Toshiba Gigabeat MEG-F60S 60 GB Digital Audio Player Dark Grey

by Toshiba

Product Details

Product Manual [4.27mb PDF]

• Item Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 6 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0007U0IHS
• Item model number: MEGF60S
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Images and music combine in this easy-to-use portable digital audio player. Toshiba's snazzy, dark-grey Gigabeat MEG-F60S packs a 1.8-inch Toshiba hard drive capable of holding an incredible 60 GB of digital media: MP3 and WMA compressed audio and even uncompressed, full-resolution WAV files. That's about 15,000 songs (more than 1,000 complete albums) at 128 kbps MP3, a crazy 30,000 songs at 64 kbps WMA, and a still-impressive 1,700 songs or 114 hours of CD-resolution WAV files.

A major feature of the player is its bright, crystal-clear, 2.2-inch LCD with 240 x 320 resolution and the ability to render over 65,000 colors. It's there so you can experience the visual as well as the aural component of your entertainment. The Gigabeat lets you download and view album covers, search for your favorite tracks by scrolling through those album covers, or even set a favorite album cover as your background image. You can download any digital still picture from your PC and create custom slideshows, too--and set them to music.

Gigabeat may be versatile, but it's also easy to operate. Its PlusTouch sensor control lets you scroll through its intuitive menus using only a soft touch or pass of your fingertip.

The PC-only Gigabeat is "Plays for Sure"-certified by Microsoft, which means that it will operate with any "Plays for Sure" download site or management software when connected to your PC. Gigabeat is automatically recognized by Windows Media Player 10, so there's no need to install new drivers of any kind. Toshiba has also partnered with Napster to provide Napster's "Napster To Go" software, giving you the option of using Napster To Go, Windows Media Player, and/or the supplied Gigabeat Room management software (Gigabeat Room is required for transfer of photo images).

So what about your CD collection? After all, you'll likely be able to stash the entire thing in here, one way or another. Thanks to a unique feature called CD RipRec, all you have to do is place a CD in your PC and press the CD RipRec button while the Gigabeat is docked in its cradle. CD RipRec will launch the software and transfer compressed audio to your Gigabeat quickly and with no further effort on your part. Using a USB 2.0 connection (cable supplied), CD RipRec can transfer the contents of an entire CD to the Gigabeat in as little as 5 minutes.

If Gigabeat's battery life (up to 16 hours) isn't enough to satisfy your entertainment needs, fret not. Rather than carrying your AC adapter everywhere, simply connect the Gigabeat to any PC with a USB cable and the battery will charge itself again.

Other features include headphones with an integrated wired remote control, a choice of 10- or 60-second intro scan to help you find a desired song, multilingual support (Japanese, English, French, Chinese, Spanish, and German), and 28 user selectable equalizer settings, and SRS WOW, which simulates surround sound from any two speakers (including headphones).

What's in the Box
Digital music player, an AC power adapter, a power-supply, a docking cradle, a USB cable, headphones with integrated remote control, a software CD-ROM (Gigabeat Room management software, CD RipRec, Napster To Go), a user's manual, and warranty information.

Product Description

The first thing you'll notice on every gigabeat is the big, bright, crystal clear 2.2-inch LCD screen. It's there so you can experience the visual as well as the audio. Gigabeat lets you download album covers and set them as your background image, or create slideshows using your digital still pictures from your PC. 240x320 resolution and over 65,000 colors mean that you'll get all of those images as clear, sharp and crisp as they appear on your PC screen. Gigabeat is flexible, but easy. The PlusTouch sensor control lets you scroll through all of the easy to understand menu systems using only a soft touch or pass with your fingertip. Microsoft's Windows "Plays for Sure" certified, simply connect your Gigabeat to your PC to operate with any "Play for Sure" download site or management software. Easily rip your favorite CDs to your Gigabeat with the touch of a button thanks to the new and unique CD RipRec feature. 2.2-inch QVGA LCD screen PlusTouch -Touch Sensitive control Flexible Download Compatibility Options CD RipRec feature for ripping of entire CD by the push of one button SRS wow surround 28 Equalizer Settings Multiple Language Support USB 2.0 and 1.1 capable USB charging capable Built-in lithium ion battery PC operating environment - Windows 2000/XP, Pentium 300MHz or above (1GHz recommended), 128MB RAM, 100MB free HD space, USB port, CD-ROM drive, Internet Explorer 5.01 or later, Windows Media Player 9 or later Windows Plays for Sure and Napster to Go Compatible Accessories included - AC adapter, power supply, cradle, USB cable, wired remote control, headphones, software CD-ROM Dimensions - 2.48 x 0.74 x 4.17 Approximate weight (body only) - 5.99 oz Brushed Aluminum

