Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Zune announced via press release that new players in different capacities and colors would be available this week, along with a software update.

Despite their different approaches, these two announcements shared a notable common thread: integrated music discovery. Each company’s new software features ways for users to find automatically generated suggestions of music they might like, the way Pandora Media Inc.’s popular personalized music lists do. Of course, music discovery also encourages users to buy more.

Apple’s new iPods include a thinner Nano with an accelerometer, which senses the direction a screen is being held in a user’s hands and flips the display horizontally or vertically. These Nanos come in eight- or 16-gigabyte versions for $149 or $199 and are available in nine bright colors. A new, thinner iPod Touch with a built-in speaker was also unveiled, and it comes in eight-, 16- or 32-gigabyte versions for $229, $299 or $399.

Microsoft’s two new Zune players come in 16- and 120-gigabyte capacities for $200 and $250, respectively. All Zunes have built-in FM tuners and wireless capability, but the new upgrade allows users to buy and download songs they hear on their Zunes’ radios via Wi-Fi, when available.

While Apple’s iPod has been a snowballing success for the company, its companion iTunes software is no slouch. To date, 65 million iTunes store accounts with associated credit cards have been set up on Macs and Windows PCs. But iTunes has always been weak on music discovery and community.

Apple (AAPL) calls iTunes 8’s ability to make smart music recommendations the “Genius” feature. The tool can automatically do two things after analyzing a selected song from your music library. First, it can generate a playlist of songs from tunes you own. Second, it can generate a list of songs you don’t own but might want to buy from the iTunes store.

MicrosoftZune’s Mixview feature displays content related to an artist with an explanation of the relationship.

Microsoft’s Zune software discovers and recommends music using categories called “Picks,” “Channels” and “Mixview.” The last of the three, Mixview, generates recommendations for other musicians and albums, as well as other Zune users with whom you might like to connect. The suggestions are based on the artist of the song you’re playing and are displayed in an interactive graphic that explains how each is linked — for instance, if your artist was influenced by a band or if a member of Zune’s social network is a top listener of the artist you’re playing.

After using the music-discovery software from Apple and Microsoft (MSFT), I felt like Apple’s Genius tool still had a lot to learn, though the company says it will improve over time as more people start using it. Zune’s software had some similar issues, but it offered recommendations in a richer, more engaging manner, encouraging me to keep digging around and learn more about my music. Though I didn’t happen to have as much time to use Zune’s software as I did Apple’s Genius, I got more out of my Zune experience.

Apple offers much more content at its iTunes store than Zune. In all categories, iTunes takes the lead: in songs, 8.5 million songs to Zune’s 4 million; in music videos, 10,000 versus 8,500; in television episodes, 30,000 versus 3,000; and in audio and video podcasts, 125,000 versus 6,000.

To analyze and learn from your music, Apple scans the contents of your music library, which may raise privacy concerns for some people. Apple says that the information it collects is completely anonymous, and that it does not and will not associate this information on its servers with you or your account.

Some of my Genius playlists were well-crafted, including songs that meshed well with one another. But outliers cropped up, such as when “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash was stuck in the middle of a list generated from Coldplay’s gentler ballad, “Green Eyes.” Some songs won’t generate playlists if you don’t have enough related songs in your library; this happened to me with the pop hit “Apologize” by Timbaland, featuring OneRepublic.

Songs from artists whose content isn’t sold in iTunes, such as The Beatles, won’t generate Genius lists, because Genius makes suggestions based only on what it sells in its iTunes catalog. Genius will soon work with songs beyond those sold in iTunes.

Genius has a bigger problem. If you hit “Play” in iTunes, a Genius sidebar appears to offer content related to a selected song. But as play continues, Genius doesn’t continuously generate new recommendations; instead, it’s stuck on the very first song that was selected — which you might have chosen two hours ago. This means music discovery must be a manual process, rather than an as-you-listen convenience.

Genius playlists can be made on a computer or iPod and sync back and forth. I synced Genius lists on two iPod touches, but this didn’t work in one test with an iPhone. Apple said it couldn’t replicate this problem and hadn’t had other reports of it.

