Prizefight: Zune vs. iPod Nano

Who can resist a good Zune vs. iPod prizefight? In fact, these days it's downright necessary, considering that the iPod Nano and the flash Zune look like they've been separated at birth. The truth is that most of the similarities between these two MP3 players are only skin-deep. The Zune's Wi-Fi downloads, FM radio, and Zune Pass subscription support are very different from the Nano's Genius playlists, iTunes movie rentals, and shake-to-shuffle novelty. But when it comes right down to it, which one is better? Which pocket-sized MP3 player is worth your hard-earned cash?

View the results of the CNET Prizefight: Zune vs. Nano

[hanzblinx]

You should be ashamed of yourself for this review. iTune songs use 128kbs and Zune 198 kbs yet for sound quality you call it a draw? Are you kidding?

Also you completely neglect to even mention Zune comes with Wifi, FM radio and all the cool firmware features such as wireless sync, sharing files, wireless store, etc, etc.

Please remove your lips from apple's rear end and report the whole story.

[zip22]

They aren't comparing the music services, they are talking about the sound quality. The wifi features were mentioned in the "Sound and Science" section.

[myles taylor]

I didn't understand why the last one was a draw when the iPod scores higher. I agree that it should have been a draw, but if you add up the scores.....maybe a mistake somewhere.

[zip22]

it looks like they are averaging and rounding. the average score of the ipod was higher in that category, but they rounded it down to a four for the draw.

[gufona]

Indeed your math system is funny: 443 average to 4 for ipod and 445 average to 4 for Zune. go figure. . .

[zip22]

No, its legit. if you average the scores and round to the nearest integer, you get the values they posted.

[NPGMBR]

Something that has become glaringly visible to me about iTunes and the people that review it has been the non-existence of a feature that makes the Zune Marketplace tops over iTunes despite all the accolades iTunes receives.

Recently, one of my best friends lost all his data when the hard disk in his two year old iMac died. He took it to the Mac store and the drive was replaced but all his data was lost. When he asked about his iTunes collection, he was told he was out of luck.

I thought it was strange because I had a similar situation with my PC but the outcome was much more pleasant. Instead of having to buy hundreds of song again (such as my friend) I was able to get a new PC when mine died, download Zune Marketplace, login and clock a button that said (Restore Collection). And within a few minutes, my 4200 track colleciton was restored at no additional cost to me.

I was surprised that iTunes didn't offer the same convenience, yet in comparrisions between Zune Marketplace and iTunes; iTunes is often rated better despite this obvious advantage that never gets mentioned.