Cesar on the Zune team says his crew's wrapped up its battery life tests on the new Zunes 80, 8, and 4, and the results are somewhat disappointing, even compared to what was
previously posted on Amazon:
Zune 80
- Audio: up to 30 hours
- Video: up to 4 hours
Zune 8 and 4
- Audio: up to 24 hours
- Video: up to 4 hours
Not, it's not that terrible, but these tests were with wireless disabled (which isn't necessarily the most realistic method of testing), using 128Kbps WMA audio and 500Kbps WMV video. In other words, it's liable those numbers could go down even further when playing higher bitrate and/or non-Microsoft format files with wireless on and dormant most of the time. Bummer. We'll definitely let you know when we get ours and put it to the test.
[Thanks, Shawn and Daniel]
posted October 15th 2007 11:38PM
Gah, stupid reply button.
This was in response to Jubei...
I get close to 30 hrs with my current gen Zune, I guess it's all in how you use it.
Keeping it off for 15 hours should not be equated into your total battery life.
BTW. The Zune2 is by far the nicest HDD player coming out for this year.
I use it for audio books and charge it once every two weeks for about 28 hrs of play time
Engadget...is a JOKE!. Editor Ryan Block, show me an iPod classic with a 3.2inch screen (60%+ larger) / WiFi and FM tuner that can do 30/4 hours (audio/video). Come on, dude do your best.
I think the Apple proponents here should ask Apple why the iTouch didn't come with a HDD for making it a better video player while the Zune 80 can do as good as it on the video front and give 7+ hours on audio playback ?
Excuse my English.
30h battery life doesn't equal 30h in real life. My iPod Photo 30GB had 18 hours battery life but used in real life with the back light on and off, fiddling and random song selection the battery last about 60-70% of the claimed time. Watch an episode of family guy and watch few pictures the battery is drained even more.
Wow, talk about bias. A competing gadget blog makes a big deal out of what good news this was, how it was nearly identical to that of the iPod, while you call it a disappointment. Reminds me of how when the Zune came out they liked it and all you did was rag on what a bad installation experience you had.
You guys on Engadget are really Apple freaks! At least first generation of Zune lasts longer than 8 hours! Remember iPods before 4th gen?
Anyway, I don't think that battery life for other audio files make a big difference. And video battery life may be a problem only for Zune 80 because trust me, nobody's gonna buy a Zune 4/8 for watching hours of video! That's a digital audio player in the first place, people!
So, um, did anyone notice that this was tested with WMA and WMV? usually, i get mroe battery life from my devices using mp3 over wma and mpeg-4 over wmv. :D
got, engadget should just be an apple blog site, it has biased written all over it.