Hasta La Gadget!

The upcoming Zune HD was the talk of the GDGT launch event in San Francisco last night, and we got a look at the device. First impressions: It’s compact, lightweight, good-looking and has a very slick interface.

Microsoft’s newest media player has a bright, crisp OLED display that the dark lighting of the nightclub showed off to very good effect. It’s fast and responsive: Video looked great on it. Its 480 x 272 pixels are a far cry from HD, but they present a 16:9 aspect ration and they’re bright and contrasty, with deep, rich blacks, so you won’t mind much. Also, we could zoom and swipe between photos with great speed; the screen never stuttered or paused no matter how quickly we zipped and zoomed the images around. The source of that visual oomph? The Nvidia Tegra chip inside. (”I know it’s not the Microsoft software,” quipped one bystander.)

The Zune team has given a lot of thought to the multitouch interface. Swiping gestures made it easy and even a bit fun to zip through menus of music or pictures, and there’s the familiar (and possibly patented) pinch gesture for zooming in and out of photos.

There’s also a dock, which includes an HDMI-out port (and a remote) so you can plug it into an HD television and watch HD videos at 720p. It appeared to be working just fine. The dock/remote combo will be sold as a separate accessory.

Why would you want to plug your Zune into a TV? The best the Microsoft rep could offer was this: Suppose you’re in a hotel room and you want to watch your movies or look at your photos on the big screen. Hm: What kind of movies and photos would that be?

Microsoft was not saying anything about what the Zune HD will cost or when it will be available. They also wouldn’t let us photograph the interface, apart from the HD radio screen shown above, stating that it was still a “work in progress.”

Photo: Dylan Tweney / Wired.com