The Gigabeat was first called the MobilPhile and later renamed to Gigabeat. It contained a monochrome LCD with blue backlighting, and a 5GB removable PCMCIA hard drive. Its case was made of aluminum, and battery life is specified at 18 hours. It required music to be converted using the Toshiba Audio Application to an encrypted format. It has a circular D-pad surrounding a smaller circular play/pause button, 2 menu buttons, side-mounted volume up/down buttons and a lock switch.
Gigabeat G
The Gigabeat G was first introduced during the Japanese WPC Expo in September 2003. The hard drive player features capacities from 5GB to 40GB, support for MP3, WMA and WAV sound files, USB 2.0, and integration with Windows Media Player. The device has a 160x86-pixel monochromic screen with blue backlighting. Battery life is specified at 11 hours. It is only available in Japan.
The Gigabeat G was updated and branded as the G21. This version offered some new features such as LAN addressing.
Gigabeat F
The Gigabeat F was released in September 2004. The hard drive player is available in capacities from 10 to 60GB, and has a 2.2" 16-bit TFT LCD screen with a QVGA resolution. Battery life lasts up to 16 hours, and reportedly 19 hours if the backlight is set to 5 seconds. The Gigabeat F introduced a new controller called "Plustouch" which is a touch sensitive control system on a plus-shaped pad. Like the Gigabeat G, the player supports MP3, WMA (as well as protected WMA format), and WAV, but encrypts all uploaded files to a special SAT format.
In November 2005, Toshiba released simultaneous upgrades to the Gigabeat F's firmware and the Gigabeat Room software. An English version was released in March 2006. Problems with image transferring and distortion were solved, and an equalizer was added to the player.
The Gigabeat F is a popular candidate for alternative firmware with its rich screen, strong processor, ample storage capacities and simple hardware customisation capabilities. It is compatible with all Toshiba 1.8" hard drives (up to 80gb with the original firmware, more with third party firmware), can take iPod replacement batteries with little or no modification, and is capable of running the Rockbox digital audio player firmware.
Gigabeat X
The Gigabeat X was an update to the F series; changes included the dropping of the 40GB version for a 30GB version, and a 16-hour battery life. The X-series has a larger 2.4" 16-bit TFT LCD display, which enables it to display images. It also has a smaller body (similar to the future Gigabeat S) and raised Plustouch pad. It was sold primarily in Australia and various Asian countries.
Gigabeat P
The Gigabeat P series players are Toshiba's first attempt at entering the flash-based Digital audio player (DAP) market.
The player features a 1.1-inch, 16-bit OLED screen of a resolution of 96 by 96 pixels and comes in two different capacities. The P5 is available in two different colour variations and is the 512 MB model, whereas the P10 is only available in 1GB in black. Both types support MP3, WMA, and WAV, and includes a built-in FM tuner.
Special editions
The Gigabeat P5S is a Japanese-only, 512MB model of the Gigabeat P that was released in July 2006 (Trapnest models) and August 2006 (Blast models), which featured custom plates of Nana characters.
Gigabeat S
The Gigabeat S was released in Japan in April 2006 and in the United States on the last day of May 2006. The player was first presented at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2006 in Las Vegas by Bill Gates in his keynote speech. It uses version 2 of the Portable Media Center interface by Microsoft and the device closely integrates with Windows Media Player 11 and the Xbox 360. The player has a 12-hour battery life for audio and plays video for up to 2.5 hours. The Gigabeat S is the first of subsequent Toshiba players that does not include Gigabeat Room to transfer and sync content, the players are now compatible with Windows Media Player.
The player offers a 2.4-inch, 16-bit TFT LCD display with a QVGA resolution and storage capacities of 30GB or 60GB. It also has a built-in FM tuner and audio support for MP3, WAV, WMA (both lossy and lossless), while the player natively supports WMV. Other video formats such as MPEG-4, AVI and QuickTime are only supported through transcoding. The device is also PlaysForSure-certified, which means that it is compatible with online stores like Napster To Go.
