iPod Nano wins over the Zune
I gave my wife a Zune player for Christmas two years ago right after they were released and she used it for a year. Last year she saw the new iPod Nano and asked for one for Christmas so I got her one and I should report she is loving the iPod much better than the Zune. She primarily buys CDs and rips them herself so she’s not missing the Zune subscription downloads at all and she is quite happy with the Nano. The main things she likes about the Nano over the Zune is how easy to use it is and the small size which makes it easier to take to the gym when she works out. She has no regrets about losing the Zune and is very happy with the iPod Nano.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
I would choose the nano over the first gen Zune too. I have an iPhone as well that I like, but I recently got a hold of the 80gb 2nd gen Zune and I prefer it and the software to Apples offerings. I was going to get the flash drive Zune, but the capacity was just too small, but man is it tiny. It makes the nano look chubby ;)
Melissa’s getting a Nano fatty for Valentine’s day tomorrow. She’s been bitching that her iPod Mini is too bulky. Too bulky for what? I love the Mini – it’s a good size, fits comfortably in the hand. Maybe I’ll take it from her. We ripped a bunch of her CDs a few years ago when I got her the Mini, and since then we buy a iTunes album for her every couple months. I think it’s more of a style issue than a function one.
That sounds to me like more like a preference for a small, Flash-based player over a larger hard-drive based player rather than a general preference of iPod over Zune. It seems possible that she might have been just as happy with the newer Flash-based Zune…
What about the Creative Zen? Creative the iPod interface and gets no recognition. The Zen is better than the iPod Nano:
- The ZEN is the world’s first 32GB Flash Player and is cost less than the iPod.
- It has a 16.7 million color screen, iPod’s is only 90,000 colors
- Supports background wallpaper & comes with themes. iPod has only white background
- Has bulit-in Microphone & FM Tuner, iPod does not
- Supports WMV, Divx/xVid, avi and MPEG. iPod only supports mp4
- Supports WMA, WAV, MP3 & AAC+. iPod does’t support windows file types
- has bookmarking feature for ebooks. iPod does not
A 1st Gen Zune isn’t really comparable to a 3rd gen nano. It would be a more fair comparison to a flash Zune.
My wife exchanged her Nano for a Zune 8Gb at Xmas, and she loves the Zune. She was very neutral about the Nano. She’s not a techie at all and I had to help her all the time with iTunes but she has no problem using the Zune software, and she loves the subscription service.