Hands-on with the Toshiba Gigabeat T400 personal media player

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We take an early look at Toshiba's new T-series mp3 player, the Gigabeat T400. Were we impressed, or was it yawn-inspiring?

We had a chance to take a look at Toshiba's new T-series personal media player, the Gigabeat T400, before its release. The player is about the same size as the last iPod mini, only slimmer, chooses than a new iPod classic, can play videos and music on its 2.4” QVGA LCD screen. There is a cross-shaped d-button towards the bottom of the front of the device, and it separates four dedicated buttons: Back, play/pause, OK and the windows icon.

We liked the screen, which played music videos and movies in widescreen format. The menus seemed easy enough to navigate, although we seem to prefer a wheel of sorts, since our music library is large and a wheel is the most efficient way to navigate through it. The device fits 4GB worth of MP3's, WAV, WMA and WMA lossless files. The lossless support is nice, but we would like to see more devices compatible with the more popular FLAC format.

Most of what we saw of the T400's interface seemed like more of the same. Nothing truly stood out; the buttons seemed to work as they should, we experienced minimal lag whilst navigating menus, and the videos seemed to perform as they should. Quality on the screen was on par for its size, no better, no worse. We did have trouble with viewing the screen due to glare occasionally, however.

After our first short look at the device, we really don't feel strongly about it either way. It's a functional personal media player that will play mp3s and movies/music videos, but nothing about it is very memorable. The design is simple, but not creatively minimalist, the file support is average, and while it was adequately slim, we weren't blown away by its size. The battery life is solid, but merely meets, not exceeds, the current standard. It will be interesting to see how Toshiba plans to market it and how well it does, considering the company has discontinued the S and E-series of Gigabeat players, and its sister player, the Zune, seems to be struggling to steal market share from the likes of Apple and SanDisk. The Gigabeat T400 comes with a one year warranty and is available now for $120. 
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