Verdict: Gigabeat to iPod: you're going down
A cafe, late at night:
Al Pacino: We are sitting here, you and I, like a couple of regular fellas. You do what you do, and I do what I gotta do. Now we've been face to face, if I'm there and I gotta put you away, I won't like it. But brother, you are going down.
Robert De Niro: There is a flip side to that coin. What if you do got me boxed in and I gotta put you down? 'Cause no matter what, you will not get in my way. We've been face to face, yeah. But I will not hesitate. Not for a second.
Michael Mann's thriller 'Heat' presents Pacino's cop and De Niro's criminal as each other's nemesis, and as two sides of the same coin. Pacino has to be like that to catch De Niro. It's what's going on in the world of MP3 players too. Only a device as good as the Apple iPod, but different too, will be able to compete. Enter the Gigabeat.
Toshiba makes the hard drive inside the iPod and it uses the same drive inside its own digital audio player. It's only available as a 20GB model, but otherwise, it's the iPod's match. It supports both MP3 and (unlike the iPod) WMA tracks, on-the-fly play listing, and connects via USB 2. The Gigabeat's non-removable battery gave us ten hours of continuous playback, compared to around eight for the iPod.
Aesthetically, Toshiba has made sure that the Gigabeat is a contender, too. It's close to the iPod in terms of dimensions, but 20g lighter than the 20GB iPod, and its square shape makes it svelter, too, though wider. Style-wise, the Gigabeat is almost the exact opposite of the plastic iPod. The Gigabeat looks like a high-end MiniDisc player, sleekly done out in both matte and shiny silver. The black band in the middle has a cool light blue on dark blue LCD. Overall, it looks more mature than the iPod and the uncluttered front gives it a retro feel.
The surprise is its price tag: £400, the same as a 40GB iPod. This is because, at the moment, it's only available in Japan, so you have to get it via international importer Dynamism.
While it's Japan-only status means the manuals are useless, the on-screen menus are all in English, as is the software, and, as it's so easy to use, not having the manuals doesn't really matter. Navigation might not be quite as euphorically intuitive as it is on the iPod, but it's still excellent. The primary control is a side-mounted rocker, which allows you to scroll up and down lists of artists and songs. Pushing it selects a song to play, and there's a button to go back, and another to toggle a menu. You can create a playlist as you go, or create playlists on the PC using the bundled Toshiba Audio Application, and then upload them to the player.
The interface isn't groundbreaking, but it's ultra-efficient at sorting music. This is due to the interesting way it stores files. Music has to be uploaded using either Windows Media Player or the bundled Toshiba Audio Application, because the Gigabeat stores all its MP3s and WMAs as SAT files. When you upload tracks into the root directory of the Gigabeat, the player creates an index in two of its own directories: 'Artist' and 'Album'. This means that the player has its own cross-referenced database of all the artists and albums of music it contains, so you don't need to create your own. Once you get your head round it, you'll realise it's a bit like a very clever movie heist: daring but brilliant.
All this SAT business doesn't stop the Gigabeat functioning as a mobile hard drive. You can use Windows Explorer to drop data files onto it, and then hook it up to another PC's hard drive to retrieve them. However, since audio files are transformed into SAT files when they're stored on the Gigabeat, you can't upload them to another PC.
Sound quality is excellent, with a sharp and detailed mid-range that makes it great for quieter tracks, although it can really rock too. The only drawback is the equaliser, which has only four fixed presets. Still, fundamentally the Gigabeat sounds bright and brilliant.
However, it's worth bearing in mind that, as is often the case in the fast-moving world of gadgetry, Toshiba has released a revised Gigabeat, the G21, with more equaliser settings, which can also connect directly to a LAN without the need for a PC. If you're interested, it's worth seeing if Dynamism can supply the newer model.
CONCLUSION
The Gigabeat is the iPod's first competitor that doesn't have to play second fiddle to Apple's device. It's going to be interesting to see if Toshiba will push the Gigabeat worldwide, because it's a great product that with wider distribution should get cheaper. But if you can afford it now, this is the real deal.
