Toshiba brings gigabeat T400 to US as nano rival

Toshiba this morning released a wave of new devices and began with the early import of one of its most advanced, flash-based music players. The gigabeat T400 closely follows the release of the Japanese version and promises the same use of H2C decoding to produce superior audio quality compared to most players: the new gigabeat's chipset can restore many of the details lost in the compression of MP3 and WMA tracks. A 1-bit digital amp and filter also help reduce background hiss and other noise that sometimes intrude into music. The T400 is also one of the few media players to support Windows Media Lossless, Toshiba adds.

The company further boasts one of the more video-friendly media players with flash memory, fitting a 2.4-inch LCD and the ability to play WMV movies for up to five hours. Music playback time is rated at 16 hours, according to Toshiba. Pricing will be the emphasis for the player with a single, 4GB black model shipping for $120 with color trim as the only option; the American version drops the second Wi-Fi model that is available in Japan and may hint at a flash-based Zune with a similar design that restores wireless support.