Need help choosing which Zune to get...

[bacon!]

I am going to get a Zune but can't decide between these three...Either the 8gb Zune ($65 refurbished), the 30gb Zune (1st generation, $70, refurbished), or the 80gb Zune ($130 refurbished, comes with AV pack). Here is the link to the refurbished 80gb http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...i_sku=13023186, has anyone ordered a factory refurbished Zune from Walmart? Which of these three should I get? Thanks in advance (Also the other two zunes are from tigerdirect.com)

[CrowdAds]

[Lateralus86]

I have a zune hd and my wife wanted one to share the zune pass so i picked up a 4gb refurb from tigerdirect. No problems as of yet. The case is nice but since i live in a large city with lots of radio stations the FM transmitter doesn't work so well.

[p0ke37]

It sounds to me that you don't have a super large collection since you are considering buying an 8gb zune, but even then I would pay the extra $5 for an extra 22 gigs of memory. If you are planning on adding a few movies to the zune, you might want to consider the zune 80gb though.

From a strictly-storage based perspective:

The zune 08gb is ~$8.13 per gigabyte of storage
The zune 30gb is ~$2.33 per gigabyte of storage
The zune 80gb is ~$1.65 per gigabyte of storage

If you want to save 60 bucks, go with the zune 30gb
If you want to spend a little more and maybe watch movies, get the zune 80gb
I wouldn't reccomend the 8gb

Good luck with your purchase

[m_k]

One other consideration -- the Zune 30 can ONLY use a very specific dialect of the WMV format -- there really isn't a whole lot of support out there for video transcoders that support it properly.

The Zune 80 on the other hand is much more flexible in that department -- it readily plays "Ipod"-formatted videos (I can transcode a video using Handbrake and it will play on my wife's Ipod AND my Zune 80 without any further conversion).

I think the Flash-based Zunes will also accept these formats, but of course you're dealing with a very finite amount of space, with NO ability to bump it up by adding an SD card, like you can with the Sansas).

If you could only get one player, and you can afford it, I'd suggest getting the Zune 80. (Although the Zune 30's "double-shot" casing is IMO a nicer esthetic, the lower capacity and video format restrictions mitigate against it. Also, the 30 is limited to 320x240, whereas the other models can go to a full NTSC-format, which means that if you are displaying via a television or external monitor you can have greater resolution. If you're only using the on-device LCD it's a non-issue, since you'll be u sing 320x240 regardless, in order to be able to fit more content on the player.)

[maskmys]

Actually, Zune 30s support wmv, mp4, and avi as of the latest firmware update.