- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 99 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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5 out of 5 people found this review helpful
5.0 stars
"truth about archos 605 wifi"
Pros: superb visual&audio quality, no windows drivers or application needed. low purchase price
Cons: computer usb charging is slow
Summary: truth about archos 605 wifi 30g
1. It wont cost you 299 euros. Sooner or later you will have to buy:
(a) a carrying case. archos provide a very well built leather case with a stylus slot for 24.99 euros + P&P
(b) a charging station. charging archos through computer usb needs 8-10 hrs. Archos provides a charging a mini dock for 29.98 + P&P , but you will most probably go for the battery dock (which also offers an extra battery) for 49.98 euros. Both these "docks" cut the charging time in half (apprx 4hrs). Note that buying a 5 euro universal mains usb charger will also speed up charging time, based on my personal experience
(c) web browsing plugin. you purchase this from archos for 29.98
(d) the so called "cinema plugin" to listen to ac3 encoded music (mainly useful if you have divx movies with ac3 sound). Archos obscurely states that cinema plugin plays DVD but it only plays VOB files. If you copy a dvd structure to your archos it wont recognize the dvd menus even with the cinema plugin installed. cinema plugin will cost you 19.99 euros
(e) you will most probably need a pair of quality earphones. If you dont already own these , a pair of creative aurvana i personally use will cost another 100 euros
(f) archos usb cable is not standard on the archos connection end. You get one special usb cable with archos but you will need most probably at least one more to keep it at your work. An extra cable costs 4.99 euros.
So archos will cost you 299(player)+49.98 ( battery dock)+4.99(extra usb cable)+ 29.88 (archos leather case)+P&P(apprx 15 euros)+29.98(web browsing plugin)+ 19.99 (cinema plugin)+ quality earphones(100euros)= 548,72 euros.
You can reduce this price to apprx 400 euros if you dont buy a battery dock but a universal mains usb charger, a non archos carrying case and cheaper earphones.
2. After you've spent something between 400 and 550 euros you will own a device that will :
(a) connect to any computer in your wireless network (even to your Network HDD) and copy, rename and delete files & directories (mass copy available). Archos 605 wifi supports wep, wap, wap2 security and is really fast and easy to connect.
(b) browse internet at almost desktop quality due to the archos 800x480 resolution)
(c) a non replaceable battery lasting somewhere between 3hrs ( net browsing, wifi enabled) to apprx 10 hrs (music listening with limited screen access). Charging the battery is annoying unless at least 5-10 euros are spent for a universal mains usb charger. Archos also states it offers battery replacing services but no charges and timeframes are specified.
(d) an extremely quiet and rather fast HDD with a bit less than 30GB capacity
(e) a bright 4.3inch 16million touchscreen with a 800x480 resolution
(f) a very neat touchscreen user interface + side buttons to quickly operate the player while listening to music.
(g) a device that needs no windows drivers/software to operate, can be configured as usb hdd, plays divx/xvid and mpeg/vcd avi files (+vob files with cinema plugin), displays photos with a acdsee pro style photo viewer with touchscreen functions for zooming and changin pictures , plays music with a multifunctional music file player which features 5band EQ, bass boost, playlist creation and album art and even displays PDF format files (which means that if you have free ebooks and can save them as pdf files you can read them using archos
- 1 reply to this review
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Dude, be honest about this product. A perfect 10 its not. A 7 or an 8 maybe, but not a 10.
Here's why: Everything costs extra, its video playback is not at all perfect, its fairly large and hefty, the DVR station is large and not portable, the sound does not turn up very loud (try using it on a noisey airplane), etc. Despite all of the shortcomings, I would still give it a 7 or an 8 because it does a lot of things well (as you pointed out in your review) but certainly not a 10.
Where to buy
Archos 605 WiFi (30GB):
$139.99 - $149.00
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$139.99 | Yes |
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$139.99 | Yes |
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$149.00 | Yes |
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