Naturally, how you choose to operate your Zune player is going to affect the total lifetime of your Zune battery. With the wireless turned off and under normal circumstances when you’re just listening to an mp3, the Zune battery will last you a good 14 hours. If you’re playing videos on the player, however, the battery life drops down to about 4 hours.
There’s a few smart things you can do to effectively maximize the overall lifespan of your Zune battery.
The first thing you should do is update the Zune firmware. This is essentially a free upgrade that improves the operation of your Zune, you have no reason not to upgrade anyway.
When you’re listening to your songs, the less interaction you have between you and the player the better. This will improve battery life tons. For this reason, I suggest that you only use the Play All or Shuffle All options on your Zune. You can do this easily using the playlists.
Using the backlights on your Zune will cut your battery life down drastically. If you can, reduce the time you use the backlight. Also, make sure you don’t set the backlight to always on. High brightness settings can also drain the life out of your battery. When you’re in places where you have a lot of natural sunlight, be sure to set the brightness settings back down to low so you can save your battery.
The wireless option on your Zune player is a great extra feature to have when you need it, but it will also drain the battery if you have it on. If you aren’t sharing files, turn it off when you aren’t using it.
As you can see there’s many effective ways to save on your Zune’s battery life. By far the most battery saving tip is to just turn it off when you aren’t using it. When you turn off the Zune, it puts it into low-power standby mode. If the Zune doesn’t have any activity within the next day, it will revert to sleep-mod and should take about 8-10 seconds to power back up.