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent alternative to iPod, August 7, 2005

By 

G-Man (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Toshiba Gigabeat MEG-F60S 60 GB Digital Audio Player Dark Grey (Electronics)

I've had the Gigabeat F60S for about a week now. I don't subscribe to a downloading service. I simply rip my CDs into mp3 files and organize the files into folders. So far this player has performed flawlessly. As a comparison I had an iRiver H10 20GB player (which I returned), and I also use a Samsung YP-MT6 1GB flashmemory player. I use Sony's MDR-EX51LP earphones.

Build Quality:
Quality built aluminum alloy body feels solid and durable in your hand. Glass to cover the LCD screen which seems to be reasonably scratch resistant (some ipod owners have complained about easily getting scratches on the screens). The 60GB hard drive is built by Toshiba. It's assembled/made in China as is the iRiver H10 and Samsung.

Sound Quality:
The Toshiba has excellent sound quality and EQ options. The little Samsung has the same excellent quality sound plus some added EQ options the Toshiba and iRiver don't have. The iRiver had very good sound, however it seemed slightly "muddy" to me and the sound imagery of various instuments were not quite as focused as in the Toshiba and Samsung players. Perhaps tweeking with the EQ settings would have improved the iRivers sound. I experienced no detectable background hissing during quiet passages and no distortion at loud sound levels. I kept all settings flat.

Screen:
WOW! Very impressive. The 2.2 inch 320 X 240 resolution screen is absolutely beautiful. State of the art, crisp, clear, bright vivid colors. The iRiver's screen was a disapointment. Like comparing a 42 inch High Definition widescreen plasma TV to a regular 20 inch TV. Lots of ways to customize the screen. Can be displayed vertcally (portrait) or horizontally (landscape). Many ways to customize the way track info and album art is displayed on your screen.

Navigation:
Ergonomics of the Toshiba was much better than the iRiver. I really like the "Plus Touch" device for navigation. It works great--very intuitive. The iRiver's vertical slide was a bit quirky for me and seemed to attract dirt. Never used an ipod, so I can't make a comparison there. I simply use the folder method to organize my files in the player and with the gigabeat I can navigate through my files just like in Windows Explorer. Another big difference was the speed with which the Toshiba could navigate through the different folder levels. Going to the next folder level was practically instantanious. The iRiver would delay 2-3 seconds before going to the next level of folders. Sizewize, the Gigabeat was about 3 mm longer than the iRiver and about the same thickness and width.

Software:
You can use either Gigabeat Room or Windows Media Player 10 to transfer and manage your music. You MUST use one or the other to tranfer PLAYABLE music files to your Gigabeat. Yes, you can drag and drop any kind of file type onto your Gigabeat via Windows Explorer for mass storage, however only music files that were transfered via Gigabeat Room or WMP10 will be able to play on the gigabeat. Photos will only be viewable when transfered via Gigabeat Room. I prefer using Gigabeat Room--it is very intuitive and performs perfectly with my computer. Album art and id3 tag info can be modified through the Tool/Music information edit.. menu in Gigabeat Room. When you plug the Gigabeat into your computer either though the supplied usb cable or the supplied cradle, the Gigabeat will show up as another letter hard drive device in the My Computer screen. You can access, navigate, organize, and delete your files through Windows Explorer by double clicking the hard drive icon in My Computer, however before any changes will take effect you must "Refresh" the Gigabeat library by going to the Tool/Library Refresh menu in Gigabeat Room. The only minor gripe about Gigabeat Room is there is no progress bar to indicate how much time is left for the transfer of files from my PC to the Gigabeat.

Downloading directly to the Gigabeat:
A very nice feature is that you can download files directly to the Gigabeat from external devices like digital cameras while being away from your PC or laptop computer. I had no problem downloading my pictures from my camera directly into the gigabeat via the supplied cradle. You can take the gigabeat with you on trips to use as a storage device for your photos instead of lugging around a laptop computer.

