Conclusions

Overall Design

The Toshiba Gigabeat F40 is not exactly the most appealing player on the market in terms of design, especially when compared to the Philips HDD6330.  However, it does feature touch sensitive controls, which are always better than scroll wheels or moving parts that are prone to breaking after extensive use.  I currently wouldn't consider a player without them.  While the side buttons are backlit in blue, the front cross-like touch pad isn't.  This is not good, and you'll find yourself having a hard time tapping the center cross when listening to music in low light conditions, such as listening to music in bed.  The large portrait-sized display does look good but nowhere near as good as the Creative Vision:M.  However, this type of display allows you to easily switch to landscape view for picture viewing as well as music playback.  The outer shell is made primarily out of plastic, making it considerably light when compared to many other hard drive based players.  However, this means you'll need to take some extra care and dropping the player may easily damage it.

Connectivity and Performance

I would like to emphasize once again on the fact that this player is by far, the fastest in terms of USB file transfers when using their software.  Unlike the Phlips GoGear, the hard drive on this player is fast and runs practically silent.  The docking station features to buttons for quick sync or ripping of your music files.  Also, it fully supports WMP 10 and it does work quite well with it.  Although transfers are nowhere near as fast as using their own software.  The player also supports playsforsure, meaning you'll be able to use such services along with it.  Any music download site or service sporting the playforsure logo will work well with this player.

Playback Features

Unfortunately, this is the only area where this player fails to impress.  For one, there is no on-the-fly playlist support or a way to easily set it to randomly play your entire music collection.  You need to get to certain menus other than the main in order to do this.  Playlists are supported, but you'll have to create them on your computer and transfer them to the player in order for it to show up on the playlist menu.  Depsite the lack of on-the-fly support, it at least offers a bookmarking feature that happens to work quite well.  You can add tunes to the bookmark and delete them, all from the player.  Another small but unique feature is the ability to sort your files for playback.

Picture Viewing

As I have mentioned in other reviews, I don't find picture viewing suitable on such small devices like this.  However, the Toshiba F40s does have an edge over a majority of other players in the area.  Pictures look very good on it's quality 2.2" screen.  But what is nice though is that you can change the orientation and display your pictures in landscape view.  Also, you can create slideshows and even add music to them.  Works quite nicely actually.  For picture viewing, I think this is the best of the bunch I have looked at.

Support

Like those who own the new Philips players, don't expect a high level of support.  If you go to the Gigabeat website, you won't find a support page with firmware upgrades.  There was a firmware release on a Japan based site, but not officially posted on the Toshiba website.  Perhaps they have plans on providing firmware updates, but this is a bad sign that they will not support the product as well as say those players from Creative.  Like Philips, Toshiba is a large company with many other products on their plate.  Larger companies like this tend to lose focus on certain products and not dedicate enough resources to provide long term support.  That's honestly the downside of owning an MP3 player from such large companies.  Many don't realize this prior to purchase and is why I like to make it clear on each review.

Final Thoughts

The Toshiba Gigabeat F40 is a feature-packed digital audio player that is very reasonably priced, considering all it does have to offer.  You can pick one of these up at Geeks.com for only $209.  This is a hell of a deal for a 40GB player that already comes with a cradle and wired remote.  After playing with it for quite some time, I personally think they went a bit overboard with its interface.  While, it does offer much more unique features than a majority of others, it can be quite cumbersome at times to navigate through your files and features and get to where you want to be quickly and easily.  A very nice touch, however, is its support to change the screen orientation any which way you like.  On top of that, Toshiba loads this player with a variety of custom wallpapers and screen themes and even lets you set your own pic as a wallpaper.  As far as performance goes, this player has one of the quietest and fastest hard drives featured on a digital audio player.  It is whisper quiet and file transfers using their application is very fast.  There is absolutely no lag when zipping through menus or a large collection of music files.  Unfortunately though, as feature-packed as it is, it fails to offer one important feature...on-the-fly playlist support.  You do, however, have a bookmark feature that may actually be enough to satisfy a majority.   So, what would I like to see fixed when their next model hits the market?  For one, I would like better playback features and in terms of its design, would like the touch pad backlit for easy navigating in the dark.   In the end though, you just can't help but appreciate all it has to offer considering its very modest price tag.  EMHz Recommended!

More information on all Gigabeat models can be found on Toshiba's Gigabeat Website.

For those looking for a good deal, you simply can't go wrong with this player.  Considering you can pick one of these up for only $209, it has a lot to offer and will satisfy a majority of audiophiles that do not need video support.

**Update 11/29/06**

We received quite a bit of traffic on this article today and did get quite a few emails with questions on this particular review.  It turns out that Geeks.com has posted a special on a large number of refurbished Gigabeat players they were able to acquire just in time for Christmas.  Using the promotional code "GIGABEAT", you can snag one of these excellent players for only $129.99.  At this price, it is truly a bargain and would definitely make for a great gift this holiday season.  Remember folks, the new Microsoft Zune is nothing more than a Toshiba player with a fancier interface.  Link to promotion here.  Only available while supplies last.

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