Alan E. Moore:

I just got my new Android 5 500GB direct from Archos yesterday and its quite a beauty. I’m upgrading from my old Archos 5 250GB, so that will be my primary point of comparison. I also have the following to compare to: iPod Touch 64GB, Archos 605, Walkman X, Samsung P2, and a host of other MP3 players large and small.

Given that my iPod Touch upgrade this year was less than astounding, I pretty much figured that this upgrade for Archos would be similarly understated. Mainly I just wanted the extra hard drive so I could backup all my laptops onto my music player. I was wrong! The new Android version seems to have a whole new feel both in form factor and the new software. I had heard that Archos was having problems with the software, but they seem to have ironed most of them out as of 1.1 firmware release. I did update my firmware immediately, and the process was quite smooth.

I’m going to rate this player on my absolute scale. I will also be making notes on the value of the upgrade from my old Archos 5. Note: I mostly use this as a media center to play music and video; secondarily as a backup drive.

Let’s get to it then, these are the things I love about my new Android:

1) 500GB — totally awesome amount of disk, I can now put just about every digital file I own on the Archos.

2) Android interface — the overall feel of the software interface has definitively improved with the integration of Android. Effects are crisper, the esthetics are cleaner, things seem to happen faster. I especially like how easy it is to access the most recently played song or video from the main screen, pops up with a little thumbnail that you tap on and voila, resumes right where you left off!

3) Apps — with Android we now have access to some serious app selection. Of course, nobody compares to the Apple App Store, but this comes the closest.

4) Weight — this actually feels lighter to me than my 250GB.

5) Dock/DVR — this popped right into my old 5 DVR and started playing right away. I still think this is the best DVR/Player combination available of all the MP3 players.

6) Video/Hi Def — of the players I have owned, this has the best, biggest, and highest resolution screen.

7) Portrait/Landscape — Archos has borrowed the iPhone trick of rotating the display according to orientation. I guess they have an accelerometer in there now, I dunno. Still, its fun to see this feature on an Archos. Its a lot easier to navigate playlists in portrait mode.

8) Easy and regular firmware updates — with a WiFi connection, the firmware updates are easily performed on the unit itself. That’s the easiest system I’ve seen of all my players. One thing I’ve learned about Archos over the years, they will put out a steady stream of firmware updates.

9) WMV/MTP mode– very smooth interface to Windows for either Media Monkey or Windows Media Player.

10) Dedicated volume button — power and volume buttons have been conveniently located onto the top edge. This is actually much easier to use when it is docked on the DVR (which is where mine spends most of its life!).

11) Sound quality is pretty good, sounds great through my Klipsch speakers and seems to have more oomph than my other players.

12) WiFi/Browser — has a good browser and WiFi connection has worked well for me. I think the keyboard is better than the Touch’s, although Safari is probably the slightly superior browser. The bigger screen also helps for browsing. Overall I’m inclined to give the Archos the top ranking for browsers.

13) I just discovered Twidroid, one of many apps pre-loaded, allows me to check my Twitter in a really nice format — love it!

14) Portability — well there’s only so much portability that can be expected with a screen and hard drive this large. This new design is smoother and rounder so its a little more comfortable in a pocket. It is very easy to carry around as a handheld device, fits nicely in my hand as I stroll about the house trying out all of the Android Apps! In any case, this is not as portable as a Touch but I think its pretty good for a small computer — which is basically what this is.

15) No extra plug ins needed (so far!). Always in the past I’ve laid out another $40 for additional Archos plugins to play iPod format music and other video formats. So far I haven’t had to do that — thank you Archos

16) Archos will stand behind their product. I’ve had to send in a couple of Archos units over the years and they have always been happy to either repair or replace the unit without quibbling about it, as long as its under warranty. Note: it did take two weeks to get my unit back!

17) Multi threading: now I show my engineer/geek side. This baby can do a bunch of different stuff at the same time, unlike the iPhone/Touch which can really only do one thing at a time. The Android can be doing other stuff while you are listening music. I love the little bar on the top that you can pull down and switch to any other task that is running.

18) Built-in kickstand, very nice feature.

19) Stylus friendly touch screen — sometimes you just get tired of trying to type a touchscreen keyboard with fat fingers! In general, this is one of my favorite touch screens. Most of the other touch screens, including iPod/iPhone, are capacitance which means stylus won’t work

20) Micro USB cable plug-in: finally a standardized USB plug and you can have it resting on its kickstand while plugged in

Given that the Archos tops the class in several categories, and continues to be the best 500GB 5 inch screen player available I give it about a 4.7 stars out of 5 (round to 5). There are a few things I’m less than thrilled about:

1) Update: I believe you can now format your drive in a Windows friendly format on 1.7.96 version of firmware. External hard drive EXT3 — as I understand it, Archos changed to the EXT3 hard drive format for reasons of speed and reliability. The result for me is that I can no longer simply select hard drive MSC mode, plug the Archos into a Windows machine and expect to access the drive. You have to install an Ext3 driver such as EXT2 IFS on your Windows PC. Once I did that I was able to access the hard drive and backup files to my hearts content.