Zune software never scans your music collection. Instead, it knows only the number of times you played a song and how you may have rated a song.

Zune’s Mixview adds a real zing to the discovery process. It is a kaleidoscope-like graphic that appears on the screen when a song, artist, album or friend’s Zune Card is selected. The selected item is surrounded by eight to 10 floating squares filled with graphics and text, each holding a related song, album, artist or graphic representation of a Zune listener who’s considered an “expert” on the selection.

Each of these related squares includes a line of text explaining its relationship to the center item. For example, as I played “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, Cyril Davies appeared as a related artist; an image of Arthur Alexander appeared as an influencer of the Stones; a Zune community member with the tag “Rreynoso” appeared as the top listener for the band and other Stones albums were displayed.

Mixview changes as you explore it. When one of its recommendations is selected, a new Mixview is created around that selection, encouraging discovery. But Mixview has the same problem as Apple’s Genius: When one song ends and another begins, the Mixview graphic doesn’t automatically change; you must manually start Mixview for a new song. Zune says it doesn’t want to change the graphic in case a user is in mid-exploration.

Unlike Genius, Mixview shows songs and artists beyond what Zune sells online. But the company says Mixview does “favor” Zune content, and Zune Picks are limited to items sold by Zune.

Zune Picks and Channels are more passive ways of discovering music: Picks are generated for you in Zune Marketplace according to your listening habits. Zune Channels bring collections of music to Zune devices and software, but these are useful only for Zune Pass members who pay $15 monthly.

Apple’s Genius is a helpful tool when it comes to quickly making a playlist, and its iTunes sidebar might reveal fresh related content. But the Zune software truly allows people to discover more about their own music and that of others.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

Digital Cameras

Megapixels: This term describes the highest resolution photo a camera can take. Often mistaken as the most important factor in a digital camera, a high megapixel count — such as 10MP or more — isn’t necessary for the average user unless he or she plans on heavily editing or enlarging photos. Most new digicams offer between five and eight megapixels, which is usually more than enough.

Optical or Digital Zoom: Optical zoom, determined by the physical movement of a lens, matters much more than digital zoom, which digitally alters an image using the camera’s internal computer. Camera companies still try to confuse potential buyers by listing a camera’s total zoom, or the optical and digital zooms multiplied together. Ignore total zoom numbers and instead focus on optical, which now averages around 5x for many new cameras.

Image Stabilization: When generously sized LCD viewing screens started replacing optical viewfinders, they also forced users to hold their cameras at arm’s length, making for plenty of blurry photographs. To remedy this, camera manufacturers have added image stabilization, tools once found only in high-end SLR models. Optical (also called “mechanical”) and digital image stabilization correct for unsteady hands and moving subjects, respectively. Cameras with both types advertise dual image stabilization, which corrects for both situations and costs more.

Mobile Devices

HSDPA and EVDO: HSDPA, or High Speed Downlink Packet Access, is the name for AT&T’s 3G, or third generation, mobile network that operates at roughly the speed of a slower DSL in a home. HSDPA is available in most major metropolitan areas and is seen as the competitor to Verizon and Sprint’s EVDO (Evolution Data Only) networks, though the popular iPhone runs on AT&T’s network using Wi-Fi and EDGE technology rather than HSDPA.

Multi-Touch Technology: Most popularly found on Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, multi-touch is starting to show up in other products, such as in Microsoft’s Surface, a coffee-table-like computer. Rather than just responding to on-screen touches, this technology enables moving, resizing and zooming pictures and Web pages using one or more fingers simultaneously. Look for many more devices — mobile and otherwise — to incorporate multi-touch in the future.

GPS: Global Positioning Systems are most often found in cars — either built-in or on portable devices from companies like Garmin and TomTom. These gadgets use satellite technology to determine geographic location, and high-end models even display Web content like news and weather along with directions. GPS integration in mobile devices can be used to plot routes in cars, can help users find nearby businesses while on the go and can link friends by showing one where the other is located and what they’re doing.

