Archos AV400 MP3 Player

The Archos AV400 comes in several models, AV420/20GB, AV440/40GB, AV480/80GB, AV4100/100GB

I used an AV420 on a recent trip overseas, 10-hour flight mind you. I had enough battery power to watch a full-length 2-hour movie and the rest of the flight I listened to mp3's. I was skeptical, but the battery holds its charge. The screen on this unit is 3.5"; it has excellent color and viewing angle. The unit also has a built in speaker that is ok, can't honestly expect big sound to come out of it, I was impressed nonetheless. With a built in CF port, you can purchase a memory card reader/writer and be able to download your picture straight to the unit from your memory cards. This is a must have for anyone traveling and taking a lot of picture. My self as an example took about 1300 pictures using a 256mb memory card only. There is no need to for a bulky laptop, transfer the images from the stick to the unit and preview all your photos on the screen. With the AV400 series you can also record LIVE from ANY analog video signal, be it a DVD player, VCR, television, cable, satellite, camcorder. You can watch on the internal screen or output whatever you see on your screen to a PAL or NTSC television. If you want to use the unit a portable hard drive you can do that also via the USB 1.1/2.0 port. This is truly a well-rounded portable storage device / media player. Blows the competition away, there is nothing out there yet that can match Archos, they all come close, but still lack either one, two or three features here and there. You will not be disappointed in this unit at all, but you will kick your self for not buying one. I had the AV420 model and had recently upgraded to the AV480. Little secrete for folks that like to tinker with things, but it does void your warranty. Other then the AV420, you can change the internal hard drive with any laptop hard rive you can find. So if you have an 80gig drive and want a 100, 120, 160 or whatever else is available in the future you can upgrade it. There are guides out there that show you how, but again you void all of your warranty doing so.

The downside to the AV400 series; It is bigger then the competition, but still well worth this minor inconvenience. The pictures (mine were 4 and 5 mega pixel) when viewing using the AV400 are very choppy or blocky. They could be viewed don’t get me wrong, but I expected a little bit more detail. Its as if the unit adjust the picture to fit the screen but does a poor job of it. Also the higher you go in mega pixels the slower the image previews become. The good news is that it does not affect the file what so ever, you can safely store the images there when on trips and download later to your PC at home. For the video portion of the player, it would be nice if ARCHOS would support more forms of AVI/MPEG formats aside the simplest standard.


SOME SPECIFIACTIONS OF THE AV400 SERIES ARE BELOW

Video recording: MPEG-4 SP and stereo sound, optimised resolution for TV up to 512x384 @ 30 f/s, in AVI format.

Video playback: MPEG-4 SP with MP3 or ADPCM stereo sound, near DVD quality up to 720x480 @ 30 f/s, AVI file format. Play WMV files.

Music recording: From any analog source in stereo sound in WAV (PCM & ADPCM) format. Voice recording with built-in microphone.

Music playback: Stereo MP3 decoding @ 30-320 kb/s CBR & VBR, WMA (including protected files), WAV (PCM & ADPCM).

Photo viewer: JPEG (except progressives) or BMP.