Toshiba Gigabeat MEG-F40S (40GB, Silver)

Pros: nice screen, picture viewer, album art, background graphics, price, fast startup, bothway usb for camera, wma and wav support, bookmark feature

Cons: terrible and confusing software usb 2.0 only available with it, hard to manage songs, album art faults, had to look in the manual several times, headphone cord is too short

Summary: This is a great audio player, fairly easy to play songs and view pictures.

*Software*
The software that you basically must use is terrible. I had to look in the manual to get it started, then I had a hard time syncing to a folder with it. It was hard to get new music on it. The album art was not displaying right. It would assign the same album art to every album without album art. I then used a program to edit them rapidly, as well as organize my music easier. I then tried to sync the fixed stuff and it wasn't displaying on the gigabeat right. Then after syncing again, it put every song on there again, so I had doubles of every song. I had to reformat it and start over. Then I put all my songs on again and I had to manually delete the same album art that was last used and assigned for that song. That took me 5 minutes for 2gb of songs. I only download albums now anyways. Sometimes the syncing still doesn't work right, but you can just delete the songs that you transfered and resync them.

*Gigabeat*
The gigabeat impressed me. The screen was nicer than I expected, and is alot better than the ipod. It has a nice picture viewer which I put comics on it and show them to friends. The display turns horizontal for pictures which makes them easy to read. I found it fairly easy to browse through songs. It has an album skip button when you press menu. A great part about the gigabeat is the ability to use wav or wma. WAV is uncompressed and some find WMA a little clearer. The headphones are pretty nice, but the cord is too short. It comes with an extended cord with basic buttons, but it's kind of pointless and the clip wieghs the earbuds down, so you can't have it suspended in air. A great part about the gigabeat is being able to bookmark a song. You can bookmark a good song, open it fast the next time you power on your gigabeat. The price per gig ($210) for 40GB is far better than other mp3 players, like the ipod. My friend bought a small 6GB ipod nano for the same price I payed for this!

Overall, the gigabeat is a great mp3 player with lower prices and an amazing screen for picture viewing, but the software and limitations nearly kill the item from competing with main brand mp3 players like the Zen or Ipod.