Digital Music

DRM: Digital rights management is a set of standards that protect the intellectual property rights of online content like music and videos, preventing it from being illegally distributed across the Web. In the past year, Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Apple and (most recently) Sony BMG said they will start selling DRM-free versions of songs, often for a higher price. In Apple’s iTunes store, these files are called “iTunes Plus” and aren’t restricted like other iTunes content.

MP3: MP3 files are open, without any DRM restrictions. Files that you rip (copy) from your own CDs are usually converted into MP3s, though iTunes users can automatically rip tracks into that program’s special format, called AAC. MP3 files can be uploaded to social-networking sites for sharing with friends and online communities.

These file types are protected by rights that tie them to specific players. Generally, AAC files make up the majority of tracks sold on Apple’s iTunes store and play only on Apple’s iPods; WMA files are Microsoft’s version of proprietary files.

Wi-Fi

The popularity of Wireless Fidelity, or Wi-Fi, brings this technology to more and more portable devices like the iPod Touch and Microsoft Zune and gives companies good reason to incorporate Wi-Fi receivers in new computers — laptops and desktops alike. While available in many flavors, different letters like b, g, a and n stand behind Wi-Fi’s more technical name, 802.11, to help discern one version from another according to characteristics like speed and compatibility. The latest version, “n,” offers the greatest range and speed, and “n” devices are usually compatible with earlier versions.

Televisions

HDTV: High-definition television has now become the standard, capable of displaying vastly better pictures, provided the source is also HD. Today’s more popular flat panel HD televisions are LCDs, or liquid crystal displays, though plasmas still hold their own. Recording HD content can’t be done with a regular digital video recorder; instead, a special HD recorder is required to capture this higher quality content.

480p vs. 1080i vs. 720p vs. 1080p: These numbers refer to the resolution, or sharpness, of a digital display, while “p” stands for progressive and “i” stands for interlaced. A resolution of 480p, known as EDTV or Enhanced Definition TV, is found most often in low-end plasmas or LCD screens. A TV with a resolution of 1080p is currently considered the Holy Grail, and costs the most. But 1080p pictures usually can’t be distinguished from less expensive 1080i or 720p pictures by average viewers at the typical distances from which most folks watch TV.

Blu-ray vs. HD DVD: Blu-ray and HD DVD are incompatible high-definition disc formats that continue to fight a seemingly endless battle to replace the DVD. The Blu-ray camp is led by Sony and the HD DVD camp is led by Toshiba. The two formats aren’t so different, technically speaking, but their very existence is confusing to consumers. The recent decision made by Time Warner’s Warner Bros. to use Blu-ray gives Sony’s side a boost, and now Viacom’s Paramount is rumored to be switching to Blu-ray from HD DVD. Dual-format players from Samsung and LG offer some solace.

Email: mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Last year, when Microsoft Corp. introduced its Zune music player to take on Apple’s iPod juggernaut, the software giant struck out. While the Zune had a good user interface and a larger screen than the iPod, it was bigger and boxier, with clumsier controls, weaker battery life and more complex software. Its companion online music store had a much smaller catalog, a more complicated purchase process and no videos for sale. And the Zune’s most innovative feature, built-in Wi-Fi networking, was nearly useless and added little value to the players, which sold so poorly that Apple barely noticed.

The Zune Pad adds touch functionality for improved navigation.

But Microsoft is nothing if not persistent, and this week, the company is back with a second, improved round of Zunes. The chunky, older 30-gigabyte model remains in the lineup, but it’s joined by a slimmed-down full-size Zune that holds 80 gigabytes, and by a much smaller model that holds four or eight gigabytes. Prices range from $150 to $250. The 80-gigabyte Zune is available only in black, and the others come in red, green, black and pink.

