My Gigabeat: My S30 Review: One month later...

Monday, July 03, 2006

My S30 Review: One month later...

So I have spent a month with my Gigabeat S30. Overall I'm very satisfied with my new Gigabeat. The core features I would expect to work with out any hiccups like music playback, video play back, FM, interface navigation, and the integration between the Gigabeat and Windows Media Player (I use 11) just works for me. It probably helped that I used Window Media Player to rip all my CD's in the first place. Cause I have not had any problems with album arts or ID3 tags.

I'm proud to show of my new Gigabeat to friends. They instantly like the look of the player and the Portable Media Player interface. Most of my friends are iPod "drones" and they marvel at how easy it is to navigate the Gigabeat. Sure the interface might miss some customization features, but to me it is more important that I can find what I'm looking for immediately.

Here are some pro's and con's that I have found after 1 month of use:

Pro's:

The sexiest and coolest looking player on the market!
Sound is excellent, even the stock ear buds are ok.
The narrow shape is more comfortable in my hand than the wider iPod 5G.
FM tuner rocks at the gym when you want stay on top of you favorite sport on TV.
Vertical screen is to an advantage when you scroll large music libraries.
Cross controller is very intuitive to novice users.
Gigabeat S Series and Windows Media Player is the first software/hardware combo to challenge and in my opinion beat the iPod/iTunes combo.
64k color screen looks better then the iPod 5G. (I think better than the Vision:M as well, but some disagree on that one)
Portable Media Center is a very intuitive interface. Navigating and scrolling through large libraries is a breeze, and very familiar to Windows Media Center users.
Plug it in to your XBOX 360 and listen to songs and show of your photos.
Take John Stewart with you on your commute to work with TiVo ToGo.

Con's:

Limited video codec support.
Music playback battery life at 12hrs might not be enough for power users.
Lack of accessories.
2GB limit on USB on the go transfers from digital cameras. (For serious photographers this could be an issue)
You can not create and edit playlists on the go. The only option is a quick list which you can add song to. This list is not accessible when you synch with WMP.
No custom EQ. Limited set of pre set EQ options.

If I had to score the new Gigabeat S30 I would end up with a score very similar to CNET (8.3 out of 10) and PC Mag (4 out of 5). Limited battery life and Video Codec support are the major flaws for me. Hopefully a firmware upgrade can adjust at least one of those. Neither one is a deal breaker for me, and I would and already have recommended the Gigabeat S Series to anyone who is looking for a great portable music and video player.

The F Series (The old Gigabeat model) had some flaws that required a firmware update for me to recommend it to anyone. With the S Series Toshiba and Microsoft delivered a player that out of the box will satisfy most consumers.

This is the last post in my "S30 Review" series. As I said in my first post this was never meant to be a full featured review with tons of details and specs. I'm just a regular Gigabeat user who enjoys to keep you guys/girls on top of the latest news and rumors on anything concerning the Gigabeat. If you do have a specific question don't hesitate to email me, and I will do my best to respond.

Previous posts:

Video Management

Music Management

Photo Management

First look with photos

For an in dept review checkout Alex Leopold's excellent S30 review over at DapReview.com

It would be interesting to get some feedback from other Gigabeat S Series owners. Post a comment and let us know what you think!

Just in case you didn't know... I have a forum here where we discuss the Gigabeat and it's been going strong for over a year now. A big thanks to all of you who continue to post in the forum!

posted by Tomas @ 1:09 PM

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20 Comments:

Mike said...: If only the experience with my S60 was going as smoothly as yours, Tomas. I'm currently in the process of trying to send in my S60 for repairs or replacement as it no longer connects to any computers. When it did connect, i only got 1 video to work and a few pictures. When i finally figured out the trick to get the tags and album art showing right it stopped connecting...

Part of me wishes i never bought it as there may be bigger and better on the horizon, but since if everything was as advertised the gigabeat would be a great player....; Tue Jul 04, 12:28:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: Tasha said.....

I love my S60. Mostly I'm like you, I use WMP 11 and all of my music is loaded through WMP. I haven't had many problems. The few problems that I did have were just from my stupidity and were answered through this website (thanks). I found the player relatively easy to use. It's almost idiot proof for windows users.