The Gigabeat S also has a USB Host for downloading images directly off digital cameras without the need of a computer, while connecting the player to a TV needs an optional composite TV-out cable.
On March 3, 2009, Toshiba released a firmware update which upgrades the Platform to 1.3 (from 1.1).[1] There are no release notes and the changes are unknown.
Criticism
Some users have encountered a problem when the player deletes all media on its hard drive after being disconnected from USB sync with a computer.[2][3] Although Microsoft's Zune is based on the hardware of this player, it is not affected due to a different firmware. This problem has been left unresolved; it is not known whether the March 2009 update resolves this issue.
Gigabeat V
The Gigabeat V, released in October 2006 in a capacity of 30GB, is Toshiba's first attempt at a portable media player. Although the device is larger, with a 3.5-inch TFT LCD screen, the Gigabeat V shares the same interface, media formats, and internal hardware design as the Gigabeat S. It is bundled with a USB cable, an A/V output jack, and a custom splitter cable. The player has a 30-hour battery life for audio and 8 hours for video. Unlike many other portable media players, the Gigabeat V lacks the ability to charge through USB.
The Japanese version includes recording audio and 1seg TV programming.
Second-generation
Gigabeat V41
A new version of the Gigabeat V was released on June 1, 2007 in Japan. It supports a 4-inch widescreen with a resolution of 480 x 272 pixels, and is available in capacities of 40GB and 80GB. The player's battery life is rated at about 28 hours for audio, and 10 hours for video. It also has a 1seg TV tuner. There was no word on when this version was coming to the US.[4]
Gigabeat U
On March 19, 2007, Toshiba announced a new line of players called the Gigabeat U, available in capacities of 1GB and 2GB.[5] The flash-based player has a 1.1-inch OLED display and is the first Gigabeat to have an FM tuner, recorder and transmitter, and the first DAP to include a 1-bit digital-analog converter. A charge of ten minutes will enable the Gigabeat U to play music for three hours, and battery life lasts up to 20 hours. The player supports WMA (lossy and protected), MP3, and uncompressed WAV. It is currently available in Japan and the United States.
Gigabeat T
MET401
The Gigabeat MET401 from 2007 includes Wi-Fi (b+g) capabilities and runs Windows Embedded. The model MET401s has no WiFi capabilities. Its hardware is largely based on the same Freescale i.MX31 CPU as the Gigabeat S and V.
This model comes with a 2.4" QVGA screen, 4GB of flash memory, and Toshiba's H2C Technology (High order Harmonic Compensation Technology) for lossy audio compensation as first featured in the second generation V series.
iRiver, stylized IRIVER and formerly as iriver, is a South Korean consumer electronics division owned by Dreamus which markets music and other accessories in its domestic market.
ZEN is a series of portable media players designed and manufactured by Creative Technology Limited from 2004 to 2011. The players evolved from the NOMAD brand through the NOMAD Jukebox series of music players, with the first separate "ZEN" branded models released in 2004. The last Creative Zen player, X-Fi3, was released at the end of 2011.
The iRiver H300 series are a series of portable audio players developed by iRiver, made up of the iRiver H320 and H340 models. They were first announced on September 22, 2004 replacing the H100/iHP-100. Each can play music, transfer pictures directly from digital cameras and UMS-compatible devices, such as flash drives, and display digital images on a colour screen. In the United States, the H320 initially retailed for $329 and the H340 was $429.
The iRiver H100 series is a series of discontinued portable digital audio players (DAP) made by iriver and originally released in October 2003. The models in the H100 series differ mainly in hard drive storage capacity. The players were succeeded by the iriver H300 series.
iAUDIO is the brand name for a range of portable media players produced by Korean consumer electronics and software corporation Cowon Systems, Inc.
The loosely defined category of S1 MP3 players is comprised by a large amount of then-inexpensive handheld digital audio players. The players were mainly widespread around 2005–2006 but the series continued for years afterwards, blurring into that of so-called "MP4 players" employing S1 and competing architectures.