We’ve been testing these new Zunes and find them to be notably better than last year’s entry. They are smaller, lighter and more attractive, and they include three big improvements. First is a new controller, called a Zune Pad, that combines buttons with a touch pad for scrolling. Second is a completely overhauled, simpler PC-software program and online store, the Zune Marketplace. Third is expanded usability of the built-in Wi-Fi, which allows you to synchronize your Zune and your PC without plugging in a cable and makes sharing songs between Zunes — its only function last year — slightly better.

Zune’s Marketplace is visually attractive.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, Apple hasn’t been standing still, either. It now has its own large-screen, wireless model, the iPod Touch, with a radical “multi-touch” interface like the iPhone’s. The screen on the Touch is larger than the one on the bigger Zunes and is much sharper. Its Wi-Fi allows you to browse the Web, watch YouTube videos and even buy music without a PC — none of which is possible on a Zune — though the Touch is $50 more and holds much less content than the new full-size Zune.

Microsoft’s new Zunes are directly aimed at the iPod Classic, Apple’s full-size, high-capacity model, and the iPod nano, its compact version. But, here again, Apple has been on the move. The 80-gigabyte Classic, which costs the same as the 80-gigabyte Zune, is slimmer than the Zune and has a flashy new interface, if a smaller screen. And the eight-gigabyte nano, which costs the same as the eight-gigabyte Zune, now plays videos and is much smaller — yet has a larger screen. Neither of these iPods includes Wi-Fi.

In addition, Apple has spiffed up its iTunes software, adding various features, including the addictive Cover Flow, which allows you to flip through all your albums with just a flick of the mouse. Cover Flow also shows up on the nano, the Classic and the Touch. Even the new Zune PC software has no interface as compelling.

And Apple still trounces Microsoft in the selection of media it sells. The iTunes store offers more than six million songs, about double what the Zune Marketplace offers, and dwarfs Microsoft’s selection of Podcasts and music videos, as well. Plus, Zune Marketplace still doesn’t sell any TV shows, movies or audiobooks, while iTunes does.

Radio Feature

Overall, we still don’t think the Zune line beats the iPods and iTunes. However, one of the Zunes, the full-size Zune 80, could give the iPod some competition, especially among new digital-player buyers who aren’t invested in the iTunes ecosystem. For the same price, it offers a significantly larger screen (albeit with the same resolution), wireless syncing and sharing, and a built-in FM radio — an existing Zune feature that the iPod lacks.

We tested the $249.99 80-gigabyte Zune 80 against Apple’s iPod Classic with the same capacity and price and then did the same for the $199.99 eight-gigabyte Zune 8 compared with the iPod nano equivalent.

We didn’t get a chance to test the battery life on the new Zune models or that of the iPod Classic and nano. But Microsoft concedes that unless you turn off Wi-Fi — one of the Zune’s key advantages — its claimed battery life is lower than Apple’s claims. Microsoft estimates as many as 19 and 24 hours of music playback with Wi-Fi on for the eight- and 80-gigabyte, respectfully. Apple claims as many as 24 hours and 30 hours, respectively, on the competitive models, which lack Wi-Fi. In the past, Apple has generally understated its battery claims, while last year, Microsoft overstated its claims.

Easier Navigating

On both Zunes, the front hosts just three buttons: the Zune Pad, a back button and a Play/Pause button. Its menus are divided into Music, Videos, Pictures, Social, Radio, Podcasts and Settings; navigating through this menu list and hundreds of songs is made easier with the Zune Pad’s touch functions. To zip through a list, we flicked a finger up or down. The top, bottom, right and left sides each work as individual buttons, as does the center of the Zune Pad.

The user interface is mainly unchanged from last year and still works very well, requiring an economical number of steps for each action.

Zune’s black, red and green colors are fine, but rather masculine — the latter reminded us of camouflage. But the pink was a glaring shade more appropriate for My Little Pony; it looks like an afterthought.

We initiated wireless syncs with the Zune software program, plugging the player into our PC the first time but leaving it disconnected each time after that. Wireless syncing took a little longer than with a cord and must be initiated by the user from within the player’s settings. One frustration: Presumably to save battery life, the Zune disconnects from the network periodically and then must reconnect the next time you want to use the Wi-Fi. Also, the Zune can’t wirelessly sync if you’re at a public hot spot that requires you to log in or pay.

