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Toshiba gigabeat S MES30V review

January 8th, 2007 by ktula

I received a Toshiba gigabeat 30GB portable audio/video player as a gift recently. It is my first non-iPod DAP. I have owned the first ever iPod (5 GB), a 2G iPod Mini (4 GB), a 1G iPod Shuffle (512 MB) and most recently, a 2G iPod nano (8 GB).

The Toshiba gigabeat S MES30V is a feature-full gorgeous looking device. The built quality looks just as good as the iPods. You can use the gigabeat S to play music, view your photo albums, watch movies as well as listening to the FM radio. Just like the iPod, it is possible to hook up the gigabeat player to a Xbox 360 and have it control the music. My Xbox 360 was in the shop and it is on its way back to me so i should be able to try that out later this week.

Just like the iPod video, it has a 320×240 QVGA screen. The nice and bright screen on the gigabeat S is aligned length-wise from top to bottom, when you are holding it upright, while the screen on iPod video is aligned length-wise horizontally. By default, watching video in landscape mode requires you to rotate the the gigabeat sideway. It is also possible to watch video in portrait mode, but i doubt many will choose to configure the playback this way. Since i don’t personally own an iPod video, i can’t compare the video quality between the devices, but the video images are very sharp and detailed.

The Toshiba gigabeat S runs on Windows Mobile Media Center version 2.11. As expected, it plays WMA, MP3 and WAV, and it does not support songs encoded in Apple’s proprietary AAC. It supports a subscription-based service called PlayForSure. I think PlayForSure is pretty much a dead thing now since the new Zune portable media player from Microsoft does not have any support for PlayForSure. It’s strange that Microsoft chose not to include the support of its own subscription service in its own media player.

The Portable Media Center software is very easy to use and navigation using crosshair style 5-way control is a breeze. One thing i particularly like is when i am in the “my music” menu (What is Microsoft’s fascination with adding a “my” to almost everything? You have “my tv”, “my music”, “my pictures” and “my videos” on the main menu), i can change the display listing among “artists”, “playlists”, “songs”, “genres” and “albums” just by pressing the left or the right button on the crosshair-like control. On an iPod, if i want to see all the songs while i am in the “Playlists” screen, i will need to go back to the main “Music” screen, navigate down to “Songs” and then select it.

Similar to the latest 5G iPod and 2G iPod nano, when scrolling through a list, by holding either the up or down button on the controller, a graphic of the first letter appears on screen. For example, if you are scrolling through the list of songs from A to Z, the graphic of the letter K will show up as songs with first letter of K are being displayed. In fact, i think this feature works quite a bit better on the Toshiba gigabeat S than on my iPod nano. Normally, it takes at least a good few seconds before the graphic of the letters start showing up on my iPod nano. On the gigabeat S, it’s almost instantaneous.

Another feature i like is the ability to switch between different screens during the playback just by using the left or right buttons on the controller. The following screen capture from the gigabeat owners manual describes the different playback screens:

Another playback screen that is very handy is the screen that allows instant changes to the current playback mode (song rating, shuffle, repeat and the EQ setting). I am not sure what the “purchase” option is for.

One thing that takes a little bit of getting used to is the dedicated buttons on the right side of the player. The dedicated buttons include power, volume rocker, reverse/previous, play/pause and fast forward/next. Because i have grown accustom to iPod’s control, i keep mistakenly press the left/right button on the controller, instead of the dedicated side buttons, when i want to skip to the previous/next song.

The gigabeat S is supposed to be one of the few DAP out there that allows you to directly transfer photos and movies from your digital camera without the need for a computer. But no matter what i do, it just won’t play nice with my Panasonic DMC-FZ5. From what i read, it only works on some digital cameras.

Now that i have mentioned all the goods, here comes the things i do not like about the gigabeat S.

• The packaging material could be better. A lot better. If you are used to the packaging standard set by Apple’s products, the Toshiba gigabeat S packaging material is nothing to write home about. Anythingbutipod.com has a picture of the box.
• A horrendous-looking two-piece power adapter. Are people still making these in 2006?
• It only works on Windows-based PC, specifically Windows XP, requiring Windows Media Player to synchronize and manage. If you only have a Mac, like i do, you can forget it. Though my Powerbook running Mac OS X 10.4.8 recognizes it as a Toshiba gigabeat S, it won’t mount it as a hard drive.
  
• If you have songs encoded in Apple’s AAC format, you will have to re-encode them in either WMA, MP3 or WAV.
• There is a very tiny battery switch at the bottom of the device. As my room was pretty dimly lit when i opened the box up, it took me quite a while before i figured out the location of the battery switch. Oh yeah, you need something as small as the tip of a ballpoint pen to adjust the battery switch. Supposedly, when not using the gigabeat for a long time, it is recommended to switch it to “off” to extend the battery life.
  
• Average battery life. According to Toshiba, battery life is 12 hours for audio and 2.5 hours for video. Apple’s 5G video iPod (30GB) has a battery life of 14 hours for audio and 3.5 hours for video. This device is not going to make 20-hour transpacific flight between here and Singapore.
• If you pause a song and gigabeat powers itself off (power saving), you can’t just press the dedicated play button to continue the playback. In fact, none of the buttons work. To continue the playback, you need to press the power button and then the play button. It is only a two-step process but it requires you to press two separate buttons. In my iPod nano, to wake it up from “sleep” to continue the playback, all i have to do is to press the play button twice.
• No custom equalizer setting. The equalizer settings are limited to acoustic, classical, electronic, hip hop, jazz, pop and rock. iPod has the ability to customize equalizer settings since the first generation.
• Most importantly, there is no gapless playback!!! This is a very important requirement for me because i have a big collection of techno/trance albums with no gaps between the songs.
• I am not sure who designed the hideous flash-based website for the Toshiba gigabeat player. One would think that after spending a ton of money on developing a pretty decent DAP, Toshiba would spare a few more bucks to have an equally gorgeous-looking website. Clicking on the “Support” link, there are only five options available: product registration, system requirements, product notices, download owner’s manual and contact. Search engine and support forum are nowhere to be found.

Update 1/15/2007

• If the battery has been drained completely, it is not possible to charge it via USB. You will need to use the power adapter. So instead of bringing with me just the USB cable when i am on the road, now i have to carry to big ass power adapter as well.
• Just by leaving the gigabeat on standby, the battery drained itself completely in a matter of days. Not since the first generation of iPod have i seen a device with such a bad power management design.
• Questionable support for future enhancement (software) from Microsoft. It is not clear if Microsoft will continue the support for the development of PMC.

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