Archos 70 user reviews (250GB)

Pros price on this is great for what you get.great video play back on all apps(netflix,slingbox)and more. The 2.2 android update and the big Archos community fan site makes it very easy to customize.The hdmi mirror output is great for games on the big screen t

Cons app space is very small.need better web site support from ARCHOS as to when and if there will be an update to at least android 2.3(or whatever gingerbread is)

Summary I love my Archos 70 an I think most people would be happy with it for what is does.It's a great video player,e book reading,music playing,web surfing son of a gun....lol. Great price...pick it up!

Pros 250gb drive, varied video format support, price and is surprisingly durable

Cons Can be slow at times. the music player needs some work (no genres, breaks up compilation/soundtracks into individual artists)

Summary One thing to take into consideration when you watch the CNET review is that it was made 5 months after the 70 was released so of course it didn't run the latest Android. I've had mine since Dec 2010 which means it's coming close to a year and overall I can't complain.
First off not having the Android Market is no problem at all. With a little research you can find the .apk and have it up and running five minutes out of the box. The video quality is great for personal use, I don't expect a cinematic experience from a 7" screen anyway and the speakers are about the best I've heard on a portable device.
There's been a lot said about the build quality but after nearly a year and a few drops mine is still running fine. The battery life is also very good especially for running the HDD. I've had 12 days at work with music playing most of the time and still had 30% battery life at the end of the day.
That being said it does have it's issues. For some reason many compilations and soundtracks are split up by artist so you'll have 18 different "albums" for you Pulp Fiction soundtrack, a bit annoying. Also the music player doesn't recognize genres, so you'll have to build a playlist if you only want to listen to your collection of Peruvian Pan Pipes. The biggest issue I've had is that if I ever let the battery die completely the device tends to go into a coma like state that can require a lot of powering on and off to get it to wake up again. Normally this would knock a star or two of a review but the fact that the Archos 70 costs half the price of many other devices with not even a tenth of the hard drive space gets it a lot of room to breath.
Right now I'm looking at the A80 but I'm not sure if I'll upgrade or not, that extra inch might make it too big to fit into my pocket...we'll see

Pros Cheap, can use a blu tooth keyboard, can use blu took to share data from your phone, great screen, and you can get Andriod Market on it.

Cons No GPS, area around the screen smudges and is hard to clean, Installing Android Market requires some effort and a little help from the Archos Community Forums.

Summary I have the 16GB version so I don't have to worry about shock like I do with a hard drive. I managed to get the full android market on it and it works great. yay Angry Birds :D. It's also great as a video and music player, surfing the web, and just about anything you need a tablet for. It's light, small enough to be portable, but big enough for those of us with big/clumsy thumbs ^_^.

The construction is pretty sturdy and I love the kick stand. It's pretty fast and useful, though it's smaller amount of RAM is a bit of a limitation when you open too many apps at once. For the price though it's hard to do better. A much faster G80 will be out in September though making this model soon to be outdated.