Cesar Menendez, a Microsoft employee working on the Zune, has posted battery life tests for the new Zune 4 ($199) and Zune 8 ($249) models, slated to be released this mid-November in the United States, on his blog. The smaller of the two flash memory devices should last for up to 24 hours of audio and 4 hours of video. The larger of the two should last for up to 30 hours of audio and 4 hours of video. The catch of course are the words "for up to" as the tests were done with the following conditions, according to Menendez: "We did all testing using pre-production hardware and software, with the wireless turned off. Audio was tested using 128kbps .wma tracks, and video was tested using 500kbps .wmv videos."
News source: Zune Insider