Toshiba Gigabeat T400

Features

• 2.4 inch screen with a 320x240 resolution, and displays 262,144 colors
  
• 4GB flash drive
• Integrates with Windows Media Center
• Supports PlayForSure subscription services
• Image formats: JPEG
• Audio formats: MP3, WAV, WMA (protected and lossless)
  
• Video formats: WMV
• Dimensions: 3.37" x 2.13" by 0.4"
• Battery life: 16 hours audio, 5 hours video

Competitors

• Archos 405 ($170, 2 GB + SD slot, 3.5" LCD)
• iPod Nano ($149, 4GB, 2.0" LCD)
• Sandisk Sansa View ($150, 8GB, 2.4" LCD)
• iriver clix generation 2 ($150, 2 GB, 2.2" LCD)

The Gigabeat series has long been associated with Windows Media Center, and the T400 continues this tradition continuing to use the portable Media Center interface. Navigating the menus is done through the touch-based cross pad where sliding your fingers across the different directions has different functions depending on the situation.

The benefit to the Media Center integration is that syncing to a Media Center computer is very streamlined with audio and video files transcoded automatically. On the flip side the T400 cannot be used as a Universal Mass Storage device, meaning the player is compatible with only Windows, and Windows Media Center computers. If you have normal XP then the player syncs up to Windows Media Player, supporting version 10 and above.

Toshiba's commitment to sound quality is evident through the support of lossless WMA and the H2C sound enhancement setting. Compressing music to MP3 and WMA formats can make the song lose information which reduces audio quality for discerning people. Lossless format features no loss in quality sacrificing larger storage space. For music that isn't lossless the H2C technology analyzes the sounds and attempts to reproduce the high and low end frequencies that are lost during normal compression.