Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (80 GB)
by Archos
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List Price: Our Price: $129.99 You Save: $220.00 (63%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (80 GB)
Customer Review: iPod Touch, Their coming for you !
Summary: 4 Stars
I had been on the lookout for a mp3/video/wifi player with a good picture.The Archos 605 WiFi will do it all and then some.Yes you have to by pluggins and all that but Id do it again for the way they make this unit work.You get great web video,great web radio and I can watch it or listen on my AV system.(Boom RIGHT THERE ON MY BIG TV!!)The web TV pluggin is just hours and hours of fun from all over the world.If you have Winamp Remote,You Tube or other services on your pc or network, they work very well with this unit. A 80G hard drive is lots of space for the road ,but at home i have all my network drives from any of my pc's at the touch of a screen.
Now if you want to use Hulu, Slingbox or other TV network sights you can't as of now.(anyone know otherwise get the word out as to how) I hope Archos and or Opera is working with these sights you read this.The Archos Content Portal great to find other sights for music, movies and TV(CHECK IT OUT)
As you can see I love my player but it's not without some draw back. The ones I stated above kind of are but not deal breakers. There is a noise issue that I have yet to get and answer from Archos or anywhere on. It happens on some but not all videos from the web. It happen on some but not all videos on the 605's hard disc. I saw this issue in another review so I again wiil call out to Archos, fix this otherwise great player. Is it firmware fixable? then crank out the firmware or whaterver.(just let the us know)Archos needs to work on their support lines and product descriptions. Be more to the point about what you will need for this to work with this and what you will need for that to work with this.Their web sight has great videos that you can play or download for most help you my need.
I say to you all , do your homework,read up before you make the call. As for me , no iPod or iTouch needed, I love my Archos 605 WiFI.If or when it dies, I know where my moneys going(Archos)
update 5-09-2010
Still love my 605 wifi,so much I now have2 and 2 dvr stations. What I've found over time with these player is to....read the manual,go to the Archos forums.
Most problem you have with the player someone else may have had it too.I got most of my tips from the forums and from contacting Archos by email. The phone support can be a bit rough but I used the call back option and got the best help ever. I also feel if you buy an Archos 604,605 or 705 the learing curb can be rough,take your time.Archos, I think they try to may the player more user friendly these day but not so much with those models. I hope they have been watching and listening to the feedback from here and elswhere. (Watching apple too I hope) Maybe that's why Android is in the new players.Help is there if you need it but if you got a bad player I feel your pain and Archos or whoever should take care of it.
As the new player from Archos come out the price on these models are way down.(good deals out there$$)I pre ordered the Archos 7 HT to give my laptop a rest and the 605 is not great for reading ebooks.My 605 will still be rockin Lost.30 Rock and others on the DVR station.My Hulu and You Tube problems were solved with a Playon account.Playon works great on the 605 and I can watch Netflix,[...] and many many more.I still love the Web tv and Web radio apps(or pluggins) for my crazy TV and music from all over the world.Still love being able to stream music ,movies and phots from all my PC's on my network to my.....wait for it .....BIG TV...LOL
Customer Review: A great portable video player
Summary: 4 Stars
I got the 605 wifi about a month ago together with the DVR. I mostly use it on my commute to watch movies, videos recorded using the DVR function and listen to music. I found it to be a very capable PVP.
Portability: I came from a 3rd generation iPod. So the 605 is quite a bit bigger and heavier. I will not be carrying it in my pants pocket to walk in the park. But nowadays, many device can play music. I can use my motorola V3i to provide 2 hours of music. For my commuting use, I can easily put it in my bag so it is not a problem. I may get a flash music player if I want it for some other activities. With the bigger size, it comes with a great screen! It is clear, sharp and color display is excellent. I have played with iPod Touch (which I had also considered at the time of purchase) and the iPhone in Apple Store. Their screen clarity are all wonderful. When I use the 605 on the train with bright light from overhead, I've found that there is little reflection on the screen, which is good. So with the 80 gb capacity and the DVR TV recording capability (no transcoding required) I went with the 605 instead of the iPod Touch.