Intelligent Syncing

This year’s Zunes also introduce a concept Microsoft intends to build on: intelligent, or automated, syncing. If you have your Zune set to sync only some of your music, not all, and drag an artist’s name onto the Zune icon in the PC software, the software will thereafter automatically sync every song you add to the PC from that artist. Microsoft believes many people would welcome such automation.

The Zune’s FM radio is well-designed and easy to use. Using the Zune Pad to flick left or right along the station grid, our Zunes detected numerous static-free stations, and we marked certain stations as presets by holding down the center button. Each radio’s digital data appeared on-screen, including the artist and song title.

We shared songs between our Zunes, beaming tracks from the 80-gigabyte to the eight-gigabyte and vice versa. A wirelessly shared song can be played by the recipient three times whenever they choose. Microsoft has removed the three-day time limit that applied last year. A minute of playing time, or half the duration of a song (whatever comes first) constitutes one play. At first, it took our Zunes a couple tries to recognize one another, even though they were both set to share music. And we noted that invitations to accept shared music don’t include any information about the music, so you could get stuck downloading an annoying tune or one you already own.

Photo Finish

Photos and videos looked great on the Zunes — about as good as they do on the comparable iPod nanos and better than on the iPod Classic because that iPod model’s screen is much smaller than its Zune counterpart’s. However, album art, which is often lower-resolution than normal photos, looked grainier on the big Zune than on the big iPod. And none of the Zunes came close to the stunning photo and video quality offered on the iPod Touch and the iPhone.

We didn’t get to test Zune’s a la carte point system for buying and downloading tracks because it wasn’t up and running yet. Neither were music-video downloads. We each had Zune Pass accounts, which work like subscriptions. If the Zune account stops, all content acquired during the user’s subscription is lost.

Album Focus

Navigating through Zune’s software can be a tad confusing. Four categories at the top left of your PC’s screen are meant to help: Collection, Device, Marketplace and Social. Collection shows your downloaded or owned content and focuses a bit too much on albums, which are becoming less significant with the ever-growing popularity of digital music. One example of this is the Collection’s default center panel shows album art sorted by date added.

Zune Marketplace’s artist pages really shine. Upon selecting a band or artist, a rich, full-screen background image of that group or person appears on the page with lists of songs floating atop the image. Various still photos of each artist are included; we found 10 for Mary Chapin Carpenter and 15 for Nelly Furtado.

A full-screen artist page for Avril Lavigne on Zune Marketplace

After listening to a Yo-Yo Ma album in her music collection, Katie wanted to download additional performances of the famous cellist from the Zune Marketplace online store. But, unlike iTunes, Zune’s software program doesn’t offer a way to link directly from your Collection to Marketplace for buying more of a certain artist or another song from an album you already own.

Another navigational hiccup in Zune’s Marketplace is its inability to bookmark searches. If, after searching in Zune’s online store to buy and download more Yo-Yo Ma, Katie looked in her Collection to see which piece she played last or liked most, then returned to the online store, her Marketplace store search would be lost and she’d need to start over. The iTunes store bookmarks your place during searches, allowing you to navigate through any other part of iTunes before returning to the idle search.

Zune tries to compensate for this glitch by identifying songs in the online store that you already own — either bought through Zune Marketplace or from other sources — with an “In Collection” label so you don’t accidentally buy content you already own. Likewise, if a song in your Collection is already synched to be on the player, a tiny Zune icon appears beside that song title.

Unlike iTunes, Zune software can’t create smart playlists. And it only offers two views, Browse and List, versus three in iTunes: Cover Flow, lists, and lists with album art.

Microsoft has greatly improved the Zune hardware and software this time. But it seems to be competing with Apple’s last efforts, not its newest ones.

