The Archos Gmini 402's slick, comprehensive music playback interface displays artist, album, track name, the name of the next track, file type and bit rate, elapsed/remaining/total time, and a progress bar. It throws in album art for good measure. The navigation pad gives you the usual fast-forward/rewind/pause functionality, while the bottom soft keys let you tweak settings; set a bookmark; edit a playlist; or browse your music by album, artist, title, genre, or year. You don't get any equalizer presets, although those who tweak their sound manually will appreciate the sliders for bass, treble, and bass boost (a.k.a. loudness).
As for getting music on to the Archos Gmini 402, you can sync unprotected music using regular old Windows; just double-click My Computer, find the player's music folder, and copy your music over. Or if you have secure, purchased music in Windows Media Player, you can sync those with Windows Media Player, which also works great for keeping unprotected files synced. While the Gmini 402 supports Windows Media Lossless files, there's still no support for AAC or open-source Ogg Vorbis or FLAC music files.
As with the original 402, the camcorder's voice and line-in recording capabilities are decent, if a bit limited. You can make recordings only in the WAV format at sampling rates ranging from 16KHz to 44.1KHz--perfect if you need top-notch sound quality but problematic if you're low on disk space or are looking to use the Archos Gmini 402 to encode MP3s from a record player, a tape player, or another line-level audio source. We also missed such handy recording features as voice-activated recording and the ability to detect and add track breaks.
Gamers will appreciate the Archos Gmini 402's support for games running on the Mophun gaming engine, a platform optimized for devices with small screens and limited processors. The player comes with seven demo games, including Golf Pro Contest, Dog City, Icebox Plus, and Joe's Treasure Quest 3D, with more available for $5 to $10. If you're hoping for PSP-quality action, however, you better temper your expectations--these games are akin to the ones you'd find on a cell phone.
Video quality on the Archos Gmini 402 Camcorder was excellent; our prerecorded movies looked sharp and smooth, with rich colors and little in the way of dropped frames or pixelization-related blocks. The video clips we shot with the camcorder looked good, considering the small 4.2mm lens. Our clips also looked smooth, with a frame rate that appeared to be just shy of 30fps; they showed no choppiness during quick pans and little murkiness or blockiness. However, we saw considerable noise in videos shot in low light, and the camcorder struggled with its automatic exposure rates when panning from areas in direct sunlight to patches of shadow.We were impressed once again by the Archos Gmini 402's sound quality, which packs a punch in terms of detailed highs, solid bass, and practically undetectable hiss. However, we noticed that the 402's sound can't quite reach the bone-rattling levels we expect when the volume is cranked all the way up. If your headphones require a lot of juice, you might want to look elsewhere; high-quality, sound-isolating earbuds such as those available from Shure or Etymotic would be ideal.
Sound levels were also a bit low for voice and line-in recordings, so we'd recommend holding the device's mic close to vocal sources and turning the volume up on line-level sources such as tape players before recording. Some trial and error is required, since the device lacks recording meters.
Our biggest performance gripe with the Archos Gmini 402 is that the processor doesn't handle multitasking, meaning that you can't play music while using other features; for example, games and slide shows would do nicely with customized music. But considering that the addition of multitasking capabilities would have inflated the price tag and that the lack of background music isn't a deal breaker, its omission is justifiable. CNET Labs is in the middle of testing audio and video battery life. The Gmini 402 Camcorder is rated at 10 hours for audio (not great), 4 hours for video (decent), and 2 hours as a camcorder.
Battery life info TK
Where to buy
Archos Gmini 402 Camcorder (20GB):
$314.99
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$314.99 | See Site |
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