Toshiba Gigabeat F20

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?head=39&page=3751' target='_blank'>http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?head=39&page=3751</a><br /><br /></div><i>"There are three capacity sizes with 20, 40 and 60GB models available in silver or brushed black aluminium finishes. Our review unit was a 20GB model making it slightly thinner than its bigger brother and weighing less at 160G. On the face of it, the 20GB model offers tremendous value. 20GB of capacity, a 2.2in 320 x 240 resolution colour display, a cradle and at 16 hours, slightly more battery life than the iPod, and all for a lot less than the 20GB Apple player. The latter also has a lower resolution screen and no dock. The 20GB Gigabeat doesn't include a remote control but it is supplied with the 40 and 60GB versions."</i> <br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/1702-incradle.jpg" /><br /><br /><br />It is a very nice looking player and according to the review, has excellent sound quality, and a plethora of features, but unfortunately for Toshiba it scored low in usability thereby taking it out of the competition.

[Macguy59]

Further proof that the competition just doesn't get it. It's the OS and ease of use not all the bells and whistles. It happens on the desktop so why not just copy the UI of the iPods?

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Further proof that the competition just doesn't get it. It's the OS and ease of use not all the bells and whistles. It happens on the desktop so why not just copy the UI of the iPods?

Because all the Apple fanboys will start ridiculing the newcomer and start a smear campaign of hate and anger at said newcomer for having the sheer audacity to copy the untouchable Apple!

BTW, Creative's players has some elements of the iPod, and in fact some of them came way before the iPod debuted.

[jeffd]

I have a theory on the Ipod success.. it is because people are stupid. Technicaly, I've seen a crap load of players that eat the ipod for breakfast. The only reason the ipod is/remains popular is because a) it has a better marketing compaign (ie apple throws more money at it), b) it does tend to have the better online store for buying songs.

This one looks fairly exceptional, I like how it contains alot of quality hardware like the screen and audio, and yet retains a low price point. It does seem to have a reliance of requiring another program to upload to it wich might be a pain, but other then that the only features this guy had problems with, related to uploading and displaying pictures in wich case I say keep it. I have no interest in loading anything remotly interesting to be viewed on a tiny 2.2 inch screen. Just give me a good ui.

[Macguy59]

BTW, Creative's players has some elements of the iPod, and in fact some of them came way before the iPod debuted.

Which elements would those be? For the record I do like the looks of this device and were I to go back to using Windows, would give it a serious look.

[Tim Williamson]

A few weeks ago I was in the market for an MP3 player so I bought one of these from Fry's (since they didn't have one on display). My usability test with all devices is to just play with it and see if I can figure it out without reading the instructions.

First off, the X that is used to navigate was not very easy to use, I would usually scroll past the item I was trying to get to.

Second, as far as I could tell, it requires you to install their software for transferring music to it. I tried manually copying the music to the device but it didn't see the songs, I think the software must add the music to a database (I may be wrong about this) that the player uses to keep the music organized.

Finally, the interface just wasn't intuitive or easy to use.

I like Toshiba overall, but I would recommend against this player.

I had also picked up an Arcos jukebox which was detected as a hard drive, would allow you to copy media and files directly to it, and had a very straightforward interface. I ended up taking that one back also because it was too much to pay for something I would mainly be using for music.

P.S. I'm still without an MP3 player, I opted for a laptop, but will get an MP3 player once the perfect one comes out. :wink: