Review: Toshiba Gigabeat F20

Don Bradbury looks at (and listens to) Toshiba's latest iPod competition

Product	Gigabeat F20 Media player
Company	Toshiba
Web	www.toshiba.co.uk
Price	£180
We like
We don't like
Rating	8/10
Requirements

Media players abound in the mould of the hugely successful Apple iPod and it's variants. The hard disk Toshiba Gigabeat is one of these, competing specifically with the iPod Photo, and offering to play not just your WMA, WMV, and MP3 files but display JPEG photos via its dedicated software as well.

Sturdily made, with a neat satin-finish case, and sporting a 2.2 inch colour display that can do justice to your photo albums, it's primary purpose for many will be to play music files. In this it does quite well. The sound through the provided earphones is clear and free from significant hiss, the stereo presentation is respectable, and the phones and amplifier are driveable to adequate volume levels before some distortion/compression sets in if you push your luck too far.

The album and file scroll and selection cross-button on the front - referred to as the Plus Touch - works reasonably, though it's touch sensitive and perhaps a little too much so; it's easy to overshoot your intended target, and some care and a little practise have to be applied to avoid this.

User options

The player options are quite good. With equaliser settings galore, wallpaper and screen theme selection, slideshow effects including interval, time format and zone, screen backlighting and power off control and so on, there's plenty to play with. There's also a USB priority option to determine whether your PC or digital camera should be automatically looked for upon connection.

Play modes include all, album, repeat one or album, and random one or random all. A 'hold' switch on the top of the Gigabeat, when selected, prevents unintended shifts from your selected play or options selection, and control buttons down the right hand side let you call up play lists as well as bookmark, demo music, genre or artist, and a recycle bin.

User setup is also featured in this list. A sleep timer with options up to 120 minutes will be valued by insomniacs, and an 'A' button lets you save time by programming the device for jumping quickly to equalisers, album skip, bookmark, mute, or display jacket. Volume control is available in two ways; the touch-sensitive Plus Touch, or a side-mounted press control.

The top of the Gigabeat houses the earphones socket and also a power socket, but power for recharging the battery will usually be applied via the USB cradle. The bottom of the device houses the cradle connections and a proprietary USB socket for downloading items from your PC.

The USB cradle also features a USB socket, and when first connected, the PC will automatically detect the cradle and install the required driver.

Software

To download tracks, the Gigabeat can use Windows Media Player 10 or Napster. Gigabeat Room is the software that converts tracks from a music CD to playable WMA format, encrypting on the fly. Library management for artists, albums, genre and play lists is reasonable, and play lists can be created and then edited.

On the hardware side, some could be disappointed that a USB hub may not be applicable for connection. Getting to one of your primary USB ports can be awkward. Moreover, Toshiba do not guarantee that Gigabeat Room will function on all PCs, notably those assembled from generic parts. Gigabeat Room has sundry other possible constraints mentioned in the manual. Even upgrades to Internet Explorer are not guaranteed to work with this software.

In conclusion

Despite some idiosyncrasies, the Toshiba Gigabeat performs quite well. It is a usable alternative to the iPod Photo, for instance, and with its 20GB hard drive it can store a large number of files of sundry types. The larger capacity alternatives in the range, up to 60GB, cope even better of course, though at a cost.

 

Don Bradbury