Archos Unleashes A Monster
Pros: 7 Inch Touchscreen, Wifi, Larger capacity than rivals Cowon, Apple, Microsoft, ect. Ability to play .VOB (DVD’s) and H.264 (Possible .MKV and .OGM + Others)
Cons: Questionable Battery life, Weight, Touchscreen controls, Having to buy addition plug-ins when other competitors have them in their product, Lack of codec support
All my reviews seem to say the same thing, it’s because nothing really has changed in the way Archos produces their products. Unlike Apple who releases a 2nd or 3rd series several years later, Archos’s products come out too fast, which doesn’t allow for much new technology to be implemented into their future lines
Battery Life – 3/5
The battery on the 705 is reduced in size to about 1/4th the total size of the total size, which limits the amount of usage you will get of playback. What I’ve found out is the video playback is about 8 hours, 10 at the most. Music was about 20 hours, which mimics that of what is posted on Archos’s Tech Specs.
Plug-Ins & Codecs – 2/5
My biggest grip with Archos is that in order to enjoy the H.264 with AAC sound and the
MPEG-2 MP@ML with AC3 stereo sound, you have to pay $20.00 for each. Don’t get me wrong, their great to have, but when you already have to pay a whooping $450 + for the unit itself, you’d think they would come with the unit with all the bells and whistles.
Now the codec issue. Archos needs to change how they tackle this. Their audio and video playback types are dismal.
Video: AVI, WMV 11 or higher, MPEG-4
Audio: MP3,WMA, and WAV
After Sucking $40.00 you get:
Video: MPEG-2,H.264
Audio: ACC,AC3
Now a quick look at all the codec playbacks of Cowon (An Archos competitor)
Video: AVI, ASF, WMV, MPG, OGM
Audio: MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG, WAV, FLAC, APE, MPC
ALL OF THESE COME WITH THE PRODUCT!!!!
Why can’t Archos get with the times and update their codec playback inventory?
Touchscreen & Wifi
Showing that they can keep up with new advances, touch screen and Wifi. Bad side with the touchscreen controls though, I found them to be shaky at times (Moving the volume and the double tap feature to move threw menus) It will cost you $29.99 for the Opera Brower
Warnings and Final Words
I’d like to wrap this up with some warnings. The amount of pictures, videos, and music stated to play is based on them being on their lowest quality. 100 Movies at 700MB’s each won’t the same amount at say 4GB’s.
The battery is Lithium-Ion Polymer, it can be recharged over and over again, but there is a Recharge Cycle
Lithium Ion is the battery type used in most of the more recent Archos products. It's great at recharging because it can hold a charge over and over again, this also is a bad thing if you don't know how to recharge properly. let's start out with a fully charged battery (100%). You drain it fully to the point where it won't boot up (0%), the recharge process should in theory go to 100%. Two factors will change this:
1.Time
2.Not Recharging the battery when it hits 0%
The most common one is #2. Say you see it's at the red bar which means you have about an hour left of battery, and you recharge then, it will in theory remember this and start the recharge from there, time also will take it's toll. A year or more of recharging will wear out the Lithium battery making it not able to hold a charge for as long compared to when you first bought the product, laptops have this same problem, it's fairly common.
When eBay puts up the 705 160GB model, I'll throw my review up there.Read full review
