Archos 5 500 GB Internet Tablet with Android

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

Manufacturer: Archos Inc. dba Archos Technologies
Customer Rating:
List Price: $499.99
Sale Price: $399.99
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Product Description

ARCHOS, award-winning for its constant technology innovation, now introduces its new ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet. This product combines all the multimedia know-how that ARCHOS is famous for, with the ANDROID operating system. It offers you an uncompromised Internet, Media and TV experience in a customizable interface. In perpetual evolution with the continuous arrival of new applications, you can personalize your ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet to perfectly reflect your tastes and needs.

All the multimedia know-how that ARCHOS is famous for, with the ANDROID operating system. Click to enlarge.

HD Multimedia

Brilliant 5-inch Touchscreen
The ARCHOS 5 features an 800 pixel-wide 5-inch touchscreen, an ultra thin design, and an accelerometer for portrait or landscape viewing. Whether enjoying media yourself or sharing with friends, it delivers outstanding image quality.

HD Video Formats
Don't compromise--the ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet is able to handle the widest range of video formats, even at HD 720p resolution (H.264 HD, MPEG-4 HD, and WMV HD5).

Your Music Everywhere
Enjoy more music formats directly on your device (MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, AAC+, FLAC and OGG Vorbis). In addition, the unique ARCHOS music browsing system allows you to create your playlists without using a PC. Who needs a tuner? Just plug your ARCHOS 5 into amplified speakers and you're all set.

Experience Your Photos
Browse through your photos with a simple flick of your finger or play a slideshow with music and transition effects. The high resolution screen is great for zooming in on details.

Take It All
With a 500 GB Hard Drive, you won't waste time choosing what files to bring along--take your entire media library with you.

Personalize your ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet with apps to suit your tastes and needs. Click to enlarge.

Find your destination with the on-board GPS. Click to enlarge.

Internet

Fast & Convenient Web Surfing
The ARCHOS 5 lets you easily surf the Web. With a Wi-Fi connection (802.11 b/g/n) and the new OMAP3440 processor running at 800 MHz, you get quick and responsive Internet browsing just like on a laptop, without the endless waits for page loads. Enjoy the Web in full width thanks to the 800 pixel wide screen, with no need to zoom in or out.

3.5 G Mobile Phone Connection
If you own a standard mobile phone equipped with 3.5 G & Bluetooth technology, simply pair it up to your ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet via Bluetooth. This will give you easy access to Internet directly on your device anytime and anywhere.

Web TV and Web Radio
In less than 3 clicks, you can access nearly 1,000 Web TV channels, over 10,000 Web radio stations, and 100,000 podcasts. There's no downloading wait time. Radio and TV start streaming directly from a worldwide list of traditional and independent radio and TV stations.

Media Club
The Media Club remains the easiest way to get video and music content on the go. With an even richer library with new partners and some of the biggest industry names, you'll discover a large library of movies, documentaries, music albums, and games. Buy or rent your entertainment in a couple of clicks and start watching it on your ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet.

GPS

Full-Featured GPS
Whether you are walking or driving, you will always find your destination with the on-board GPS. The GPS includes voice assistance, points of interest, fast multiple-route calculations, and car/pedestrian/adventure modes based on the latest maps from Tele Atlas with 3D landmarks.

You can go to your account at anytime on the ARCHOS website and purchase the available maps or cities.

3D Photo-Realistic City Navigation
Find your way around cities in 3D Photo Realistic mode. With multi-angle views and four zoom levels, you'll be able to recognize places as if you had taken your own photos from the sky. This is ideal when walking and visiting large cities in the US (available Q1 2010).

Free 7-Day Trial
Try the GPS for 7 days free of charge.

TV

HD TV-Out With the Optional DVR Station or HDMI Mini Dock
Turn your TV into a real web-connected multimedia platform. Enjoy all the ARCHOS functions on the big screen of your living room. Watch your movies in HD (720p), listen to your music, share your high resolution pictures, play games or surf the Web.