Yepp was Samsung Electronics' digital audio player brand until Samsung decided to retire most of their family brands in February 2011. From then on, their MP3 players were simply branded "Samsung" worldwide until they discontinued all of them in late 2013. The brand included a wide range of hard-drive based as well as flash-memory based players. The name is claimed to be an acronym for "young, energetic, passionate person".
The iRiver Clix is a portable media player that was developed and sold by iriver through two generations. The Clix was originally known as the U10, released in 2005. The next year it was revised and essentially rebranded to Clix. A second generation player, often called the Clix 2, was released in 2007, and later a minor revision called Clix+. The players are navigated by four buttons embedded on its sides, referred to as D-Click.
The M6 miniPlayer, from Meizu, is a flash-based portable media player that plays audio files in MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, APE and Ogg and is also capable of AVI video playback on a 2.4-inch QVGA screen. The Mini Player includes an FM tuner, voice recorder, calendar, stopwatch, calculator, a basic ebook reader for TXT files, and two games.
My Life Online (Mylo) was a device created and marketed by Sony for portable instant messaging and other Internet-based communications, browsing Internet web sites using the Opera web browser and playback and sharing of media files. The pocket-sized, tablet-shaped handheld device, which debuted in 2006, had a screen which slid up to reveal a QWERTY keyboard. The brand name 'Mylo' means My Life Online. Using Wi-Fi instead of cellular networks, the Mylo was targeted to the 18–24 age group.
The Sansa e200 series is a portable media player developed by SanDisk and released on January 5, 2006. The device is available in four capacities of Flash memory: 2 GB (e250), 4 GB (e260), 6 GB (e270), and 8 GB (e280). All players have a 1.8-inch, TFT LCD display with a resolution of 176 by 220 pixels. Certain files, if not in a format accepted by the player's original firmware, must first be converted with the Sansa Media Converter Windows software. This will convert images to bitmap format (.bmp) and videos to MJPEG, for v1 models. On v2 players it will convert videos to DivX and simply resize images. It is not possible to simply copy videos to the device, even if they seem to be in the correct format; trying to access them displays an error message.
SanDisk has produced a number of flash memory-based digital audio and portable media players since 2005. The current range of products bears the SanDisk Clip name. SanDisk players were formerly marketed under the Sansa name until 2014.
The Gmini is a series of portable audio and video players released by Archos in 2004 and 2005.
The Archos AV series is a line of portable media players from the company called Archos that was released through 2003 to 2005. This series introduced the digital video recorder for the AV500, an optional feature that would be compatible in subsequent players. Although the AV series did not have standalone digital audio players, Archos did release them under the concurrently released Gmini series.
The Sansa Fuze is a portable media player developed by SanDisk and released on March 8, 2008. The Fuze is available in three different Flash memory capacities: 2 GB, 4 GB, and 8 GB and comes in six different colors: black, blue, pink, red, silver, and white. Storage is expandable via a microSDHC slot with capacity up to 32 GB, and unofficially to 64 GB or more via FAT32 formatted SDXC cards. All models have a 1.9 inch TFT LCD display with a resolution of 220 by 176 pixels and a built-in monaural microphone and FM tuner; recordings of the latter two are saved as PCM WAV files.
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The H10 is a series of portable audio players developed by iRiver, coming in multiple capacities and sizes. The player first went on sale in South Korea in December 2004 and rolled out internationally soon afterwards. The H10 series are hard disk based players coming in a 20 gigabyte form, along with smaller variants of 5 or 6 gigabytes. All versions come with a colour screen as well as voice recording and FM radio. Unlike most other iRiver products, the H10 series does not play Ogg Vorbis. However, the device works well with the Rockbox alternative firmware which does play Ogg Vorbis.
The Sansa Fuze+ is a portable media player manufactured by SanDisk as part of their Sansa line of MP3 players. The Fuze+ was released on September 1, 2010, and is the direct successor to the Sansa Fuze. The Sansa Fuze+ is available in five colors: Black, Blue, Purple, Red, and White. Internal storage capacities of the player vary by color.
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