Zune Wireless Review

Courtesy : http://www.engadget.com/

we've seen the wireless, we know by now what it's capable of: sending tracks to any Zune player in the vicinity, which are then placed in an "inbox," and restricted to 3 plays or 3 days (whichever comes first). We all think it's lame, but apparently it's the best Microsoft could do in terms of sharing. We wish they'd taken a page out of MusicGremlin's book by allowing Zune Pass (unlimited download) members the ability to trade files wirelessly without restriction, but maybe they'll add that in the future. Then again, maybe not -- they're not saying. Whatever, either way we're pretty clear on our feelings about the wireless feature as it stands today; but if we had to make good on our promise to Mom to say something nice or nothing at all, we would definitely mention that sending and receiving music and photos is totally seamless. No configuration was required, no menus traversed. You're prompted to accept a file, and boom, it's done.


For the purposes of this review, we did not scientifically test wireless transfer speeds, but our use was about as expected. Zune transferred an average-sized song in a few seconds; small batches of pictures took about the same amount of time because of the file overhead. Interesting note: when your device is not yet registered with a Zune Tag through setup, the wireless options are totally disabled. (See above for the WiFi-free Zune; note the lack of Community menu item and wireless settings.) We guess they absolutely must keep track of who's transferring what!