Controls: The touch screen control and the buttons on the unit are very responsive. Volume is a bit low for my train ride. I usually have to set to 3/4 of max. and use a Sennheiser noise cancellation headphone for my viewing. The bookmark feature is good because it lets you set one bookmark on each video. Not just the video currently playing. I can jump around to different videos and resume where I left off. I did not buy the browser plug-in so I have not use the wifi feature yet. It should have been included in the first place. I have tried to view photos on the 605. It displays large jpg pictures relatively quick. The brightness and color are also very good. The finger-flipping control on the touch screen is cool and works pretty well. May be I have the screen protector on, it is not as sensitive as I would like it to be.
Miscellaneous issues: I have mp3s in Chinese title. The 605 can display them properly. But the way I get it to work is to change the language setting to Chinese. Then all the menu controls are in Chinese, which is not what I want. It is just a little annoying. And from time to time, the hard drive spins up for a few seconds, the video I am playing will stutter for a second. Then it will resume playing smoothly. It doesn't bother me that much but it may to somebody.
Recording: You need the optional accessory, DVR to record video. Recording from TV is relatively simple. The quality is quite acceptable. It is very convenient though. I was considering the iPod Touch. But that option, I will have to get an EyeTV (which records in MP2), transfer to MP4 (time consuming), then transfer to the device. The 605 does it in one setting. But, I found out that it uses the DVR's IR emitter to control my VCR for on/off, duration and channels switching. I need to input those information with the 605 and DVR facing me, then I have to turn them around so it faces my VCR's IR receiver before I walk away. Perhaps I haven't figure out a better way yet. It can also moonlight to be a portable storage device, PSD--I am planning to get the mini dock or battery dock for photo storage while on vacation. With it USB host capability, I can offload photo from memory cards to the 605 either as a back up or empty the memory card for more photos.
All in all, I found it to be a great portable video player, a capable PVR.
Customer Review: Excellent Product - Not a Great Sync Partner
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased the 80GB 605 WiFi a little over a month ago because I absolutely can not stand iTunes. My music library is shared from a central server at my house, and iTunes can not handle a network localized music library very well. So I was looking for a media player that could play movies and handle my entire library.
The screen resolution of the 605 is nothing short of amazing. The picture is ultra crisp and it plays xVid and Divx compressed movies flawlessly.
The 605 is very simple and straight forward in it's ability to handle music also. The playlist creation leaves a bit to be desired, which is where I run into the only problem I have found with the 605 so far. The 605 doesn't sync playlists with Windows Media Player running on Vista Home Premium. It attepmts to create your playlists on the PMP, but they do not work. There is also an issue when music is synced with WMP, initially, the release year of many media files changes to 1969. This normally wouldn't be a problem, I could care less what the release year of a song is that's stored on my PMP, but the next time you sync, it changes any songs you played on your PMP to release year 1969 in your library. This can be fixed with a repair tool on the 605. When you run the repair tool, although the release year tags get repaired, it erases your ratings of all music files. I have read extensively regarding this issue, and I believe it is an issue with the 605 firmware that I hope Archos can resolve soon. Others have mentioned that this doesn't occur with other media players, but I have tried Media Monkey and it does the same thing, so I'm not convinced it's a WMP problem.
The 605 is very intuitive with it's handling of pictures. Resolution and color is excellent and the touch screen scrolling feature is not only very easy to use, but is also a great wow factor when showing the 605 to friends.
Speaking of the touch screen, it so far has worked flawlessly for me. I have pretty fat fingers, and I have no problem selecting anything on the screen. Even though you know your finger is touching buttons other than what you are selecting, it selects the button that has the majority of your finger pressure.
I know there have been mixed reviews of the purchased plugin model, but personally for me it made perfect sense. I have purchased the Web Browser plugin and the additional video codec plugin. The two of those combined are $50 in addition to what I paid for the 605, and I still consider it to be one of the best technology buys I have made in the last 10 years.
The 605 browses the web decent. It is a little slow, but there are very few web sites out there the Opera browser can not load properly. With the 605's screen resolution, it displays web pages very nicely, and if you need to zoom in to a certain portion of a web page, you simply double tap the screen to zoom and double tap again for the original zoom level.
All in all, the 605 is an excellent product for someone who wants to listen to music and view movies on the go, but wants their PMP to fit in their shirt pocket. The WiFi and web capabilities are just an added bonus in my opinion.
Customer Review: Excellent media player!
Summary: 4 Stars
I've had the Archos 605 80 GB for about a month now, and have been very happy with it.