Record your favorite programs with the Optional DVR Station
With the optional DVR Station, you have the perfect match for your ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet at home. Record TV shows and movies in one step using with the included remote control. Then you can enjoy your recording at home on your wide-screen TV or in the palm of your hand when you are out.

Add the DVR Station to record TV, play video back to your TV and charge your ARCHOS. Click to enlarge.

Get extended playback and S-Video/Composite video with the Battery Dock. Click to enlarge.

Use the DVR Snap-on to record from almost any audio or video analog source when you are on the move. Click to enlarge.

Applications

Ready to go with pre-installed applications

Enjoy a selection of fun and practical applications for daily use right out of the box:

eBuddy IM: for instant messaging
The multi-platform instant messaging application. Chat from one place to all your friends on the various platforms. Supports MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, Facebook, ICQ, MySpace and AIM (AOL)

DroidIn: for connecting to LinkedIn
Connect to your LinkedIn account to exchange information, ideas and opportunities. Stay informed about your contacts and industry. Find the people & knowledge you need to achieve your goals. Control your career online.

Twitroid: for instant micro-blogging
Twitroid is the industry-standard Twitter client for the Android platform. Easily access the famous free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables you to send and read tweets, publish short URLs and pictures.

Deezer: for music streaming
Enjoy 35 free web radio stations and the SmartRadio directly on your ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet.

Dailymotion: for viewing and sharing videos
Browse videos by searching tags, channels or user-created groups.

QuickPedia: for access to Wikipedia
Access to the free web-based and collaborative encyclopedia.

ThinkFree Mobile: for viewing Office documents
This application allows you to view, edit and create Microsoft Office 97/2000/XP/2003/2007 Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF documents. You will get a free update before year-end allowing you to also edit and create documents.

E-mail & contacts
Stay in contact by using the full integrated Email and contacts applications.

Moov: toggles easily between your apps
Moov wraps up your search needs all in one place, so you can quickly toggle between the product's contacts, Google, Wikipedia and the remaining Applications on your product.

CraigsPhone: for access to online classified advertisements
CraigsPhone is a centralized network of online communities, featuring free online classified advertisements � with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, gigs, r�sum�s, and discussion forums.

High Paying Jobs: for access to a list of jobs (US & Canada only)
Browse through jobs lists directly on the Product. Search over 2 million jobs from all the leading jobsites.

Add-ons

DVR Station
This accessory allows you to record TV, play video back to your TV and charge your ARCHOS. Recording your favorite programs has never been so easy. You can also surf the Web or stream web video to your TV while comfortably laid back on your couch using the included remote control as a keyboard and mouse pointer.

DVR Snap-on
Use our DVR Snap-on to record from almost any audio or video analog source when you are on the move.

Mini Dock
Transfer your files directly from USB keys, digital cameras, or other portable media players. Quickly charge your ARCHOS with the included charger/adapter. Play video out to your TV with video output in high quality S-Video or standard quality composite.

HDMI Mini Dock
Optimize TV playback with HDMI output quality. Transfer your files directly from USB keys, digital cameras, or other portable media players from the standard USB port. Quickly charge your ARCHOS with the included charger/adapter.

Battery Dock
Transfer your files directly from USB sticks, digital cameras, or other portable media players. Quickly charge your ARCHOS with the included charger/adapter and get extended playback with the built-in backup battery. Play video out to your TV with video output in high quality S-Video or standard quality composite.

What's in the Box

ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet, headphones, Standard USB cable, DVR Station adapter, Quick Start Guide (QSG), legal and safety notice.

Product Details

500 GB capacity for up to 148,000 songs
10 hours of audio or 4 hours of video on a single charge
4.8-inch TFT LCD touchscreen display with 800 x 480 pixel resolution and 16 million colors
Supports MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, AAC+, FLAC, and OGG Vorbis audio formats
Supports MPEG-4, MPEG-4 HD (up to 720p), H.264 HD (up to 720p), WMV, and M-JPEG video formats; JPG, BMP, PNG, and GIF image files

Video Reviews

No video reviews found for this product.

