Take 1: Toshiba Gigabeat U103

I’ve used an older version of the Gigabeat before, and I can genuinely say that I enjoyed the experience; it had a lot of features that many digital audio players don’t have nowadays, and I really appreciated them.

As I went through my initial stages of research, I realized quite quickly that the most shocking part of this digital audio player would be its colour palette; oh my, the Gigabeat U103 comes in twenty-four different colours! That’s already a big plus in my book; although it might be a bit much, it means that I wouldn’t have to purchase a Gigabeat that looked as colour-unfriendly as my previous one (a navy blue).

This variant of the Gigabeat is available with a single gigabyte of storage, and a 1.1-inch screen; it is not as aesthetically-pleasing as many of its competitors, and lacks storage when compared to digital audio players such as the iPod Nano and the Zen Vision Plus.

Asides from that, I don’t think I need to say too much; this might be the first digital audio player that I would not recommend getting. It doesn’t have ample storage, and looks quite ugly (when put bluntly). The only thing I say it has going for it is the almost ludicrous amount of colour-selection; I guess its consumers (whoever that could be) would be able to have an exceptionally decent selection, but I greatly doubt that retail stores will have all the colours in stock.