I was upgrading from the Archos Jukebox 20 Recorder (which has served me well for about 5 years now) and that's why I wanted to stay with Archos. The few times that I have used an IPOD I really have not liked it.
The main reason for upgrading was to get more hard drive space. The Jukebox only had 20 GB, which filled up pretty quickly. I didn't think I needed 160 GB, but 80 GB seemed reasonable.
To be honest, I wasn't expecting to use this for video playing, but, as a nice surprise, the screen is very watchable, and makes for easy watching if you are on a plane or somewhere like that.
Upgrade the firmware (to 1.3.52 or later) as soon as you get the unit - with the installed firmware I had an issue where after a while of playback, the sound would start crackling. 1.3.52 fixed that.
Pros:
- 80 GB of space, and not too bulky or heavy
- no need for itunes or special software, just plug it in via USB and it appears like an external hard drive
- can record inbound audio/video (but requires DVR station - which is a must buy, by the way)
- can also also browse via directories on the hard drive itself (my preference), or via artist/album/title/etc
- playlists are reasonably easy to create on the unit itself (though not so easy to do on a computer and then transfer the created playlist to the archos, that doesn't seem to work)
- has a 'lock' feature so that it can be carried around in a pocket
- the DVR player can be plugged in anywhere in the world (100 - 240 V)
- touch screen
- charge via USB
Cons:
- no voice recording feature like the Jukebox 20 had (used to use the Jukebox 20 as a dictaphone). though this might be possible using the DVR recorder and a microphone, which I have not tried
- battery life - as noted here, the battery life doesn't seem to be quite what is advertised, music about 10 hours, video about 4 (though this is with the occasional suspend and resume). The battery dock seems to be a necessary purchase (have not purchased yet)
- why is the earphone jack on the opposite side of the player from the control buttons? If I am carrying this thing in my jacket pocket, I need to take it out of my pocket and out of the carrying case to change tracks, volume, etc
- not quite sure why there is an external speaker on the unit? seems unnecessary
- since it has a touch screen I really don't use the buttons very often
- not really a con, but I liked the fact that the Jukebox 20 had removable AA batteries, the archos 605 is an internal battery that cannot be removed
Wish list:
- would be nice if this unit had those headphones where it has some of the controls in the headphone cable itself (like some portable CD players have the headphones where in the cable there is a control for volume, change tracks, etc) so wouldn't have to take the thing out of my pocket to do this
Have not tried yet:
- WiFi web browsing
- video recording
Highly recommended unit!
Customer Review: feature packed
Summary: 4 Stars
So this device has a number of really useful features packed into a great portable device. I can#t really say whether the quality will last the test of time. I've had it for 2 months now. Initially there were some glitches with sound, these were fixed by a software update, and I haven't had too manhy issues since.
Generally the device works well. It exposes multiple features in a usable fashion. The navigation menu's and overall usability of the device isn't very user friendly. It's not as intuitive to use as some other players on the market. However all the features are there and more.
Try and think of a portable device that can surf 95% of web pages and truly supports flash content. 99% of pda's can't boast that. It has a number of extra "soft" features such as wireless streaming from a computer through the player.
If you really want to fully feel the force of the player, you will need to purchase the extra plugins and the dvr station. For around $75 the dvr station does a really good job for the price!! It's not much more than ipod video out cables and it allows this plus much more. Make recordings of any program, stream content from a desktop pc through the player and dvr onto your tv with ease. Surf the web on your TV and watch youtube and google videos through it. This is one of the most amazing things, and the quality isn't too bad, especially with youtube videos!!
I'll need more time to see whether the device continues to perform well to judge whether it will last. It's not the sort of portable you'd want to take on a short road/rail/bus trip as it's not as portable as a simple mp3 player and is more purposeful as a video player. You are likely to use it more as a portable video on long haul journeys, and in this class it performs great.
My one major gripe with the product is the lack of tv tuner thus relying on the digital cable boxes to perform the tuning and making channel control difficult (although the feature is available it doesn't seem to work with my setup). This means if I want to record 2 seperate programs on 2 seperate channels I'd need to manually switch channels.
Not the optimum thing to do when recording overnight. A little trick around this would be to use the cable auto program tuning features if you have such available to force the cable box to autotune to the different channels for recording. This should work but is definitely annoying and unwelcome.
All in all great device, does what it says and performs reasonable well at it.