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

But despite improvements on the original iPod, none has enabled interaction with other players or wireless Internet connectivity–two features that competitors are eager to offer so as to chip away at iPod’s huge market share. Microsoft Corp.’s Zune music player, for example, was shipped with built-in Wi-Fi, enabling song sharing–albeit limited — with nearby Zunes.

Apple is about to bring out its own wireless music player in the iPhone, which combines a full iPod with Wi-Fi and cellphone connectivity. But so far, it’s unclear whether you’ll be able to use the iPhone to download or share music.

This week, I tested SanDisk’s $250 Sansa Connect player, a collaborative effort from SanDisk Corp., Yahoo Inc.’s Yahoo Music and Zing Systems Inc. that comes with built-in Wi-Fi for more than just limited sharing with other players. Unlike the iPod, which must be plugged into a computer to load new music, Sansa Connect can play and download content on the player whenever a Wi-Fi network is available, including photos, Internet Radio, songs from Yahoo’s music store or recommendations from friends.

The Sansa Connect isn’t without flaws. Downloading music on the go requires a subscription plan that costs $144 a year or $15 monthly, so you never outright own this content. The player also relies on a Wi-Fi connection for much of its functionality, and you may not always be within Wi-Fi range. Another problem is that Yahoo’s music store doesn’t sell videos and offers fewer songs than Apple’s iTunes: roughly two million versus five million. Lastly, the Sansa Connect doesn’t enable searching the store for specific music. Instead, you’re limited to Internet radio or play-lists suggested by Yahoo, a caveat that can be maddening if you want to find a certain title or artist.

But overall, I really liked the Sansa Connect. It forced me to look at my portable player as an evolving, untethered device that introduced me to lots of songs. When it wasn’t connected to Wi-Fi, I was disappointed to not be downloading new songs. My iPod suddenly seemed old-fashioned.

The four-gigabyte, black Sansa Connect isn’t as handsome as the iPod, and has a stubby Wi-Fi antenna protruding from its top edge. It measures about a half an inch wider than and two and a half times as thick as the comparably priced iPod Nano, which has twice as much memory–eight gigabytes rather than four. The Sansa Connect has a microSD card slot for expanding its capacity, but doesn’t come with such a card.

The Sansa has a movable scroll wheel similar to that found on the original iPod. This wheel aids navigation tremendously, as does its smart interface. A colorful 2.2-inch display showed seven menus in a fan formation at the bottom of the screen, and I flipped through each by turning the wheel. A tiny speaker is built onto the back of the device, which came in handy more often than I anticipated.

I cut right to the chase when I opened my Sansa Connect, testing its Wi-Fi capabilities by playing an Internet radio station through the device. The player detected my Wi-Fi network, I entered my Yahoo username and password and seconds later was listening to a new Carrie Underwood song on one of 16 pop stations.

Even without a paid subscription to Yahoo Music Unlimited To Go, owners of the Sansa Connect can access about 100 Internet Radio stations; subscribers get twice as many. Each player comes with a free 30-day subscription.

You can also view uploaded digital photos without a subscription. The Sansa Connect links to Yahoo’s free photo-sharing site, Flickr.com, so you can see your images as well as the top 50 photos Flickr labels as Today’s Most Interesting–but you can’t view friends’ albums. These photos looked good on my Sansa Connect screen, automatically adjusting to fit the screen in landscape or portrait views depending on the image.

With a subscription, the Sansa Connect’s Wi-Fi connection becomes more useful. While a song is playing, you can press a button to download it or the whole album to your player. I tried this with Mat Kearney’s “Nothing Left To Lose,” opting first to download just that song but then deciding to get the entire album. One by one, the songs downloaded, averaging about 10 seconds each at best, until they were loaded in the player’s My Music section.

Finding exact songs, artists or albums using the Sansa Connect is complete hit or miss. Rather than gaining access to Yahoo’s entire store on your player, you’re limited to choosing from general genres via the Internet Radio section, top songs on Yahoo Music or Yahoo’s recommendations for what you’ll like. So if you want to hear a certain band, you’ll have to guess which category the band falls under in Internet Radio, hope to see one of its songs and then download as the song plays.

