Like the Gigabeat S, the Gigabeat T400 is strictly an MTP device that can only be used with Windows XP or XP Media Center Edition. If you're the type of person who has to be color coordinated, the Gigabeat T has you covered with their color-matching earbuds. With its QVGA LCD display capable of displaying 262,144 colors, photos really pop off the screen and can either be browsed individually or played as a slide show. The photo viewer feature is fairly self-explanatory, allowing JPEG pictures to be organized and synced to the device via Windows Media Player. We were able to convert and transfer most of our video files within Windows Media Player without any difficulty.
Video support is limited to WMV files, with a maximum resolution of 320x240. However, Toshiba does include a handy resume function for video playback, and the T400 skips and scrubs through long video files with great precision. Also, there's no support for Audible audiobooks, nor are there any bookmarking or auto-resume functions that would help with long files such as podcasts. Sadly, the limited internal memory lessens the appeal of this feature somewhat, given that even WMA Lossless files are still quite large. In particular, the inclusion of WMA Lossless support is a rare treat that plays to the Gigabeat's strength of high-fidelity playback. The Gigabeat T's music player supports MP3, WMA (including purchased and subscription files), WMA Lossless, and WAV files. We definitely miss the FM radio, but there's no love lost over the photo import feature. The only features that Toshiba didn't port over from the Gigabeat S are the FM radio tuner and direct photo importer. The Gigabeat T400 is clearly a descendent of one of our all-time favorite MP3 players, the Toshiba Gigabeat S.
We're happy to see that cover artwork pops up next to selections in album view and can even be viewed full screen during playback. The sophisticated menu system provides multiple views for sorting content by name, date, or ID3 attribute.
The main menu, which can be pulled up from any screen, is divided into five sections: TV, music, pictures, videos, and settings.
A mini-USB port, power/hold switch, and 3.5-millimeter headphone jack are located on the bottom edge of the Gigabeat T.Īlthough the Windows Portable Media Center platform is somewhat antiquated, it is still one of the most intuitive and elegant user interfaces around. We're happy to see that Toshiba was able to consolidate all of its controls into one little square-inch of space, as it's an improvement over the sprawling side-mounted controls used on the Gigabeat S.
The four buttons surrounding the PlusPad are used for jumping in and out of menus, playing or pausing, and for calling up the main menu screen. Depending on the context, the PlusPad control is used to adjust volume, skip between tracks, or scroll through lists. The navigation controls taking up the bottom inch of the front panel feature Toshiba's ubiquitous 4-way PlusPad control, outlined in a blue, orange, or pink trim.