Customer Reviews

1st Impressions: big and beautiful!

Review Date: October 17, 2009

Reviewer: Alan E. Moore, Sanford, FL

I just got my new Android 5 500GB direct from Archos yesterday and its quite a beauty. I'm upgrading from my old Archos 5 250GB, so that will be my primary point of comparison. I also have the following to compare to: iPod Touch 64GB, Archos 605, Walkman X, Samsung P2, and a host of other MP3 players large and small.

Given that my iPod Touch upgrade this year was less than astounding, I pretty much figured that this upgrade for Archos would be similarly understated. Mainly I just wanted the extra hard drive so I could backup all my laptops onto my music player. I was wrong! The new Android version seems to have a whole new feel both in form factor and the new software. I had heard that Archos was having problems with the software, but they seem to have ironed most of them out as of 1.1 firmware release. I did update my firmware immediately, and the process was quite smooth.

I'm going to rate this player on my absolute scale. I will also be making notes on the value of the upgrade from my old Archos 5. Note: I mostly use this as a media center to play music and video; secondarily as a backup drive.

Let's get to it then, these are the things I love about my new Android:

1) 500GB -- totally awesome amount of disk, I can now put just about every digital file I own on the Archos.
2) Android interface -- the overall feel of the software interface has definitively improved with the integration of Android. Effects are crisper, the esthetics are cleaner, things seem to happen faster. I especially like how easy it is to access the most recently played song or video from the main screen, pops up with a little thumbnail that you tap on and voila, resumes right where you left off!
3) Apps -- with Android we now have access to some serious app selection. Of course, nobody compares to the Apple App Store, but this comes the closest.
4) Weight -- this actually feels lighter to me than my 250GB.
5) Dock/DVR -- this popped right into my old 5 DVR and started playing right away. I still think this is the best DVR/Player combination available of all the MP3 players.
6) Video/Hi Def -- of the players I have owned, this has the best, biggest, and highest resolution screen.
7) Portrait/Landscape -- Archos has borrowed the iPhone trick of rotating the display according to orientation. I guess they have an accelerometer in there now, I dunno. Still, its fun to see this feature on an Archos. Its a lot easier to navigate playlists in portrait mode.
8) Easy and regular firmware updates -- with a WiFi connection, the firmware updates are easily performed on the unit itself. That's the easiest system I've seen of all my players. One thing I've learned about Archos over the years, they will put out a steady stream of firmware updates.
9) WMV/MTP mode-- very smooth interface to Windows for either Media Monkey or Windows Media Player.
10) Dedicated volume button -- power and volume buttons have been conveniently located onto the top edge. This is actually much easier to use when it is docked on the DVR (which is where mine spends most of its life!).
11) Sound quality is pretty good, sounds great through my Klipsch speakers and seems to have more oomph than my other players.
12) WiFi/Browser -- has a good browser and WiFi connection has worked well for me. I think the keyboard is better than the Touch's, although Safari is probably the slightly superior browser. The bigger screen also helps for browsing. Overall I'm inclined to give the Archos the top ranking for browsers.
13) I just discovered Twidroid, one of many apps pre-loaded, allows me to check my Twitter in a really nice format -- love it!
14) Portability -- well there's only so much portability that can be expected with a screen and hard drive this large. This new design is smoother and rounder so its a little more comfortable in a pocket. It is very easy to carry around as a handheld device, fits nicely in my hand as I stroll about the house trying out all of the Android Apps! In any case, this is not as portable as a Touch but I think its pretty good for a small computer -- which is basically what this is.
15) No extra plug ins needed (so far!). Always in the past I've laid out another $40 for additional Archos plugins to play iPod format music and other video formats. So far I haven't had to do that -- thank you Archos :)
16) Archos will stand behind their product. I've had to send in a couple of Archos units over the years and they have always been happy to either repair or replace the unit without quibbling about it, as long as its under warranty. Note: it did take two weeks to get my unit back!
17) Multi threading: now I show my engineer/geek side. This baby can do a bunch of different stuff at the same time, unlike the iPhone/Touch which can really only do one thing at a time. The Android can be doing other stuff while you are listening music. I love the little bar on the top that you can pull down and switch to any other task that is running.
18) Built-in kickstand, very nice feature.
19) Stylus friendly touch screen -- sometimes you just get tired of trying to type a touchscreen keyboard with fat fingers! In general, this is one of my favorite touch screens. Most of the other touch screens, including iPod/iPhone, are capacitance which means stylus won't work
20) Micro USB cable plug-in: finally a standardized USB plug and you can have it resting on its kickstand while plugged in :)

