Archos 5 250 GB Internet Tablet by Archos
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Digital camera reviews of Archos 5 250 GB Internet Tablet
Digital camera Review: ARCHOS5
Summary: 3 Stars
The battery life is about 5hrs for video. Start up time is too long. Video and audio quality is good.Reliability should be much better( my device was froze after 1 month of use and I send it back for repair)Digital camera Review: Almost Perfect All-In One Media Center
Summary: 4 Stars
Pros: Ease of use, Compact design, Massive storage space
Cons: Playback software should have been included, Where's the plug-in charger for the 5-series? Excellent product, but buyers shouldn't feel like they're being nickle & dimed for things that should come STANDARD with the player.
Idea for the future: Two Words-BUNDLE Packages. If you want to pick up T.V. reception, sell the T.V. Bundle. You want the DVR functonality, sell the DVR Bundle. Extended Battery use? Sell the Battery Pack Bundle. We as customers would pay a little extra for the combos instead of buying the player & the docks seperately. Works for the XBOX 360 & PS3 right?
One Other Thing: Pack in the plug-in charger with the 5-series (Which is included with the 7-series). USB charging with the 5-series while packing in the normal plug in charger with the docks leaves a bad taste in the mouths of your customers.
Digital camera Review: Almost perfect for me.
Summary: 3 Stars
The extended reviews give you everything you want to know about this except for one thing. The one thing that I truly needed next to large storage capacity.
I went the the J&R store here in NYC and listened to the Archos 5 compared to my 5G iPod. I was looking to upgrade from the 60GB hard drive. It could even play lossless files like FLAC. But what it lacked what sound quality.
I listened using my super.fi 5 pro headphones. Not as good as the UE-11, but no apple headphone or bose headphone can touch it. The sound lacked punch and it seems universal that the sound quality doesn't quite match other devices. The sound quality was bad enough to make me wonder if a 30GB player with nearly the same price is worth more just because of how much more it will deliver.
As of this writing, Google is said to be making the Android, which hopefully will do something about the ads. But Archos, I'm begging you, after making the ONLY decent large storage PMP, make it have great sound quality for headphones and you'll be seeing a lot more business from audiophiles who're still looking for the perfect portable player, hardware-wise.
Digital camera Review: Almost perfect out of box (Archos 5 250GB)
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm coming to one of the devices from an iPod 5G 60GB, and two Creative players prior to that.
First, the device itself. Sleek, slightly fingerprint prone on the front and fairly intuitive. The screen is beautiful and the built-in speaker is a plus. As for the touch screen itself, it's not quite as good as the iPod Touch's but it's good. For maneuvering around your media your finger works fine, however for web browsing you may want to pick up a stylus since some links can be very small. The 5's biggest setback, if you've read other reviews, is the beta nature of it's software, but it has come very far in the last few months.
My device has been fine except for not recognizing files. I have about 1300 tracks under one artist (Various Tracks) and the Archos only sees 1013, as well as other albums with missing tracks here and there. Hopefully it's something that will probably be fixed in the upcoming firmware update.
The device itself plays almost any audio and video format, however for certain file types you'll need to buy a plugin depending on the type of file you wish to play. It can handle SWF internet Flash files, PDF and the Opera browser supports Flash Video, but not every site. So far I've only used YouTube and Google Video, as well as a few others you can see in the comments below and they've worked great (the ones that worked).
Charging can take a long time, so a dock purchase is recommended when they're released or a USB charger at 5 volts with at least 1A. A small problem I have is foreign language character support in a different default language. Example: My device is set for English, but songs I have in Russian Cyrillic appear as random characters (but display perfectly if you make Russian the default language).
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Update: Device works fine (apart from beta features/ads for upcoming products). Be sure to charge fully before using. I repurchased and still had the cataloging problem, but I re-converted all the problematic files which took a while and now all is good. Apart from that, it's a good device. 4-Star rating still stands as that problem shouldn't even be an issue these days.
If you'd like me to test any Flash-based websites for compatibility on the Archos, write your inquiries in the comments.
Digital camera Review: Already have program with it
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased the Archos 5 250 GB on Amazon.com on 12/4/09, listed as brand new unit on Amazon.com. I received the Archos 5 a few days later, charged up the battery, watch the demo video and the preloaded pictures, the image on the demo video and the preloaded pictures look great, I was happy with it.
I loaded some of my own pictures, everything is still fine at that time, but after a few time using it, I noticed there are some red, green lines outlining the image on the LCD screen, at first I thought it is the quality of my own pictures, but it is the same when I go back and watch the demo video and the preloaded pictures, Then I realized it is the unit that has problem. (I was so careful handling it and it was never drop or hit by any hard object)
I did not do anything at the time due to I was leaving the next day to Europe for 3 weeks, I just returned and now will have to deal with the headache to have it fix
Since I already have problem with it after a few use, I am only giving it a one star rating