Archos 5 Internet tablet with Android user reviews (8GB)

Pros RECORD VIDEO OR AUDIO WITH THE DVR SNAP ON VIA RCA CABLE YOU CAN ADJUST VOLUME/COLORS/CONTRAST/EDIT AFTER YOU ARE DONE/TRANSFER FILE TO PC AND CONVERT TO DVD,ITS ALSO GREAT FOR READING BOOKS,VERY FAST INTERNET 800MHZ,SOLID STATE FLASH MEMORY

Cons battery still bad, only 2 hours max if youre lucky ,not what they claim,and the damn headphone jack still so tight i know its gonna break like it did on the archos 5 opera ill give it 2 months and it will get loose,the 605 never had that problem

Summary ANYWAYS.. IF YOU PURCHASE THIS.. SAVE THE RECEIPT AND IF ANY PROBLEMS DO AN RMA VIA EMAIL,AND THEY WILL REPLACE YOUR UNIT FOR A NEW ONE FASTER THAN WAITING FOR THE REPAIR,THEY EXCHANGE MY ARCHOS 5 OPERA 60GBS 3 TIMES DUE TO THE HEADPHONE JACK GETTING LOOSE,ON THE LAST EXCHANGE I GOT A BIGGER HARD DRIVE MODEL 120 GBS BRAND NEW!! SO I SOLD IT AND GOT A NEW 5 TABLET MODEL 8 GBS FOR $150 @ J&R,
THE 16 GBS ARCHOS 5 TABLET IS $279 PLUS TAX BUT THE 8 gbs MINI SD CARD ITS ONLY 20 DOLLARS!! ...ON RADIOSHACK..( IT WAS $50 BEFORE SO GET IT WHILE ITS ON SALE ) SO DO THE MATH 16 GBS MODEL $279 PLUS TAX OR 8 GBS MODEL $150+20 8 GBS MINISDCARD =170 PLUS TAX hmm LET ME THINK...I'VE SAVE A 100 DOLLARS!!...
SO A NEW MODEL IS COMING OUT ..THE ARCHOS 43 OR 4.3 INCHES IT HAS A CAMERA BUT WHY A SMALLER UNIT?!! WHY NOT AN ARCHOS 5 WITH A CAMERA? I GUESS THE 5 TABLET WILL NOT BE REPLACED BY A SMALLER SCREEN ...AND NO ADDONS? !! IT HAS NO PORTS ON THE BOTTOM FOR THE DVR ALSO IT LOOKS LIKE A PHONE... I HOPE NOONE ASK YOU FOR IT TO MAKE A CALL...NO WAY THE ARCHOS 5 WILL BE REPLACED BY THAT PHONE LOOKING DESIGN FLAW...THE 43 IS ANOTHER ARCHOS 7 FAILURE...THE ARCHOS 5 TABLET IS THE BEST PMP OUT THERE PERIOD ...THE INTERNET FEATURE ITS JUST A PERK... ITS MAIN PURPOSE IS THE AMAZING QUALITY OF VIDEO AT A PERFECT SIZE SCREEN AT A PERFECT PRICE ..MANY PMPS AT THIS RANGE PRICE DONT HAVE WIFI NOR TOUCH SCREEN OR ADDONS LIKE HELMET CAM DVR ETC

Updated on Oct 20, 2010

update !! omg get this model before is soldout i cant believe this model is gonna be replaced is been discontinued ***!!! i did an update cause the drawing capabilities on this device are awesome!! just get sketcher from appslib and youll see its free and you can save your work ,i love the resistive screen i cant believe this is been replace with the capacitive screens that every tablet device is using now ...the only alternative will be the stantum resistive tablet coming out on 2011 but is gonna be expensive so get the archos 5 or the archos 9 pc tablet if you got the money it also has a resistive screen and it comes with a stylus you just need a software that has tablet option/recognition

Pros i like the design of the portable media player

Cons i think the price is a little expensive.

Summary yes, this portable media player is very good, and have seen it before, last time, i have found some digital media player in http://www.epathchina.com/portable-media-players-c-28.html , there are many Portable lcd monitors, portable dvd player, digital video glasses here.

Pros Fast web browser, plays tons of video formats, android

Cons battery life is too short, takes forever to charge, will freeze sometimes.

Summary So after scouring the internet for reviews of this product and even taking CNETS reviewinto consideration, I decided to buy the Archos 5 Android with 160 gig HDD. As soon as I got it, I updated the firmware. I tried charging it via USB connected to a pc but it took forever to charge. I have heard it takes more than 4 hours to fully charge the device while connected to the pc via USB. Is this archos fault? not really, because a USB slot will only output a certain amount of power and since the Archos 5 is a power hungry device, its only logical that it would take a while to charge. Unfortunately in the box there was no wall charger. I think archos does this so you resort to buying their battery pack ($50) or their dvr dock ($130). I would say that this company is trying to nickle and dime you, but in reality, if you buy the ipod touch, you would have to buy a wall charger if you felt inclined to need one.

Aside from my quarrel with charging the device, everything else is pretty solid. Because I got the hard disk drive version, the Archos 5 is 2 times thicker than the solid state drive versions. It is quite heavy, but a plus is that it has its on kick stand. i can lay in bed and have it next to me with no problem.

As I write this, I have firmware 1.3.07 installed on the device. It runs quite smoothly. I can browse the internet pretty fast. It comes with ebuddy, a chat program that lets you log on into any of the popular chat client, ie; aim, msn messenger, icq, yahoo, etc. Because it runs android, it has access to the applib store. At the moment there aren't a lot of applications (i tink around 20 or so) but the ones that are there are useful for the most part. There are times when i'm trying to access the applib store and it takes a while to load or it says i need to clear the cache for the application and that also takes a moment. I think there will be more apps once archos updates the android os to the latest one which i believe is cupcake or eclair. In any case, once the os is updated to the latest android os, it will have access to more apps that run natively on an 800x480 resolution.

The biggest reason I wanted to get this device was to put my entire anime collection in it. Putting media into the device is a matter of click and drop, very easy and you don't have to convert a thing (unlike the apple wonder). While I do have a 32 gig iphone, I could have put my collection on it, but i would have had to convert more than 80 gigs of anime into mp4 format and even then i wouldnt have enough room. I tranferred avi, mp4, mkv's, and mpg's into the Archos 5 and it plays them all smoothly. It does have some quirks with the mkv or mp4, but i believe that future firmware updates will fix that. The tranferring time doesn't take long and the videos look amazing on the screen.

I also decided to put some of my mp3's into the device and they all play beautifully. I love that it has a built in radio tuner and under the archos media tab you can listen to web radio and your local stations while you're surfing the web or looking at pictures.

I should mention that the input method for typing is a virtual keyboard. its not really the best nor does its predictive text feature work well, but there are other keyboards that you can download and use.

Overall, I am very pleased with my purchase and because I am a power user and tech savvy, I don't think its too challenging to operate the device and get the most of it. You have to be patient with the device if you don't want it to freeze, but thats the same with a windows pc.