The Toshiba gigabeat MP3/WMA player and photo viewer demonstrates that the electronics company has been watching and learning from the competition. The styling of the player and the size of its screen make it a stand-out in a crowded field. What really sets the gigabeat apart, though, is its software — the "gigabeat room." It has an intuitively simple layout, and has a few features not found in the competition's software.

On the gigabeat's dock are control buttons to sync the player and initial "RipRec."

Case and controls

Substantial — that was my first impression of the Toshiba gigabeat. The 20GB player I tried out was only a tenth of an ounce heavier than its Apple iPod counterpart, but its brushed aluminum casing and metal side panel gave it a nice, sturdy feel.

It took me a little while to fully master navigation, as some of the controls changed function depending on what menu I was in. In addition to the dedicated "Menu" button, for example, the "On" button is also used to call up menus. Practice made perfect, though, and I was soon flipping through screens with ease.

Music transfer

I loaded the gigabeat room software onto my PC, and was soon ready to start transferring songs. The software gave me the choice of using either it or Windows Media Player 10 to manage my music. This can be a real plus if you're comfortable with the Windows program, as you don't have to learn new procedures to use the gigabeat.

I stuck with the gigabeat room, though, because it had some interesting features that Windows Media Player didn't. Normally, to transfer music to an MP3 player, I have to import the tracks I want from the CD onto the PC's hard drive, and then move them from the computer over to the player. This takes a little while, and sometimes can be a real problem when I don't have a lot of free hard drive space. The gigabeat room's "RipRec" function let me bypass the PC's hard drive and fly the tracks directly from the CD into the player. There's actually a button on the player's dock for this, to make it even easier.

The software's graphic display for "RipRec" tracks the transfer's progress from CD to player.

I just loaded a CD, selected the tracks I wanted, and then pressed the button on the dock. The software has a nice graphic display that showed where it was in each stage of the process. I found it took about five minutes to transfer a full CD; most of that time involved converting the tracks to WMA format. For WMA-encoded CDs, the process went a lot faster.

In the gigabeat room, everything's laid out for easy navigation.

With the gigabeat room program, I could access the music on the player and organize it easily. I could create folders for different styles of music, and tweak the track settings individually. Clicking on a track, I could also open up a window that let me edit all of the information, as well as adjust the EQ and volume setting for that track. I even had the option of changing the album cover art.

With Track Edit, you can customize track info, volume and EQ settings — even album art.

PlaysForSure compatibility

The gigabeat's box sports the "PlaysForSure" logo, which means it is fully compatible with music stores that also carry the logo. The start-up disc comes with an interface for Napster, a "PlaysForSure" music download site. The interface is fairly smooth, and it's easy to download purchased or rented songs to the gigabeat. The same was true for other "PlaysForSure"-approved sites, such as MSN Music.

Playing music on the gigabeat

Of course, the gigabeat had all the options found in most other players. I could play all my tunes in order, or completely at random. With the gigabeat room I could create playlists for different moods, and either listen to the playlist as I had arranged it, or hear just those selections in random order.

When a song is playing, volume can be controlled either by the touchpad or the side volume control. It's good to have that side control. To change volume on the touch pad, I had to tap up or down; if I slid my finger, I tended to accidentally go up a level into a menu.

The gigabeat comes with 28 EQ presets, so I could really fine-tune the sound. Some of them are genre-related, such as "Vocal 1," "Jazz 2," and "Latin 1." Others boost bass and or overall volume. There are also three SRS WOW™ settings, a technology that creates the illusion of 3D audio. Especially for tracks that I wanted to sound "bigger," such as classical orchestral music, it was a nice option to have.

Bookmarking tunes

The "Bookmark" feature was an option I grew to appreciate as I loaded more tunes onto the gigabeat. Basically, I could tag my favorite songs with a bookmark. When I selected the Bookmark folder and pressed play, only the bookmarked tunes played. With the 20GB player, I had the potential to store almost 5,000 songs. Having a shortcut to my personal faves was a real plus.

