As a Zune owner, and an iPod owner, I can honestly say that the Zune has much better playback quality. The new Zunes don’t have equalizer settings, and at first that worried me, but when I switch the Zune between my car, headphones, speakers, etc. it sounds much better on each platform. With the iPod I was constantly tweaking EQ settings to get it to sound at least somewhat decent, sometimes with mixed results.

So, having had both, and considering I’ve listened to both in the same environments, the Zune really does have better sound quality. Which is kind of unexpected, because you’d think the iPod would be better since it’s been out longer. Not the case.