Outstanding Portable Media Player

I bought my 60 GB Gigabeat five weeks ago and have been pleased with it since it arrived at my house. The main reason I'm writing this review is to share my experiences with this product for anyone interested in buying one, and to set the record straight on a few of the misconceptions and/or complaints that are floating around the internet.

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As far as I can tell, the data loss issue isn't even a problem. I have no idea where this complaint comes from. There's a possibility that Toshiba might have released some buggy units early on in the products initial run, but those problems have since been sussed out. Failing that, the people who are complaining about this glitch have done something wrong and created their own problems. My 60 GB MES60VK works fine with no data loss, software, or hardware issues.

The second common complaint is length of battery life. Unlike the data loss complaints, this is a legitimate issue, although it may not be a deal breaking one. From my experience, the internal battery does NOT last the 12 hours on a single charge that they claim it should. On the other hand, it lasts a lot longer than 4 hours as some of the reviewers here on Amazon might have you believe. Typically, I can squeeze out 7 or 8 continuous hours of music. This is a problem if you somehow expect to go days and weeks between charges. If you listen to music all day, you will have to charge at least once every 24 hours. This hasn't been a real problem for me, however, because a two hour charge brings you to full power again (you can charge when you go for a cup of coffee, even). It's not a huge price to pay and not worth denouncing the Gigabeat entirely over.

Those things aside, there's really not a bad thing you can say about the Gigabeat. If you're buying this 60 GB version, it's almost a guaranteed thing you will have more hard-drive space than you need. The video presentation is excellent, given the nature and limitations of the product. Similarly, the sound quality is about as good as you could ever realistically expect from a portable media player. The interface is streamlined and easy to use, and they include a software upgrade so that you'll be running the most current iteration of Windows Media Player (a necessity for using the Gigabeat). It's simple, works well, and does everything you could expect out of a portable media player.

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As far as I can tell, the Gigabeat only has one flaw: battery life. And, if you're patient enough to make the quick trip to the charger on a daily basis, that doesn't even count. The number of features offered by this player and its strong performance and storage abilities more than compensate. In fact, that's why I'm recommending it unequivocally.

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Great little player

I own a 60 Gig iPod and I bought this for my husband for Valentine's day because I liked all the extra features it has. He played with it all night long and it is just great. I love that it has a radio tuner and the fact that you can just plug it into your TV and watch your movies is beyond awesome. It just has so many features its great. we will see how it holds up and I will likely get one for myself as I need a portable device I can upload my photos to when I am out taking pictures. I am leery of all the randomly formatted drives, so we will wait and see. Over all though, this thing is great!

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I returned this item

Item did not feel as solid as my ipod did. I do like the Microsoft OS on it so i went with the Zune which im now very happy with!

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