PROS:
1. Great Sound quality.
2. Best screen in the business.
3. Solid quality construction with an elegant classy design.
4. Very nice intuitive navigation using the Touch Plus.
5. Direct downloading from other devices to the Gigabeat.
6. Gigabeat Room is intuitive and easy to use software.
7. Simple CD rip and transfer feature via Gigabeat Room.
8. Shows up as hard drive for use as mass storage device.
9. Simple to add album art to music files.
10. Slide show during music playback.
11. 60 GB! Great storage device.
12. No bugs, crashes or shutdowns. Everything works smoothly and flawlessly.

CONS:
1. Photo management is poor. Photos can not be organized into folders. ONLY one folder for ALL your photos.
2. I really wanted something that has true drag and drop file management like my 1 GB Samsung but with 40+ GB of storage. The Gigabeat is not a true drag and drop player because music files must be .SAT encoded and photos must be modified by the software before they can be played on the Gigabeat.
3. USB 1.1 transfer rate if you use MWP 10.
4. No progress bar in Gigabeat Room.
5. No FM radio.
6. No voice recorder.
7. No inline recording.
8. No video. (What a shame with such an awsome screen)

Bottom Line:
After doing tons of research, this Toshiba was the best fit for me. I'm very happy and satisfied that I bought this player. I would have given it a 5 star rating if it had better photo management, and true drag and drop ability without the .SAT encoding and need to modify the photos prior to transfering.

For the price, this Toshiba is a serious contender to the the 60 GB iPod Photo. The Toshiba has awsome sound quality, the best screen available, and a slick interface. I hope that Toshiba addresses some of the minor shortcommings with a firmware/software upgrade. The only other player I considered was the Cowan iAudio X5L 30GB. But, couldn't find a store to check one out.

108 of 125 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Giga-size Mistake., August 20, 2005

By 

Hoichi, the Earless (Sietch Tabr, Arrakis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Toshiba Gigabeat MEG-F60S 60 GB Digital Audio Player Dark Grey (Electronics)

Given both the limited amount of reviews here so far about the Gigabeat, and given the mammoth size headache/mistake I had in purchasing one, an honest review to help anyone thinking about the 'Beat.

Firstly, this review comes from someone who waited for at least a year and a half for the price of 60gb mp3 players to go down. And from someone who disliked in general the "Big Brother" & "We are your friend" approach of Apple & their iPod.
As one might gleam from the above, I was ecstatic about the opportunity to buy a non-iPod 60gb mammoth to call my own. After some research, I really figured it would be worth it even though a couple of well-known sites gave it really dismal marks, I was willing to chunk it off to reviewers too awed by Apple.

I was wrong.

Exactly everything and more from their reviews were correct. A small list:

#1 - And most glaringly atrocious is the software Toshiba designed in order to 'protect' any music one uploads. With the Gigabeat, Toshiba has all but virtually made it impossible to put YOUR mp3 files onto YOUR mp3 player and ever hope to then get YOUR mp3 files back onto your hard drive in mp3 format. Why? Because the player will encrypt everyone of your files into a format dubbed .SAT, which is unreadable by any media player for any computer. Exactly so that the question of ever sharing or anything like that is out of the question with Gigabeat.
Mp3 in; SAT out = Readable in / Unreadable out


Sure, if you spend hours looking for how to get around that encryption on the Web, you'll find that the solution just as undesirable. Namely that if you connect through Windows Media Player 10 instead of the Toshiba Gigabeat Room software, you can then ignore the WMP aspect of it and proceed to drag&drop files onto it like a external hard drive. With a HUGE catch: Only while docked in the units cradle; which ONLY can process such transfers at USB 1.0 speed, not the standard 2.0

I actually was desperate enough that I actually did this and in all truth: On a 3.2 gigahertz Dell computer, transferring my collection of 23 gigabytes came back with a waiting screen of 26 hours. I'm not even BS-ing. If you could do it normally with USB 2.0 that time would be 3 hours at tops. And if you ever wanted to get those files back onto your computer the same thing applies.

#2 - One of the reviews I read bashed the sound quality output of the player, but then also followed up with how good iPod was in contrast. I naturally disregarded the information. Wrong.
Wrong.
The output is atrocious; almost anything you will have sounds like it's in a very open room. And no, my mp3s are not of crappy 128 KPS. And forget about the equalizer settings...they are as equally horrid.


