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: Writing from this device
Summary: 4 Stars
So far, so good. I'm writing this from my Archos 605, sitting in my living room. So far I've only been testing the web browser which I bought as soon as I got this running. The fact that I can write this right
on the device is pretty cool. The screen resolution is awesome. I'll write more later from the PC but so far I love it!
Ok. It's been a couple of weeks - and I still love this thing. Sitting in my easy chair writing this update from the 605 on my WiFi.
By far the greatest thing is the screen. At 800 pixels wide, you can see a full-width webpage - everything is perfectly legible. You can zoom in with a double-tap on the screen, but I mostly find that unnecessary. NYTimes, Google News, etc. - all look great. I was messing around with a colleague's iPhone the other day. The Archos screen kicks its butt.
Pictures and movies look great. Music is cool - support for cover art, etc.
Sound? My only major complaint. It's way too quiet. Even with my noise-reducing headphones on - I had a very difficult time hearing soft dialogue on video playback on an airplane. At home I can turn it up to full volume without hurting my ears at all - it's not even uncomfortable. As far as I can tell, there's nothing you can do to make it louder. It's one of the few disappointments I have had.
What else? I'll write more from a computer later this week. Although it's perfectly functional, it's still a pain to use this virtual keyboard. Still 4 out of 5 - I'd give it 4.5 if I could.
Customer Review: Great media player!
Summary: 4 Stars
After much deliberation I decided to puchase the 30 GB version of the Archos player. The reasons I chose this over the competition include:
Nice screen
Touch screen
Reputation to play everything
Unit size
Cost
After using it for 20+ hours, I've come up with a short list of pros and cons:
Pros:
Screen IS great. Any reasonably formatted video looks fantastic
Audio sounds great. While it wasn't very loud in a large pair of reference headphones, it sounds much better than my last gen iPod.
Ability to output video to television through the docking station is NICE.
Wireless works great. I plug it into the DVR station, sit down on the couch, use the remote to access the shared folder on my PC and seamlessly stream my video to my television.
Battery life is long enough for a NY-CA flight...roughly 5 hrs of play time.
Cons:
To really get good use out of the player you need to buy a few additional things. The AC3 codec is a must, as many videos are encoded with AC3 sound. The web browser would be nice, but is not a necessity, and a docking station is a nice add on. $20 for the media codec, $30 for the browser, $99 for the docking station...adds up.
If I had it to do all over again, I'd buy it again in a hearbeat
YEARS LATER my product is dead. The battery won't even hold a charge enough to turn the unit on when it's plugged in on the docking stattion. See ya later, Archos!
Customer Review: Archos
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought the archos after much deliberation between the i-touch, the archos and a few other PVPs. The choice rapidly concentrated on the archos and Itouch. I actually tried to buy the itouch twice at retail stores and was unable to get one.
My decision to purchase the archos initially came down to memory and screen resolution. I have a 2gb ipod nano and think that sub 10gig is really not enough space for music - let alone video.
So I bought my archos. Initially the interface was a bit of a challenge. The extra plug in were annoying and the lack of a realistic DVD copying program excutiating.
I now download from Cinema now and Amazon - I am still extremely annoyed with amazon for not allowing rentals to be transfered to portable players and not clearly demonstating rentals as regards purchases.
I travel a great deal and consequently my archos gets more use than for most people. The upsot is I LOVE IT - the video quality is exceptional, the music player is fantastic (volume could be louder but new ear plugs make this a minor problem). Connectivity is fantastic.
In short this is a fantastic peice of kit. I have subsequently played with the itouch and while the interface is pretty and the usual design elegance is there I still prefer my archos.
The downside is that gettign add ons kit - wallets, hardware etc is a problem in comparison to itouch. The follow up softwre - widgets -seems to be delayed. These issues knock off the final star. The player itself is an easy 5*
Customer Review: An MP3 Player, a video recorder, a digital picture frame, a web browser (costs extra :) )
Summary: 4 Stars
I own a 605 WiFi. I have been actively using it for abouta month. It is worth the money I have paid and my kids love using it, at home or on the go.
* This is truly a european product. Does not really help you while using it (not so much user friendly) but once you understand how Archos does things (this may take rather a long time) things proceed smoothly. So in a way it expects you to be tech savy.
* Extra cost for the qualifications that fascinates me is a con for this machine. But it perfectly does what I expect it to do but I have to pay for them. Records movies and easily transfers it to the computer. But making a dvd from what you have recorded might be problematic since it records in DiVX formats.
* Sound quality and reliability of Archos is well beyond good.
* Having no place to attach the stylus onto the Archos another tiny but disturbing shortcoming.
* WiFi connection runs smoothly. But I dont own the web browser, which I hope to run smoothly too.
* Battery life is not extra ordinary. Plays video for 3-4 hours. Although I paid utmost attention to initial charding, I was not expecting to reach 5,5 hours of video battery life.
* 30 gigbytes is satisfactory. More hard drive may make it hard to manage the files you have.
* Touchscreen and the buttons are easy to use and works withouth any problem.
Customer Review: ARCHOS 605 - 30 GB model
Summary: 4 Stars
Bought this product with the dock. By and large, both work as advertised. Read the product description at to what it does - I'll go over the cons.
Biggest problem is this company has absolutely no support. Go to their website and there's no tel# and/or email address.
Big problem - I recorded dvd movies to the device. It'll let you play on the device but not on an external device (e.g. TV).
The user-interface is absolutely w/o "out of the box" thinking. very cumbersome and at times very unintuitive (e.g. copying files)
There's some video editing features - sometimes buggy but works.
Sometimes the mp3 file tags don't transfer over properly. This could be a WMP problem.
Also, bought the browser. works but i wish it played WMP video streams.
The company really needs to provide some sort of a support mechanism - at least a forum.
Happy with the product..but sometimes not so.