As many readers may recall, I was hemming and hawing as to which portable music player I would go with.  Going against what I thought I wanted, I ended up with something that fits my needs and, so far, has proven to be even better than I’ve imagined in the past.  As you can tell from the title, I chose a Zune!

I had originally thought about getting a solid state player.  But even so, I still wondered if I would spend a lot of time shuffling tunes to and from the player as I got tired of them.  Despite my misgivings of getting a hard-drive-based player, I finally decided on getting a Zune 120, which holds 120GB of content.  At my current bit rate settings, I figure I can get about 20,000 songs on the player, provided I don’t use much for video storage.

What sold me on the Zune?  A variety of things.  The player has had some good reviews.  I found the navigation to be adequate, and was surprised to find that the directional pad was touch-sensitive when I first played with one.  You can actually “spin” through your list of music much like spinning a wheel, which makes navigating lists of hundreds or thousands of items much easier.  The sound quality is very good for a portable, even more amazing when you consider that this little unit contains a hard drive, a large 320×240 LCD screen, and the audio circuitry.

Little surprises abound.  The touch-sensitive navigation was the first I noticed before I even bought it.  Others?  If you remove the headphones, the player goes into pause mode.  Also, if you browse for another item in the menu, your current place is saved if you are interrupted and the player goes back to displaying the currently played item.  It’s also neat that you can set any picture you upload as a screen background.  The games were a surprise but, in my case, I may delete most of them to make room for more music.

Video was actually a surprise as well–I converted one concert DVD to WMV format, and it looked nice on the small screen.  I did not want to use this at all for video, but seeing how well it worked, I may keep a few on the Zune anyway.

Having a lot of music all on one device has turned out to be very enjoyable–I am only about halfway through my collection so far, and I’ve been able to dial up anything I want with minimal effort, within a few seconds.  I have also made one custom playlist with my favorites on it, and have ideas for dozens more, such as, making a best-of collection of existing album tracks, to save space on the player.

I do still want a flash memory based player for outdoor use, but given my experience here, I may get a smaller Zune for that application, and upload only selected items to it.

With this Zune (which is red, by the way), I received the home A/V kit as a bundled freebie.  It adds audio/video cables, a dock, a USB charger, and a wireless remote.  I’ve used this setup a few times, and it has worked nicely.  It’s difficult to read across the room of course, but I can often guess on the items I can’t see.

So far, it’s been a thrill using the Zune.  I’ll have more to report as I get the player filled up.  Right now, I’m off to listen to the rest of Ramsey Lewis’ “Sun Goddess” album, now playing on the Zune…