Given that the Archos tops the class in several categories, and continues to be the best 500GB 5 inch screen player available I give it about a 4.7 stars out of 5 (round to 5). There are a few things I'm less than thrilled about:

1) Update: I believe you can now format your drive in a Windows friendly format on 1.7.96 version of firmware. External hard drive EXT3 -- as I understand it, Archos changed to the EXT3 hard drive format for reasons of speed and reliability. The result for me is that I can no longer simply select hard drive MSC mode, plug the Archos into a Windows machine and expect to access the drive. You have to install an Ext3 driver such as EXT2 IFS on your Windows PC. Once I did that I was able to access the hard drive and backup files to my hearts content.
2) The playlist interface didn't get much of an upgrade and its still kind of clunky. I want to simply tap my playlist and it starts playing. Often times I have to do a couple of extra taps to get the thing playing.
3) We lost the dedicated play button and removable battery a while back -- but I still miss them both! None of my favorite touch screen players has either of these features. I'm also missing the brown metallic color and the rubbery backside.
4) Finding a case for this baby is no easy trick. You're not going to find one at the local Best Buy I'm afraid. In the past I've resorted to ordering my Archos cases from European companies like I-nique and Noreve. This is generally true of any player that is not an iPod or a Zune.
5) As always with Archos, you must remember that you are dealing with a French based company. This means that they don't always provide the best support/service/upgrades to us Americans.
6) Lets face it, Archos is always playing catch up. Some of the new features aren't fully functional yet. I do have faith that Archos will fix all the little glitches with things like GPS over the course of the next 6 months. The Apps available are currently a bit limited. I expect this will improve over the coming months.
7) Keep in mind that this is not a unit for the faint of heart. This is more for the hobbyist who wants a cutting edge experience that may take some messing around to get it just the way you want it. If you want something easy that requires minimum effort then iPods are going to be more your cup of tea.

For me this is still the best player of its class -- that class being large hard drive, big screen PMP players with other fun features. Android makes for some fun possibilities, and overall I'm impressed with this as an upgrade. Once again, if you don't mind a smaller screen and you love apps I suggest you get an iPod Touch. If what you care about most is sound quality you may want to get a Walkman X. For me those are your top 3 touch screen players, it just depends on what you care about the most.

Note: 10-23-2009; I upgraded to firmware version 1.2.03 which fixes some App, Browser, and YouTube issues. Apps do seem happier now, upgrade process was very smooth. Still happily listening to tunes for about 8 hours a day with no problems :)

Update 11-7-2009: I've been running version 1.2.15 with a host of bug fixes and the unit does seem more stable in general now. Wifi is working better and USB connection seems more reliable.

Update 11-23-2009: Upgrade to firmware v 1.3.07 -- a long list of bug fixes including a few improvements that I had hoped for to control the scanning of multimedia files/ ArcLibrary. Got an AppsLib update which seems to work more reliably. There seem to be a lot more apps available now (300 ish) in AppsLib. Just keeps getting better and better! Still is playing music day in and day out with no problems and I'm backing up 2 laptops worth of files onto my 5 IT.

Update 12-18-2009: I've been on firmware 1.4.16 for over a week now. Lots of little fixes, seems even more stable now.