#3 - Finally the interface was simply put, terribly designed. Just trying to find the pinky size pause button for instance, located in the middle of the gigabeat cross-pad, and successfully hitting it without either turning up the volume/switching tracks became a unpleasant game of hit-or-miss every time. And that every time added up immensely.

There perhaps will be a day when some bright someone will devise a hack for the gigabeat that will make it overcome encrypting one's files, but that day remains to be seen and even if it were to happen, the interface/poor sound performance would still drag it down at every turn.

Do yourself a favor and avoid at all costs.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unbiased review., October 21, 2005

By 

Jamie (Henderson, NV - USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Toshiba Gigabeat MEG-F60S 60 GB Digital Audio Player Dark Grey (Electronics)

Let me start by saying that I have never owned or even used an Ipod. Not that I don't think it's a great product, but I have all of my music copied onto my PC in the WMA format, which I much prefer over MP3. From what I understand the Ipod, at least at the point in time I was looking, did not support the WMA format. So I was looking for an alternative.

I came across this player at Costco. I studied up on it a little, read one or two reviews, and decided to give it a shot. It met my primary requirement of being able to hold my entire 600+ CD collection. I was looking for a player to use at home (so I don't have to dig for my CD's all the time) and for travel (so I don't have to carry a book of CD's on vacation).

I brought this home, plugged it in, hooked it up to my PC and the display instantly displayed that it was connecting to Windows Media Player 10. A box popped up on my screen and asked if I wanted to sync this device to my music library. I chose yes. Windows started to copy all 6000+ songs that were currently on my PC into the Gigabeat. I left it to it's task overnight and when I woke up my music library had been transferred to the Gigabeat. Effortless. Painless. I never even installed Gigabeat room, which is the software everyone complains about. When you have Windows Media Player 10 or Napster you don't even need it.

Now came my listening experience. I've had mine for around 2 months now. Most of the time it's plugged into my home stereo where it acts as a massive Jukebox. It has a "play all" mode where it starts wherever you tell it to and plays everything in order from that point, a random all mode (I usually use it this way, and half of the time I have no idea what I'm listening to. I'd forgotten I owned so much music!), and a few other modes like random album, etc.

The sound quality is great, but to make it even better there are numerous pre-set equalizers to choose from. If you have the time (which I do not) you can even pre-program a specific EQ setting for every album in the player.

One of the other reviews I have read stated that you cannot fast forward and rewind the tracks. I can understand how they might assume this as everything is controlled by a four way touch sensor, however, that is hardly the case. If they had either a little more imagination or the sense to at least peruse the manual they would see that the controls are quite intuitive. Tap the touch sensor to the left or right and it will skip tracks forward or back. Press and HOLD the sensor either left or right and it will fast forward or rewind. And the menus allow you to customize the touch controls even further if you desire.

Another correction to a previous reviewers comments is that music is not only categorized by album. Songs can be found in many ways. Songs are stored by album, artist, genre, and a few other categories. You simply select the appropriate category. Looking for a particular song? Select the artist and all of the songs by that artist will be displayed. Select the one you want. Again the menus and conrols are very intuitive. And the color screen makes it a pleasure to use.

I have not used the ear buds so I cannot attest as to the comfort level of those. However, when was the last time you purchased an MP3 player based on the comfort of the included headgear?

Now, I must admit that there are a few cons to this magnificient device. The primary one for me is that only the first artist/genre/etc listed in Windows Media will copy into the Gigabeat. Meaning that if you have your music broken down into many categories anything that you have more than category for (i.e. I have Hooverphonic listed as Downtempo and as Electronica) will only be listed under the first category in the Gigabeat. Same goes for Artist. If a song is a collaberation between two bands only the first band will be listed in the Gigabeat (which means you can't find the song by searching for the second artist, so make sure the artist you know is lested first). This is not typcally a problem but I am a little particular.

The other con is that you have to have the Gigabeat power cord plugged in to be able to connect to your computer. The USB does not power the cradle. And you have to use the cradle to use Windows Media or Napster. The only reason this is a problem is that I use my Gigabeat on my home stereo. So I have it plugged in back there. To add my new music to the player I have to reach back behind the stereo, unplug the player, and then plug it back in in my office. Call me lazy, but it annoys me.

Anyway, neither of these cons in the least way makes me love my Gigabeat any less. I think it's the best thing since sliced bread. Or in my wife's words "This is the coolest thing we own!"