The only real problems are the cons that you listed above. Although I would like to see a firmware update that lets the user post pictures or some kind of theme for a background. I would also like to see a better selection or EQ settings or even personalized settings.

Overall I am very pleased with the S60 that I have, I don't plan on giving it up; Tue Jul 04, 05:02:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: Hey Tomas,
Thanks for the mini review. I love my S60, but have been experiencing crackling/popping sounds while switching between audio tracks. It happens consistently and has started to get really annoying as of late. I'll be returning mine this week.

Have you noticed this on your S30?

Thanks.; Tue Jul 04, 02:17:00 PM 2006
Josh04 said...: Video codec support is always going to be an issue with portable media players, because of the difficultly of optimising the decoding for the processors etc. Remember that the iPod Video only plays one codec.

(I think :P); Wed Jul 05, 03:53:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: Tasha Said:
I have noticed that quite a few people have this crackling noise between songs.
Even though I was already using WMP 11 I still used the enclosed CDROM. Once the CD is open I selected download WMP 10, as a result every now and then there is a folder in my recycling bin that says something about removal of noise from the S60. I have not had a problem with the crackling between songs.
No doing this did not revert my player to WMP 10, but maybe whatever downloaded from the CD corrects this problem.
It's worth a try.; Wed Jul 05, 08:13:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: Thanks for the heads up Tasha. I returned it already, so I didn't get a chance to try out your suggestion.

Using it some more, however, the crackling seems to happen whenever the hard drive is being accessed and isn't limited to switching between songs. I noticed the crackling while navigating the menus as well. Perhaps there is some electrical interference from the hard drive being accessed that's being transferred to the audio signal. Just a guess, but I didn't feel like waiting past my 30 day return period to find out.; Wed Jul 05, 11:17:00 AM 2006
Jeffrey said...: I just got mine from fedex today. It looks like a ferarri next to the humvee that my cowon x5l is. The interface is very nice. I know a couple people who're going to want one of these immediately once I show them the interface.

One thing I've noticed is that the device is always on once booted, which probably doesn't help the battery life. That "battery" switch on the case is really the power switch. The power switch, on the other hand is really the standby button. It would've been nice to make that battery switch more accessible for those of us who'd like to sacrifice boot times for battery life.; Wed Jul 05, 12:28:00 PM 2006
Create Play said...: I agree with Jeffrey about the power consumption. I don't know how badly leaving it in standby uses up the battery.

I just got mine last week thougha I love it. So far it's been flawless and I'm really loving URGE To Go. The service has a VAST library and I have tons of great content on the go with me. Selecting specific artists, albums, etc isn't that big of a deal to me. Usually I'll just play my entire library in shuffle or limit that to a specific genre, but it mixes up what I listen to and I really love everything about this player.

Video playback also looks great even on the default brightness, which is a plus. It's a pain to use in daylight though, so that's probably its one downside. But that's true of many players.; Fri Jul 07, 03:57:00 AM 2006
Create Play said...: It's also a beautiful device you're proud to pull out. I love showing it to people. The number one question upon first glance, as expected, "Is that an iPod?"