Update 2-11-2010: Firmware 1.7.33 (Android Donut) upgrade. The upgrade was a bit of work, I ended up reformatting the drive and starting anew. However, power saving seems to work a lot better and I haven't seen it reset itself for quite a while now. This seems to be the most solid release yet!

Update 4-8-2010: Firmware 1.7.96: just keeps getting better! Several annoying bugs fixed, Deep Sleep and Windows hard drive modes have been added as helpful new features among other things. This seems even more stable than previous versions. This is still my main car and home music player of choice.

Review with a clue

Review Date: October 12, 2009

Reviewer: Eric Laffoon, Portland, OR USA

This is my third Archos. I had an iRiver which was only nice until I saw the Archos 605 wifi. As nice as that one was I saw the new Archos 5 in a side by side video booting up, playing a video and loading a web page. It was vastly better so I bought it and loved it. When I saw this one I didn't wait to get it. Mine arrived 1 week ago as I write this. I sold my 605 because my wife didn't want it. I'm keeping the old 5 because it's not worth selling when I can use as a second unit. My wife doesn't want it either, but she wants one of these! I will compare to the previous version but I want to introduce what I think shines and also respond to some clueless posts here.

First of all there is no other device like this anywhere. My PC has a Quad Athlon 64 CPU with 8 GB RAM running 64 bit Linux. The Archos loads web pages in most cases faster than my PC! Looking at a Zune? The Archos 800x480 has 2.94 times as many pixels as the Zune's 480x272, but that's only half the story because the 4.8 inch screen has double the pixel density of the 3.3 on the Zune. Don't even ask about ipods. My BlackBerry 8900 has more pixels. Pop up a video and marvel at a screen so good you will forget you're looking at a handheld device. I have my old unit in the dock to watch on TV, but I actually prefer this one in hand. (My old one is 250 GB and bulky) The browser in this unit renders pages correctly that the old one munches up at 800 pixels and with the continuous zoom and intelligent column handling it's way easier to read.

Someone mentioned it weighs as much as a PSP? Bzzt! Wrong again. I showed mine to a guy with a PSP and he held them both and asked me to check out that his PSP weighed twice as much. He said it suddenly seemed like a brick. When I told him I didn't have to transcode videos to play them and could do MKV he was blown away. Here's a tip. Forget that there are a few bugs and just go out in public with this unit. Everyone who saw it started asking questions and all my friends were incredibly jealous, even after I had to reboot it in front of one of them. Battery life is also excellent as after a few charges I managed all day usage out of this playing with it. On top of that wifi is so good that I get at least 10%-20 more range on my portable hot spot than I do with my BlackBerry or my old Archos 5. I also got 7 satellites locked in the middle of my house using the free Android YGPS software I downloaded.

The very cool part that drew me to this was Android integration. There are a few caveats. Android is still fairly new, but growing fast and integrating media center programs with a phone layer in a device that doesn't have a phone is an extremely ambitious project... and let's be clear. Nobody else is even close to this! That said there are Android programs that need work, which is not chiefly an Archos problem. When something crashes it pops up a dialog and asks if you want to kill it or let it try to recover a little longer. One frustration is some programs not offered on the AppsLib require a photo barcode reader to download and seem to behave as if they are not sure what the device is, but I expect that to improve as it gains popularity and gets more interaction.

One thing people complain about is that the browser doesn't do Flash. Uh, yeah... show me a PMP that does Flash. That's right, the last generation of Archos. Now try to view Flash 10. Right, doesn't work. That's why a bunch of companies partnered together on the Open Screen project with Adobe. Guess what. Adobe and Google hoped to have it out by now but it's just in beta. Wow! It must be software! Being as I develop software I know about things taking longer than you hope. However the TI chip in this unit was specifically designed to be able to make short work of Flash 10. The Webkit browser is nicer than the Opera browser in the last unit and this unit will still run flash, just not integrated into the browser. Given that the new software should be ready in 2-3 months you can hardly blame Archos for not investing huge effort to hack flash 9 into the browser.

