling when it wil hit RP yet. However, you can snap one of online fairly cheaply-although maybe not so cheaply once you add the insane shipping costs the importers habitually charge. Thanks to its video and track-swapping powers, it’s a credible alternative to the iPod, if not the iPod slayer Microsoft was promising.