Navigation is tremendous and I couldn't be happier with my purchase.; Fri Jul 07, 03:59:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: I've had my S30 for two weeks now and I'm already feeling its flaws over my F40, which I sold to a friend in order to come up with funds to buy the S30 in the first place. First of all: It doesn't continuously play music. If you click "play all" on an artist, it will stop at the end of the artist, unlike the F40, which'll keep playing to the next artist and so on and so forth. Second of all: there's no sleep timer like the F40: one can't set it so that the player will stop playing after 30 mins, which is nice because I can lull myself to sleep with classical, but not on the S30. Thirdly, I kinda miss the awkward touch shortcuts from the F40 and also I don't really like how my settings screen is so limited. The player does look very lovely, but I'm somewhat feeling a bit used: the F40 was only $249 for me, and the S30 was $279 for me, and I've lost 10GB, some thickness, and many options, along with battery life, and I've only gained WMP11 support (which is bad because I can't figure out how to modify or add album art), and video support, which is stupid because I have to convert 30 mins from DivX only to have WMP11 convert it once more for some reason, even though I'm converting from WMV. This may seem as a complaint, but I'm feeling tinges of regret every now and then.; Sun Jul 30, 12:33:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: man my gigabeat is the best mp3 ive ever had the only problme i had with it is tht i broke my screen but thtwas my fault and i caled toshiba and there retards and dont no wat there talking about but yea GIGABEATS KICKS THE SHIT OUTTA IPODS; Fri Dec 15, 09:06:00 PM 2006
Anonymous said...: does anyone knows of any firmware upgrades to this device either by toshiba or microsoft?? if so, then do let us know.; Sat Dec 23, 12:18:00 PM 2006
Anonymous said...: hi am mimi in nigeria i luv my s30 as its not common here in my country in fact i had to ship itr from d states but my prob wit it is d power button seems to have stopped working after just a month of use.i have to now switch on from below and it seems to go off n come on on its own like it has a life of its own pllllllllllllllls can anyone help me out or tell me wot the problem cud be i cant posibly send it all d way back.help?; Sun Jan 14, 04:09:00 AM 2007
Anonymous said...: hii.....i just got my new gigabeat S30 shipped from the states b/c its like $150 cheaper than it is here(i live in australia). i previously owned a gigabeat F20...which i liked....but i needed video...can anyone tell me if the is a sleep timer or an off timer on the S30?
thanx Gid; Fri Mar 30, 03:13:00 AM 2007
Sam said...: hey everyone

i just got an S30 and so far im really impressed. the graphics are unbelievable!

im a bit annoyed with the conversion rate of video...so far its taken about 2 days of my computer being on and its only transfered 5GB/7.5GB---this is with USB 2.0.

another problem i had was it automatically seperating songs into different albums. i would have 3 albums of the same artist with different songs in each. once i downloaded WMP11 i figured out how to merge the albums...

overall im happy with it :); Sun Apr 08, 08:05:00 AM 2007
Anonymous said...: hi every1....i just got a gigabeat S30...and i am running it through windows mesia player 10....i have folders on my computer with music (eg. 2006, 2007). however when i put them onto the gigabeat it dus not create a playlist of (2006,2007) instead it throws all the songs under aritists, genres and albums.....can any1 tell me how yo make playlists??
thankyou...; Tue Apr 10, 04:30:00 AM 2007
Anonymous said...: hi there.
my S30 is 10 weeks old now, and I love it... BUT.
Twice (5 weeks apart) I've had all my media DELETED! I think there must be a factory function, when you press the power button the right amount of times, it shows a display "YOUR MEDIA IS BEING DELETED... PLEASE WAIT" or something like that.
A real bugger when I hadn't properly backed my songs up on my pc properly.
Anyone know anything about this? it sucks! 30 gig down the drain!

Cheers,Pete; Sun Jun 03, 05:31:00 PM 2007
craig said...: like others have stated, toshibas lack of support for their S30/60 series has turned me off big time! put new features on the S30 and S60 like

Timer Shutdown integration!

Divx codec support!

Better battery power management!

just to name a few off the top of my head; Tue Sep 04, 08:24:00 PM 2007
Anonymous said...: I have a 60GB. The problems with it are that it sucks dust into the screen. It also sometimes deletes your songs randomly for no reason. And for me it took like 3-4 hours to sync my entire collection of 5000 songs and 100 videos. Also, I had the battery almost all the way up and it said something about low battery life.; Mon Sep 17, 06:12:00 PM 2007
Anonymous said...: hey man,
thats a good review,
iv'e got a gigabeat s30 and am and a happy owner for almost a year but recently got a new pc that has wmp11 instead of my old pc which had wmp10.
every thing ran smoothly on wmp10 and now that i got wmp11 i seem so get troubles every time i try to sync my device, i have manged to get some music on my gigabeat but when trying to sync items on it comes up with a message saying cancelling inspection of files on device then it pretty much pauses.
please any advice would be great!
thanks; Mon Jan 14, 03:25:00 PM 2008