I am not surprised this unit is less than perfect. Some of the flames directed at Archos are really infantile. They are a small but growing company. Companies with no less financial clout that Microsoft are notorious for releasing software that has numerous promised features removed, can't run piles of software from previous releases and ships to PC companies with dozens of pages of known bugs. All that while making far less internal change than promised. This unit is a huge jump. I have had mine for a week. It has frozen up on me a few times. It depends on what I'm doing. Some things crash it more easily. It would be nice if it were more fully debugged, but having released software I found that no matter how thoroughly I tested customers found bugs I didn't. Early adopters of bleeding edge hardware running custom software are going to experience higher than usual bugs. Get over it! One day you flip it on and it loads a great firmware update and all is happy. And for the guy who said he didn't have wifi... spend [...] man! You can download the upgrade and manually install it, but that is less satisfying for browsing the web.

Everything the previous unit did this one does better, except play Flash video, but the last one was not as good at browsing the web as they promised... which never took away from it being great as a media player and excellent on HDTV browsing the web with the dock. Would I like to have this unit now or wait until Adobe finishes Flash for Android and Archos smooths out more bugs? Hell yes I want it now! I'd like to see the tether work, flash and some other things, and I'm sure I will soon.

There is a prevailing foolishness today that people, when handed a [...] gold piece with a small scratch on it, will trade it for a shiny new quarter and imagine they achieved empiric victory by acquiring inferior goods over imperfect superior goods. If you like to complain so much you can't enjoy an imperfect world have someone buy this for you for Christmas. That way they have no more than a few weeks of you complaining before Adobe let's you watch Hulu... which will look like crap on a Zune and nothing at all on an iphone. There is nothing like an Archos. If I have to reboot this thing once every few hours to have a unit that's 97% perfect months before it is flawless those months are money well spent in happy exploration of the most awesome handheld device yet.

from an ipod addict.............

Review Date: March 26, 2010

Reviewer: A. Niles, USA

before i bought my archos 5 160gig with android, i did much research and reading. ive had it for 2 days now.
it is all it should be! i love it. will i love it tomorrow. i think so.
however ive read so much about it crashing that i wonder if it will last.

im not a gadget guru or a tech-head. just someone that was addicted to apple ipods. had many of em. they have problems as well people. lets not pretend they dont. but for all its quirks (and there's not many), the archos is really cool.

now 6 months or 3 years from now when my lil archos device stops working and i cant get any archos tech support of any kind at all...
will i still love it? YES!!!!!! why?
heres why?

its like no other device out there. it destroys the iphone! (my brother has 2 iphones and loved em till he saw the archos)
u wont believe the stuff this thing can do!

but enough preening over it. heres some stuff u should know.

1. closing the browser doesnt stop the browser program entirely. ull need to go to the system functions for that. its made like that, i assume, for the purpose of faster loading. BUT... leaving open all theses different apps all at once MAY be the reason for all the crashing. i say may because, again, im no tech-head.

2. the booklet and the internet info all say to "CHARGE COMPLETELY BEFORE USING" and u better do it! charging straight from the usb cord on ur computer will take much longer than a wall outlet adapter though. MUCH longer.
in fact the booklet says that when its done charging the little light will blink. but in my case, 24 hours later and the little light was still solid. when i picked it up i accidently hit the power button. the archos powered up and to my suprise, the little light started to flash. now i unhooked and ran it down dead and im still waiting for it to charge back up. (no wall adapter yet lol!)
but i gotta say for its first charge... it ran from 2-3 in the afternoon till around 2-3 that night. (i only had it play music all night) meaning the 12 hour battery life they boast is fairly accurate.

