Archos 5 Touch Screen Internet Media Tablet Review

Archos 5 / Archos 7 Touch Screen Internet Media Tablets

Archos 5 / Archos 7 Touch Screen Internet Media Tablets

The Archos 5 is the popular edition of the Archos’s impressive PMP (portable media player) collection. It has a nice, bright, responsive 4.8 inch touch screen and comes in a wide range of internal memory ranging from 60GB to an enormous 250GB. It weighs 250g (60GB version) and 300g (120/250GB version) and feels nice and sturdy in the palm of your hand. The OS is quick due to its ARM® Cortex™ superscalar microprocessor. It has a glossy body which does get fingerprints all over it but still adds to the sleekness and sexiness of the device.

Archos 5 Features:

The Archos 5 is jam-packed with tons of features including an Opera powered web browser with full Flash 9 video support and its very own native email application.

The actual media player supports many more codecs than Apple’s very own iPod Touch. It support MPEG-4 (including Xvid/Divx), WMV, WMV HD MP 720p, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP 720p for video and . You can also optionally buy an extra plug-in which allows you to play MJPEG videos, HD videos and ACC music for a $19.99 which is a disappointment. However, the standard list is still more impressive than that of the iPod Touch.

Another big plus that gives this an advantage over Apple’s iPods is that you don’t need a third party program to put your media onto the Archos 5, you just drag and drop it onto the devices hard drive. However, if you prefer to use a program, it works with Window’s own Windows Media Player.

It has an email application that works with all standard POP emails and has internet TV and radio support. You do need to register your device to use both the internet TV and radio features and the web browser.

As standard, the Archos 5 comes with 7 useful widgets for you to use, a currency converter, unit converter, weather forecast, note writer, news reader, safe password and a calculator. You can also download countless more widgets from the Opera website.

Body and Design

The . Because of the glossy body, it is very susceptible to fingerprints and scratches so a case is almost a necessity.

Archos 5 - 4.8

Screen

The Archos 5 has a gorgeous 4.8 inch screen, 800×640 pixels and has the ability to show16.7 million different colors. It is bright and has a decent responsive touch screen. It is excellent for viewing videos however is not good in the sunlight.

Other

The battery life is ok with 12 hours of music playback and 4 hours of video. If you set the screen brightness to around medium, you get a couple more hours of battery. The Archos 5 also includes a built in speaker and has a picture viewer which supports JPEG, BMP, PNG, and GIF files. It also has a PDF file viewer included in the device and a kick-stand that folds out of the back of the devices and allows you to view videos hands-free.

Archos - 12 Hours battery life

Archos also supply many add-ons that you can buy from their site such as DVR station which allows you to record real live TV onto the Archos for later viewing, a helmet camera, a FM tuner plus many more. Visit the Archos website (http://www.archos.com) to see a full list.

Summary

Overall, the Archos 5 is a brilliant device which is well built, has a good OS, tons of memory space and has supports many different codecs. You do however, need to buy a plug-in for $19.99 to enable some of the codecs on the device and you need to register to unlock some of the more useful applications on the device e.g. web browser.

You can buy the Archos over its own website (http://www.archos.com) and from many other sites such as Amazon.

Buy Archos 5 60 GB Internet Media Tablet – $339.99
Buy Archos 5 120 GB Internet Media Tablet – $389.49
Buy – Archos 5 250 GB Internet Media Tablet – $427.50

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