Zune HD. If you can, you must

I’ve held off blogging about my Zune HD for a few weeks so I could get a feel for it and offer a considered opinion. Thankfully for me, my opinion hasn’t changed since I took it out of the box – it’s stunningly good.

The hardware is a impressive and much like an iPhone when you first see one, hard to put down. The brushed aluminium exterior looks great in black (better than platinum imho) and it feels well engineered. The cutouts in the side of the device are subtle and make it easy to hold even though you caress it like a jewel. “Hello from Seattle” is carried over from earlier Zune’s and is now on the left side of the device.

As you switch the device on, after a few seconds the home screen gently bounces, encouraging you to peek at what lies inside with a swish of you finger up the screen. It’s that screen that delights most people when they first play with a Zune HD, especially when you fire up high quality video. It’s really very impressive.

Software wise there is perhaps even more to like. It took me a little while to figure out some of the new navigation metaphors of the Zune HD and perhaps I’ve been overtrained by the iPhone to use the single button on the front to get me out of navigation trouble. Personally, I prefer to Zune HD navigation to iPhone now I have gotten used to it. Slightly obscured large fonts at the top of the screen lead you back through the menu structures and the scrolling action is super smooth – due I’m sure to the NVidia Tegra processor. Alongside that, the accelerometer is super fast – much faster than my iPod Touch.

The quick list (not sure of the official name) on the device is also nicely done. It remembers photos, music, etc that you have played recently and also allows you to pin favourites to the screen. A simple swish of the finger left or right takes you to that screen from the main menu screen.

I’ve not played with the browser too much but it seems fast and with the pinch capability of the iPod Touch it works well enough for the few pages I’m likely to use it for. Of course there is a looong way to go to get close to the applications on the iPhone/Touch which is perhaps the biggest disappointment of the Zune HD for me. I’d love to have seen more applications available at launch and I’m waiting patiently for the Twitter app in particular. At the moment I have only a calculator and weather app which aren’t too enthralling.

In the music side of things, the device really lights up. It magically grabs additional information when connected to your PC or the Internet and many of the artists on my device now have photos, bio, related artists and (if I lived in the US) the ability to download additional tracks directly to the device. It’s a very nice set of features and I learnt some stuff I didn’t know about my favourite bands from the bio sections.

Zune HD ushered in version 4.0 of the desktop software too and that brings plenty of changes. There is a real focus on music exploration with features like Smart DJ, Quickplay. Like the Zune HD user interface, the 4.0 software took some getting used to but when you have, it really shines. I’ve not used iTunes in a while but if it’s better than this perhaps I should. Once I’d changed my system settings I got all the features my US brethren do such as Marketplace with a whole set of recommendations based on my catalogue and playing profile. Three other features I love – the miniplayer and the Windows 7 Zune taskbar and the Windows 7 Zune jumplist. 

All in all, I’m very very happy with my Zune. I went for the black unit hence I only have 16gb (I’d like more) and of course it’s frustrating that it’s not available in the UK and I just can’t be bothered with the hassle to setup a US account to use Zune Pass…but, it’s a beautiful piece of hardware that frankly wouldn’t look out of place in Jonathan Ive’s collection and the software on the PC side is equally elegant. One minor gripe – I wish it came with a carrying case of some sort or that there was a quality leather case like the one I have for my Zune 8.

To summarise I’ll re-use a quote about I once read about a certain type of car. “if you can, you must” . You’d be hard pushed to be disappointed with this device.