
Archos Is On Track and Really Hit the Market Hard
Review created: 01/08/07(updated 01/08/07)
20 of 23 people found this review helpful.
Ok. Where to start? How about with this; Go see my other reviews about the , Archos Jukebox Recorder 20GB,Archos AV500 and Archos 504 160GB Model to get a feel on how I review technology advances from this outstanding French company Archos Technology.
Pros: WiFi, Touch Screen, Records TV shows,Plays DVD's and h.264 codec, USB Recharing instead of conventaional Power Cord
Cons: WiFi is slow, Only 30GB's, No Kickstand on back, Processor is slow, Slightly thicker than any of the other 4 Series due to the addition of WiFi, Battery life sucks, have to buy acceriores that used to come stock with the AV Series to save money (Bullet Cam, Docking Station, Power Cord)
Start breaking this down for ya. With all the good that this comes with, the bad is almost as equal. Archos packed this with all the right stuff, but still fell short on their delivery, mostly because had they done a better job, the price for this would be about twice as much.
Price - Pro
This is not that pricy, which is a good thing and somewhat of a bad. It doesn't come with alot of stuff,so the price is somwhat low compared to the 504 160GB's retail $599.99, this 604 30GB WiFi will run you $449.99 if bought from Archos OR you can try eBay and get it for less than $400.00.
Battery - Con
Archos has made leaps and bounds in advances in this department, but still falls short. Nothing has changed between any of the 4 Series (404,504,604) Battey life sucks. Videos can play about 8 hours before recharge and Music can play about a whole day. *Note* Turning the screen brightness in the settings to 1 or 2 will extend battery life and still have a bright enough to see what your doing.
Playback - Pro and Con
Archos finally did a good thing and threw downloads of $20.00 each you can play .VOB files and files that use h.264 (MKV and OGM) That means Dual Audio files and the ability to play DVD files, as well as AC3 and OGG audio.
Still a bad part is the limited Video playback formats it has (AVI,WMP,WAV) That means NO Quicktime files, NO Loseless audio, Limited MPEG Video codecs and you can't simply download the codecs, you have to reformat the videos to the useable formats already playable, Archos needs advancement in this secetion.
Wifi and Touch Screen - Pro and Con
1200 more characters left and counting, gotta wrap this up.
Wifi...awesome, I can now be on the net, anywhere, anytime...Cool....wait if only the pages didn't load up so slowly, and oh what's this, I can't load Flash pages either like YouTube or Myspace? WTF? Whats the use of having WiFi with so many restrictions? Plus, you need a place with a strong singal to stay connected. Plus, you are on the Internet, and the device is a hard drive.... put those two together, Hard Drive + Internet= Viruses and you don't have Norton or McAfee's to save your behind if you get that nice Trojan or Worm
The touch screen, awesome. Archos you did a great job, the 1st on the market with this, other than say Blackberry or a conventaional Palm Pilot. 1st to have WiFi. Apple, Microsoft,Creative Vision, all of the competion are behind in this field and are playing catch up. Now all Archos needs to do is stay on top and a step forward of the group.
**BEWARE**
http://www.archos.com/products/video/archos_604wifi/tech_specs.html?country=global&lang=en
Archos's Tech Specs
Note on the bottom about the limited Recharging cycle and filesizes thigns have to be at in order to get the quoted amount of files stated above @ the top
Review ID: 10000000002714850

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