Jake Ludington’s MediaBlab has some photos of the two portable MP3 players entering into a death-match this winter. We expected the iPod to be a little smaller than Zune ,but Jake reports that the iPod is actually heavier. The iPod is an 80Gig of the latest iteration just picked up days ago.

For that size difference you’re getting wi-fi and a full 3 inch screen out of a 30Gig Zune. The iPod Video is 80 Gigs a 2.5 inch screen and no wi-fi.

It’s not that I’m an iPod fanboy. Oh, I own one and love it but I’m also sick of the iPod-mania and endless peripherals out there. The absolute coolest iPod peripheral is the Fatman iTube Dock.

But in light of exactly how Zune’s wi-fi is to be used, it’s just not going to cut it. It looks like you’ll be able to locate and share DRMed music samples with other Zune users, but you won’t be able to connect directly to Zune’s music service for downloading through wi-fi. So, what good is that? A little gadget called MusicGremlin has been doing that bit for months, which makes it a groundbreaking device that not even Microsoft has been able to top. But to be fair, this is only the first generation Zune; in the future maybe they’ll get it right. More about MusicGremlin and Zune features in a later post.

For my money I’ll stick with my year-old 20 Gig iPod with the fourth gen Wolfson DACs.