Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (30 GB)
by Archos
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Our Price: $374.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $134.95 (click here) Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (30 GB)
Customer Review: It's nice.
Summary: 4 Stars
I've owned my archos for about 5 months now and ithas lived up to what it was made for. Wifi works great, I enjoy having both the touch screen and the side buttons, video quality is outstanding. The main reason I bought the 605 was to listen to music, but getting the web browser/internet radio and tv plug-ins really improved the device. The sound quality is above par but not outstanding. It's much better with the proper equalizer settings (very nice touch) and good quality headphones. The versatility is great, you can have it be an MTP device when connecting to your computer, or just be read as an external hard drive. I like that it is linux-based but it isn't truly open source. I like that it plays flash games (somewhat slowly I might add) and that the Opera browser has nice widgets that work pretty well, but if it was open source then it would truly be a huge step up from the itouch. The stylus that comes with it is overall a good stylus but there's nowhere to put it. It is useful when surfing the web but I don't want to have to take it with me in the hopes that I'll get into a wifi hot spot. Since the device does have a touch screen, I was hoping that the interface would be a little more touchscreen friendly. It works well, but it could be a lot better by making the folders bigger and therefor easier to access via touchscreen. I haven't been able to experiment a lot with the browser (I just set up wifi in my home yesterday) but I can tell that my overall experience with the 605 will be enhanced. One of my favorite things at the moment about this device is the internet radio. It is well supported and has superb stations. I would recommend this product to anyone as an alternative to the itouch...but not for $400. I got mine at a really great price (around $180 I think) and it is well worth it but Amazon seems to have bumped up the price to $400, which isn't worth it (I don't think any mp3 player is worth $400 honestly). Overall, great product and highly recommended.Customer Review: Very good portable video player
Summary: 4 Stars
This player replaced my previous favorite Creative Zen Vision: M I had the creative for a while and thought of upgrading and this was the only player that I had in mind (iTouch wasn't even considered since it does not have a big screen like the 605 and the screen resolution was lower). What attracted me to the 605 is how easy it was to use. The touch screen works flawlessly and the buttons on the side are very easy to use. The battery life is respectable, around 5.5 hours of video and around 18 hours for audio. It supports the major formats such as AVI. XviD and DviX (H.264 and M-PEG2 must be purchased separately as plug ins). Transfer rate is smooth and easy. Here is my biggest gripe about the player (which caused me to sell it off to upgrade to the newly released Cowon A3) the amount of formats supported is very minimal when compared to the A3. I own a lot of video in MKV format (although currently the A3 cannot play a lot of videos because of the lack of H.264 native support but hopefully a firmware update will fix that) and it does not support it. Also, any video resolution not matching the screen resolution (800 X 480) cannot be supported whereas the A3 can support up to 720p. When I contacted Archos they told me there was no future firmware update for MKV and that nailed the coffin on the player for me.
If you do not mind the fact that this player lacks a lot of formats then this player is right for you. However, if you want a player that supports a huge amount of audio/video formats, look to the Cowon A3 player as it is your only option.
The reason why I did give this player the same score as the Cowon A3 is how easy it is to use this player and there is physically nothing wrong with any of the design (unlike the A3). Also, it can go online for those who are into browsing on the net (make sure you have a WiFi connection readily available).
Customer Review: Great Media Player! Make your Friends Jealous!
Summary: 4 Stars
This is my second Archos. I replaced my old 550 with the 605 and I am quite happy with the upgrade!
Bad:
Volume is low - With the headphone supplied the volume was very low. I replaced the headphones with a pair of in ear Sony's and now I don't have an issue. I thought the supplied headphones were uncomfortable anyways.
USB Charging ONLY (out of the box) - There are NO USB plugs on the unit. The only way to charge the unit is via the supplied USB cable. You will have to buy one of the Archos adapters to charge the unit via a wall adapter. I bought the Mini Dock. It has Power (international plug included btw), USB, and video out.
Extra $$$ for Plug In's - Some of the features that are loaded on the 605 are not available unless you pay an additional fee, like the web browser. The web browser costs $30. Kind of annoying if you did not know that going in. Once you buy the plug-in, you get a code that you type in to the 605 to unlock it.
Good:
WiFi - Very easy to connect! It doesn't seem to have the strongest antenna I've ever seen but it works just fine.
Web Browsing - The Opera browsers is great! Plays streaming video and audio files, like YouTube or any flash based sites very well. You just have to be a little patient some times when clicking links, I don't think it has a ton of RAM, so it can lock up if you don't let the pages load all the way.
HUGE Screen - I just flew to Italy and watched four episodes of Band of Brothers in wide screen. Looked and sounded amazing.
Play Music while Browsing or Looking at Pictures - Great feature! You can leave the music player and go to the web or your photo albums with out stopping the music. Great for slide shows.
I am quite happy with the 605! Highly recommend it!
Customer Review: Overall a good player
Summary: 4 Stars
I agree with most of the things that were said in the reviews:
bad:
No pen holder so I hardly use the pen now
Its frustrating to need to buy so many plug ins. Archos seems to give you half the product, then upsale you rest of the way.
no extra charger, just the "charge forever" usb
terrible case for such an expensive product (again upsale)
Good:
solid feel
beautiful screen
large HD (much better than Itouch)
good OS (I didn't have problems with it. Just my luck)
Here are some other points that I noticed was not mentioned much:
The language support was worse than Ipod. It cannot simultaneously support an english GUI while displaying Chinese characters (which the ipod could, along with many other languages). You must switch it completely to chinese GUI and even then, there are some unrecognized characters. I believe this will only concern a small portion of the customers.
Also, people mention how its great to not have a software bundled so we can transfer songs like a HD. I personnally wished that there still is a software to sync whenever I change songs, change the bit rates, and/create/delete playlists on the computer and then sync immediately. The closest thing that I have found is using the Windows media player, but WMP doesn't seem to allow you to choose what to sync (i.e. just the music and not the photos). Anybody have a better suggestion?
I find the loudness to be acceptable, of course it would always be nicer if there is the option to go louder.
I mainly use it for travel, like watching movies in the hotel room when my wife goes out shopping, or listening to music on the plane.
Customer Review: Almost 5 stars, but the volume is too low!
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a nice improvement from the 604. The higher resolution is much nicer for web browsing. It also makes my pictures and videos look so much nicer! The web browser works great and I love how it can do flash. The only issue I have is the low volume. MP3's are not to bad, but I can turn the volume all the way up with headphones on and it's just at a medium sound level (not loud at all). Any movie ripped with 5.1 is terrible with headphones. With the volume all the way up it is still soft and hard to hear. The build in speaker is a little louder on this compared to the 604, but I just wish the headphone output was louder. I was able to rip a movie with an MP3 soundtrack and increase the volume by about 200%. This made a huge difference and it is now at least listenable. I am guessing you need the docking station and have your 605 connected via SPDIF for the 5.1 sound to work.
Update 09/19/2007:
Well I had originally purchased a 604, but it was defective and I returned it for a 605. I only had the 604 for 2 days before I returned it, but I purchased the cinema plugin for it. I called Archo's sales and they said they could refund the charge if I purchased the plugin for my new Archo's, which I did. They even sent me an email confirming the refund. After about 2 weeks I never saw the credit. I called them today and they told me that it was a mistake and they could not refund me the 19.99. I told them about the email and she said she already saw it, but told me too bad! I was really shocked and will dispute the charge with Visa. Still very poor customer support. I still love the new Archo's, but that was really poor customer service. Chad