BUT YOU MUST CHARGE THE HECK OUT OF IT BEFORE U USE IT THE FIRST TIME. my advice: 24 hour initial charge. do not interrupt

and i know its hard to do that when u just got it and u really wanna play with it. however, for the money ur spending, u better do it right and get the most out of ur dollars ya know.

ive not yet tried the transmitter in my car, nor have i tried the GPS. but i did very easily look thru (and listen to) my brothers music folder on his computer via the wi-fi. a lil sluggish but he has over 400 gigs of music so u could see why.

plug n play: best thing ever!!!!!!!

and as far as people saying that the touch screen is NOT sensitive to finger-touch but sensitive to EVERYTHING else.... wrong! (at least in my opinion) and come on people, its an electronic device, u cant throw it on the table like car keys.

if ur wondering wether or not u should turn from ipod to archos... i think so.
just be sure to update the firmware and i think the archos will impress u greatly

so far i dig this device. and again......... just my opinion

Archos 5 IT is awesome!

Review Date: April 16, 2010

Reviewer: James N. White, Iraq currently

This thing is great, I love it despite what any one else says about it. I have had this product for about a month I think, and I havent had any issues. I know there are addons to it that cost extra but what product doesnt. Allot of it is based on having wifi everywhere, I think they could have implimented 3/4G into it, but its okay, some cities are offering wifi throughout the whole city itself, than you can also tether it as well. Cell phone companies are providing 3/4G wifi routers the size of a deck of cards that can go anywhere.

You do have to register it on the internet before you can use many features like video/audio. The time I bought it, amazon gave the HD video recorder for free so I did not have to pay for the 40 dollar plugin for HD. That was a great deal.

Also the first thing you should do is update the firmware, this will take most of the problems that previous user had have in the past. I did this and I havent seen any problems.

Caution - will not connect to AD-HOC networks. :(

I would buy this over an IPOD or ZUNE anyday.

Better now than a month ago

Review Date: November 16, 2009

Reviewer: Jonathan Rockway, Chicago, IL

Hardware-wise, this is a nice device. Android feels bogged down on my phone, but on this device, it's wonderful. Animations are smooth, apps load instantly, etc. The device is physically beautiful. It has been in and out of my pocket for a few weeks, and there is not a scratch to be seen anywhere. It looks as nice as they day I unwrapped it. The screen is also very nice; it is bright and exactly 2x bigger than the iPod Touch's. The device still fits into my pocket OK, although it is a little bit bigger than I would consider ideal for that. (I have the 32G flash version. If you get a hard disk version, 160G or 500G, it's not going to be easily pocketable anymore.)

Software-wise, the default firmware this device ships with is total crap. You will see a lot of 1 star reviews here, and it's for that reason. The reviewers got the device, turned it on, and nothing worked. The default firmware is buggy, the built-in apps don't work right, the media player crashes like crazy, and it is generally frustrating. Archos really should have delayed the release of this thing by a month or so (but then wouldn't have gotten the free testing from people that paid $400 for the device).

Archos has recently fixed this, however. They have been good about releasing firmware updates every week or so. (Archos has a bad reputation for abandoning devices, so I was worried what I was shipped was The End. Not so, anymore.) With the latest firmware, everything I want working works. All of my favorite Android apps work great. The media player plays my music and videos perfectly (they even added Japanese fonts to the media player after I requested them!) Random videos from the Internet play fine, and so do H.264 MKVs I generated from my DVD collection. If you can watch the video on your computer, odds are it will play on the Archos device without any re-encoding. Just copy the video to the device, and start watching.

The web browser is also awesome. It is super fast, and if you are OK with a small font, pages render just like they would on your desktop. You feel like you are using a small computer, not a big phone. So if you want to go have a cup of coffee somewhere with free wifi and want something to read, this device is the perfect thing to have with you. (When I do the same thing on my phone, I never quite feel like I am really enjoying the experience. With the Archos, I enjoy the experience :)

So bottom line, if you have Wifi and can update the firmware, you should get this device. It is the perfect media player and mobile web browser. It has better hardware, better codec support, and more extensibility than anything else available. And, the extensibility doesn't come at much "user experience" expense. If you can copy files and read labels on icons, I don't think this is any harder to use than an iPod Touch. (And of course, if you have FLAC music or MKV videos, they are simply incompatible with anything Apple ships. But if you have the Archos, they play perfectly.)