About a week ago, my Creative Zen Micro decided to give up the ghost. One day it was working perfect, and one afternoon, it just shutdown, never to wake up again :( And so the quest for an MP3 player starts again. I'm just going crazy at work without some music!
So I narrowed down my choices to the new Creative Zen, and the Cowon iAudio. Having tried quite a few mp3 players before choosing my Zen Micro (I like the warmth of the sound. Pair that with my Grado SR80s.... oooo low end eargasmic heaven.) The Cowon was chosen based on it's reputation for sound, and I didn't get a chance to try it out.
Today however, just mere hours ago, I was out doing my weekly shopping and decided to head out to Best Buy to check out if they had any MP3 players. Sad to say, they didn't carry either brand, only some lesser known brands, some Toshibas which were very nice, but extremely expensive, lots of Ipods that I ignored (no thanks, the last one I tried I wasn't too impressed), and.... Microsoft's Zune offering.
Now the only thing about the Zune that caught my eye before today, was their advertisements. Motion Theory did the Birds ad - but I'm not sure who did this Phallic advertisement :P
The Zune itself was rather large, coming from a person using a Zen Micro for more than 2 years - the Zune is, from my estimates about 3 times as large. However, it makes up for it with a lovely, lovely large screen (perfect for showing off Demo Reels and tech examples hehehehe!) and a 30gb hard drive. What made me really interested in the Zune was the interface - it was just pure simplicity. No multi tiered menus to scramble through - I picked up on the controls instantly. Basic features that I required were there - Mp3 play back and some EQ controls. Didn't see any custom EQ settings like my (dead) Zen, but I don't use the custom EQ anyway.
I almost wanted to just drop my cash then and now (it was US199 for the Zune, and you'll need to add tax...), but I kept my resolve - giving myself the excuse that it used a custom USB cable - so therefore, it sucks. :P
So much said, I did not get a chance to try the sound quality. Would it at least exceed the last ipod I tried, and perhaps at least come close to the Zen Micro's warmth? Well.... I'll know in about a week!
It must be an act of Synchronicity - I was searching for the best prices to buy it. First hit was Circuit City - they had it for 149, and with tax just barely 170. I was about to change, grab my keys and head out, but again, I calmed down, and decided to read more reviews to see if it would suck. After a bit more searching (and deciding, after reading some posts about people using it with some Grados, and the Zune seemed to be driving them pretty well...), Amazon (duh) had it for only... tada! 129! WOO!
Still... keeping calm.... I was still trying to find something about the zune that sucks so I'd not buy it :P The software portion of the Zune seems to be a major down side, but hey, it's the same for my Zen Micro so I just kept going. And suddenly. Dun-dun-dun! This website, woot.com had the brown zune for 79.95! Granted it was a refurbished unit, but people who had bought it early reported the units coming in a pristine, like-new condition.
It was the brown version though, and while the price was right... brown isn't THAT appealing to me.... Nearly bought it but..... decided to hang out in some Zune forums :P And came across similar fantastic deal, for the black zune for 99 on sellout.woot.com
And that was it. No reason not to get it! So now I'm just waiting for it to arrive. If the sound quality is really bad, then this baby will go on ebay. Else I'll just enjoy it until they manage to create the perfect mp3 player :)
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