Just below the Archos logo on the front of the player is the 1.5-inch, 128x128-pixel monochrome LCD. The display is on the small side but makes the most of its available real estate, packing in artist, album, song title, and file/sampling info, as well as time elapsed/remaining/total, a progress bar, play and repeat modes, volume and battery indicators, the current time, and even the title of the song that's up next. Our only complaint is that the display is sometimes slow to refresh, especially when skipping from one song to the next.
Beneath the display lies the five-way navigational control and the stop/back and menu/power buttons (all within easy reach of our thumbs), as well as indicator lights for hard-drive activity, all embedded in a handsome but easily smudged silver panel. We had no trouble with the Gmini's intuitive controls; we were zooming around the player's various menus within a few minutes.
Along the top of the Archos Gmini XS 100 sits the USB 2.0 port, a headphone miniplug jack, and an AC port. Unfortunately, you'll have to buy the AC power separately, although you can charge the battery via the USB port. Also missing is a hold slider, a small but crucial omission; instead, you can freeze the keypad during playback by pressing and holding down the menu key. (Note: Holding it down disables the power-off feature.)
The Archos Gmini XS 100 doesn't have the bells and whistles of other compact or even flash-memory music players; there's no FM tuner, no line-in or voice recording, no calendar or contacts, and not even a game or two. But what the XS 100 does do, it does well.
