Gigabeat F20 VS Iaudio x5

[ZZDMAN]

hey people,
after lurking these forums for a few months i finally decided to sign up.
I'm looking for a 20gig mp3 player for around 200$.
The options are:
Creative zen touch (outdated, non color screen, a bit thick)
Archos gmini xs200 (the 202 which is the updated version disappeared into thin air and the xs200 has an ugly monochrome green screen with bad batt life)
Toshiba gigabeat f20 (2.2inch beautiful high res screen with a 16hr batt life).

So basically it's either the toshiba gigabeat f20 or paying a bit more for the iaudio x5. My ipod mini broke 2 months ago and i'm not even thinking of going the apple route btw :-/

So lets see:
i want music and photos, video is useless to me. The extra features of the iaudio are appealing but also quite useless (i won't listen to radio if i have every song i like on the player, i won't record cause i don't have anything to record, i won't use line in....).
The only USEFUL extra feature of the iaudio is in my opinion the USB OTG.
The iaudio x5 is 250$ shipped, 14 hr battery vs the the gigabeat f20 which is 200$ shipped, 16hr battery. The sound quality on the gigabeat has massively improved since the latest firmware (ver 3 was released in japan and now makes it one of the best sounding players on the market. it will be released in the US in 2-4 weeks).
The only thing people hate about the gigabeat are the controls and software which i can live with (i think a crazy ol overclocker can handle an mp3 file transferring program).

Now to what REALLY makes the gigabeat more appealing:
My sister will be buying the player for me from the US and sending it to me (i'm a us citizen currently living is Israel). The iaudio x5 have batt problems and i CANNOT afford to RMA.

All of my music is mp3 192kbps or 192 VBR.

So are there any comparisons that i missed or should i just bite the bullet?

thanks in advance!

EDIT:
can't afford the x5l so plz don't recommend it, thanks


BUMP: Anyone?

[Konechiwa]

battery problems? Thats not a huge thing, its a rare occurance.

Toshiba is coming out with a new player now (gigabeat S) so the F will drop again soon. Its really up to you, X5 is drag and drop while toshiba is not at all.

both have SRS/BBE...X5 plays movies though (new gigabeat S does too) but F does not.

I here that the music management software for gigabeat sucks, but other then that its pretty solid (well, plastic solid- not as good as metal...)

my guess is gigabeat.

[dfkt]

I would never buy a player that forces me to use some proprietary software to transfer music onto it. All other advantages just can't be so good as to justify some superfluous crippleware. So, X5 for now it is.

[ZZDMAN]

Alright thanks guys but my sister managed to RMA my old ipod mini. Yey

[afruff23]

Originally Posted by dfkt

I would never buy a player that forces me to use some proprietary software to transfer music onto it. All other advantages just can't be so good as to justify some superfluous crippleware. So, X5 for now it is.

Same here, that's why I never bought the iPod or the Rio Karma. You wouldn't believe the ignorance of Karma users at riovolution.com . They keep saying it's a great player even after they're on their 3rd/4th/5th Karma due to HDD failure/joystick breaking. Not to mention they have to use proprietary software(or pay to use svelta from dbPoweramp or pay for riorad explorer from Red Chair software).