Watching music on the gigabeat

Unlike most other players, the gigabeat entertained me visually as well as aurally as I played my tracks. It displayed all the track information I expected, but it also allowed for a little customization, and a little fun, too. As noted earlier, I could change the screen theme, and with it text size and album art. I could also switch from a horizontal screen orientation to a vertical one.

One of the three screen animation choices. As the music plays, the dots pulse and change color.

I could also choose some screen themes that had some animation. "Spectrum Analyzer" was just that, although I found the bars didn't refresh fast enough to make it particularly useful or interesting visually. The "Ball" setting had a grid of dots across the top half of the screen that pulsed and changed color. My favorite setting, though, was "Speakers," which showed four large animated speakers vibrating impressively. It reminded me of the speaker wall in Outkast's "The Way You Move" video.

Transferring photos to the gigabeat

Loading photos and other images onto the gigabeat was easy. In the gigabeat room software, I started by opened up "Photo Browser" window. This allowed me to preview the photos I wanted to pull from my computer onto the player. I then just dragged the images — or image folders — I wanted over to the player's icon, and the transfer was done.

Displaying images on the gigabeat

The gigabeat's screen is large enough to show images clearly — I could even make out most of the writing on the posters I loaded into it. The player showed me a group of thumbnails, and I could pick which image I wanted to display.

If I wanted to, I could set the image as the screen's background, or use it to kick off a slide show. I even had a choice of transitions &151; I could have the pictures fade to white, or black before changing, or just have a wipe go across the screen. I liked having the option of changing the speed of the slide changes, which kept each image onscreen long enough for me to really enjoy it before the next one appeared.

Syncing the gigabeat with a digital camera

The gigabeat can also be used as backup storage for some digital cameras. Using the supplied cable, I could connect the gigabeat directly to my camera and transfer pictures. It's important to remember that this feature only works with cameras that support USB Mass Storage. Since some cameras support Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) instead, it's best to check the camera's manual. Some cameras support both, and have a switch to let you change from PTP to USB Mass Storage.

USB Mass Storage is a data transfer protocol, which meant I couldn't view the imported pictures on the gigabeat. I had to move the data file to my PC before I could open it — and then transfer the pictures back to the gigabeat if I wanted to view them on the player.

With the right kind of camera, though, this feature can be handy for travel. If I only used 16 GB of my player's 20GB hard drive for music, for example, I would have over 130 hours of music — and enough space left to store over 1,000 high-resolution photos from my camera. For me, that would be more than enough music and image storage for a week's vacation.

A few quibbles

If there were any downsides, they were minor — and mostly involved comparisons with Apple's iTunes software. Since iTunes doesn't play WMA files, and isn't usable with the "PlaysForSure" sites, these differences might not matter to most users.

Toshiba's software let me construct playlists using different parameters, such as genre or artist. Once created, the appropriate tracks were pulled over from the library without me having to select each one individually. This is extremely convenient, especially if you have several thousand songs in your collection. However, the number of parameters is limited compared to those in the iTunes Smart Playlist feature, so I didn't have the degree of control I was used to. Still, though, it's far better than what other MP3/WMA players offer.

I also missed the "Join Tracks" option that iTunes has, which links songs and imports them as a single track. This keeps, for example, the movements of a symphony, or the Beatles' Abbey Road tracks together, so even on random play the whole work remains intact. Granted, unless you're intensely serious about classical music or classic concept albums, this might not be much of an issue.

One fun player

Overall, the gigabeat was fun to use — and fun is what a digital music player should be about. I really liked the large screen, which made images and graphics pop. With the gigabeat room software, loading the player was a breeze.

I also liked the look and feel of the player. The gigabeat is a welcome addition to the field of digital music players, especially for folks who prefer the WMA format and all the music sites that use it. In my opinion, Toshiba got just about everything right with the gigabeat.