Though this lack of a search process is frustrating at times, it also might force you to discover music that you haven’t yet heard. This is a different way of thinking for iPodders, so it may not catch on as easily as the Sansa player’s creators hoped.

But remember: The Sansa Connect is Wi-Fi capable so it can receive software updates wirelessly, adding new features to the player at any time. Its developers say search on the device is something they’re looking at for the future.

If you’re desperate to load your player with familiar tunes, you can always plug it into your computer and sync it with music in your Yahoo Music Jukebox–its version of iTunes. You can download songs with your subscription, or just buy them–each costs 79 cents with a subscription or 99 cents without. Any regular MP3s that you have stored on your computer will transfer over to the player, as expected, which I did easily.

You can also create play-lists in your Yahoo Music Jukebox on a PC and these will be wirelessly sent to your player, ready for downloading whenever you choose. I did this with a few different play-lists to get some specific songs that I wanted.

The final component of the Sansa Connect works through Yahoo Messenger. Using the player itself, you can log onto Messenger to send or receive song recommendations to or from friends who are logged onto Messenger at a PC or on another Sansa Connect player–but they must have a subscription to listen to your recommendations, and vice versa.

Wi-Fi is a real battery sapper, and the company estimates that continuous Wi-Fi usages will cut the Sansa’s estimated 12-hour battery life by half. But you’ll rarely have Wi-Fi on continuously, and the player smartly shuts Wi-Fi off the instant you’re not using it to conserve battery power.

Even though the Sansa Connect requires a Wi-Fi connection for most of its magic, this player is refreshingly fun to use when it works. I’m never completely surprised by the next tune that plays on my iPod and must rely on the radio or friends’ suggestions to hear new music. The Sansa Connect solves that problem by giving your portable player new life.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com.

Next month marks the fifth anniversary of one of the most successful products of the digital era, Apple Computer’s iPod music player. Since 2001, potential iPod-killers have come and gone like autumn foliage. Apple claims an astonishing 76% market share in the U.S. for the iPod and an equally amazing 88% share of the U.S. legal music download market for its companion iTunes online store. Over 60 million iPods and 1.5 billion songs have been sold.

The Cover Flow feature in the new iTunes

Still, this autumn, the iPod could face its greatest challenge. Microsoft, after failing for years to combat the iconic gadget, will launch a new assault Nov. 14 with a player called Zune. Unlike past Microsoft music efforts, the Zune will be sold by Microsoft itself, and, like the iPod, it will be tightly integrated with companion software and an online music store.

Not only that, but this week, RealNetworks‘ Rhapsody music service, the best of the iTunes competitors, will announce its own player, jointly developed with SanDisk, which is the second-place player maker, albeit a distant second.

So, this holiday season Apple has made some of the biggest changes to the iPod and iTunes in years. It has redesigned the iPod Nano and Shuffle, cut prices and/or raised capacities on all models, introduced a new iPod search feature, added color games and movie playback to the full-sized iPod, and more. Plus, it has given the iTunes software its biggest overhaul ever, making the software both simpler and more fun to use.

Oh, and it has started selling downloadable feature films, which can be played on computers, iPods, and, soon, via a forthcoming new device, on TV sets.

We’ve been testing the new iPods and iTunes for several weeks, as well as the new movie download service. Our review of the hardware and software follows here. See the accompanying article for our take on the movie downloads.

Our verdict: the new iPods are more versatile and less costly than ever, but the new iTunes software is an even bigger improvement, although it has one big downside — its coolest new feature is so graphically demanding that it doesn’t work right on some older computers.

For the main iPod, the biggest changes are in capacity, price, battery life and software. The base version, which holds 30 gigabytes, is now $249, a $50 price cut presumably intended to put pressure on Microsoft. The higher-end model, at $349, is also $50 less than last year’s version, even though it holds 80 gigabytes, up from 60 gigabytes last year. Battery life for video playback has been greatly improved, to 3.5 hours on the base model, up from just two hours on last year’s model. The bigger model has 6.5 hours of video playback time, up from 4 hours. (Battery life for music is unchanged.)

