Drop, charge, and lose the cords
- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 48 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
4.5 stars
"The Swiss Army knife of personal media players"
Pros: Ideal for the person on the go who wants great audio performance, digital photo storage and playback, FM radio and recorder (option), basic games plus superb video playback
Cons: Not the best manual I've ever read, some features not as intuitive as they could be and the battery life, whilst not bad, could be improved.
Summary: Sound quality is great for my varied MP3 collection (my son even grudgingly admitted it sounds better than his new iPod) and this is probably helped by the Sony earbuds that I opted for. The supplied earphones are good and have an in-line volume control, but I prefer smaller earbuds.
I don't play the pre-installed games (I've actually deleted them) but they will keep most users amused.
Saving video into the Archos format can be a bit of a hassle, but with the plug-ins from their website the process is not hard to master. The resulting video quality just has to be seen to be believed. The colour LCD screen is the best around - and not too small, even for my ageing eyesight.
The built-in compact flash reader is a huge "plus" for me and it has replaced my X-Drive storage device when I travel. Photo playback is a little slow but adequate. I mainly use the Gmini for freeing up my Canon flash card (I can edit and view when I get home).
The optional wired remote controller and FM radio unit is easy to use and has a clever little feature that I love - as soon as you switch the FM radio on, the Gmini starts recording a 30 second continuous loop. This means that whenever you hear the first few lines of a favourite song you can hit the record button and not lose the beginning of the track. The track is recorded as an MP3 file to the hard disk, and can be cleaned up later with any MP3 software - neat eh?
I did have a couple of operating "glitches" at first (actually my stupidity), but they did not stop the unit functioning and Archos provided the fix reasonably quickly via email.
So, all in all, I would recommend the Gmini 400 to anyone who wants a very portable, top performing, hard disk based player suited to pretty well all media types. Great for carrying data files too!!
Check it out - you won't be disappointed if you want something a lot better than just another MP3 player.
- 1 reply to this review
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i dont use half the crap on my Swiss Army Knife though. How would this be any different?