The iPod’s screen is also now 60% brighter. But what’s now on the screen is even more interesting: There’s now a search feature that lets you find items alphabetically, by using the scroll wheel to select letters. In our tests, it worked well. And, in addition to viewing full-length movies on the full-sized iPod, you can now play classic color games, such as Tetris, Pac-Man, Bejeweled, Poker and Mahjong. Apple sells these games via iTunes for $4.99 each.

In our tests, playing even very familiar games with a scroll wheel instead of a mouse or joystick took some adjustment. But, eventually, we got the hang of it, and the color and detail of the games on the iPod’s screen was impressive.

The iPod Nano also has the new search feature, but it can’t play the movies or games. It has been given a new aluminum skin, like the old iPod Mini had. This has two advantages: It resists the scratches that affected the first Nano models last year, and it allows for a range of bright colors. It’s even a teeny bit thinner and lighter than the amazingly small original Nano. We liked the new Nano and found it worked well.

Clockwise from the left: the 4GB iPod nano, iPod, and iPod shuffle.

The Nano still comes in three versions, but the capacities for each have been doubled while the prices remain the same. The base $149 Nano now holds 2 gigabytes and comes in silver only. The middle $199 Nano now holds 4 gigabytes and comes in four colors, including a hot pink. And the $249 top-of-the-line Nano now holds 8 gigabytes and is black only.

Even greater changes have been made in Apple’s iTunes software, the biggest overhaul since it came out in 2001. ITunes is one of the world’s most popular software programs, much more popular than the iPod itself. That’s because many people use iTunes, which is free, to manage and download music on their Windows and Macintosh computers, even if they don’t own iPods.

But iTunes had been growing long in the tooth. It didn’t do as good a job with video as with music, and was visually boring. So the new iTunes 7, which is still nearly identical on Windows and Macintosh, has lots of new stuff.

The coolest new feature is called Cover Flow, an optional way of viewing your music library. In Cover Flow, the top half of your screen is filled with an array of all your album covers, and as you scroll through your songs with the mouse or keyboard — or, as songs play — the album cover for each appears in the center of the array. Sometimes, if you’re skipping around in a large library, the covers flip by at high speed, finally settling on the one you’re playing.

In a way, it’s just a parlor trick, and it sounds like it’s no big deal. But we loved it, because it reminded us of flipping through a box of old vinyl albums or watching an old jukebox in a diner. It actually helped remind us of albums we’d forgotten about.

If you don’t have the album covers for all your songs, iTunes 7 will fetch them online free, so Cover Flow can work. Cover Flow also works with video clips, displaying either the official art supplied by iTunes, for purchased videos, or just a still from the video for other clips.

Unfortunately, Cover Flow puts such heavy demand on computer graphics systems that it doesn’t work properly or at all on some machines, especially older or more limited Windows computers. While it worked fine on our Macs and on our Dell and Hewlett-Packard Windows desktops, it failed on Katie’s Toshiba laptop and in a virtual Windows machine running under the Parallels software on a MacBook Pro laptop.

Apple has released a revision of iTunes 7 to address Cover Flow issues and some other problems, but the revision didn’t do the trick on our problem machines.

Beyond Cover Flow, iTunes 7 sports numerous other new features. It can now detect when albums were meant to be played without gaps between songs, as on many classical albums and a few rock albums, such as the Beatles’ Abbey Road. In fact, it will go through your library, find all such albums, and eliminate the gaps. This “gapless playback” feature also extends to the new iPods.

This latest iTunes also sports separate libraries for music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, audiobooks and games. And, when you attach an iPod, it offers a much cleaner and more comprehensive tabbed interface for managing the synchronization of music, videos, photos, and other content.

And, finally, you can use your iPod to move content from one computer to another, although this feature only works with content you purchased from Apple.

It’s impossible to know if Apple can sustain its remarkably high market shares in the face of new competition, but it is going into the battle with better products at better prices.

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com.