2) The playlist interface didn’t get much of an upgrade and its still kind of clunky. I want to simply tap my playlist and it starts playing. Often times I have to do a couple of extra taps to get the thing playing.

3) We lost the dedicated play button and removable battery a while back — but I still miss them both! None of my favorite touch screen players has either of these features. I’m also missing the brown metallic color and the rubbery backside.

4) Finding a case for this baby is no easy trick. You’re not going to find one at the local Best Buy I’m afraid. In the past I’ve resorted to ordering my Archos cases from European companies like I-nique and Noreve. This is generally true of any player that is not an iPod or a Zune.

5) As always with Archos, you must remember that you are dealing with a French based company. This means that they don’t always provide the best support/service/upgrades to us Americans.

6) Lets face it, Archos is always playing catch up. Some of the new features aren’t fully functional yet. I do have faith that Archos will fix all the little glitches with things like GPS over the course of the next 6 months. The Apps available are currently a bit limited. I expect this will improve over the coming months.

7) Keep in mind that this is not a unit for the faint of heart. This is more for the hobbyist who wants a cutting edge experience that may take some messing around to get it just the way you want it. If you want something easy that requires minimum effort then iPods are going to be more your cup of tea.

For me this is still the best player of its class — that class being large hard drive, big screen PMP players with other fun features. Android makes for some fun possibilities, and overall I’m impressed with this as an upgrade. Once again, if you don’t mind a smaller screen and you love apps I suggest you get an iPod Touch. If what you care about most is sound quality you may want to get a Walkman X. For me those are your top 3 touch screen players, it just depends on what you care about the most.

Note: 10-23-2009; I upgraded to firmware version 1.2.03 which fixes some App, Browser, and YouTube issues. Apps do seem happier now, upgrade process was very smooth. Still happily listening to tunes for about 8 hours a day with no problems

Update 11-7-2009: I’ve been running version 1.2.15 with a host of bug fixes and the unit does seem more stable in general now. Wifi is working better and USB connection seems more reliable.

Update 11-23-2009: Upgrade to firmware v 1.3.07 — a long list of bug fixes including a few improvements that I had hoped for to control the scanning of multimedia files/ ArcLibrary. Got an AppsLib update which seems to work more reliably. There seem to be a lot more apps available now (300 ish) in AppsLib. Just keeps getting better and better! Still is playing music day in and day out with no problems and I’m backing up 2 laptops worth of files onto my 5 IT.

Update 12-18-2009: I’ve been on firmware 1.4.16 for over a week now. Lots of little fixes, seems even more stable now.

Update 2-11-2010: Firmware 1.7.33 (Android Donut) upgrade. The upgrade was a bit of work, I ended up reformatting the drive and starting anew. However, power saving seems to work a lot better and I haven’t seen it reset itself for quite a while now. This seems to be the most solid release yet!

Update 4-8-2010: Firmware 1.7.96: just keeps getting better! Several annoying bugs fixed, Deep Sleep and Windows hard drive modes have been added as helpful new features among other things. This seems even more stable than previous versions. This is still my main car and home music player of choice.
Rating: 5 / 5

Sean Pasell:

I have to say that I went against my gut when purchasing this device, as it looked really nice, and really, I wanted it for watching movies, listening to music and checking the internet quickly when I am on the run in airports.

The movie portion worked really well. For that, I give this device 5 STARS…I actually downloaded movies to my Amazon Unbox, then hooked up the Archos and bam, instantly on my new Archos 5 (well, after the movie downloaded to my unbox in 1.5 hours).

The music portion also works flawlessly. Not really any hiccups there, and the sound was good, but could be better. For that, I would give it 4 stars…

SO FAR SO GOOD RIGHT?

WRONG

First, I had the reset this device 5 times in 2 days because it just plain froze up. I would get multiple error messages when I was connected to internet, dropping the connection frequently (and yeah, I’m pretty skilled at making that work). TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE.

And I don’t want to hear how a simple patch or download will fix this issue. If it doesn’t work out of the box, than DON’T SHIP IT!! I’ve been reading that apparently, Archos is getting slammed with this stuff after only a week.

FOR THAT, it gets 1 STAR and should get ZERO stars!!

Second, the Appslib was never installed on this device. I called customer service, was talking to someone in 5 minutes, who then put me on hold for 45 MINUTES!! After 45 minutes (I only stayed on hold that long cause I was watching NFL game so I had nothing else to really attend to at the time), the phone rang for 10 more minutes, and then, line went dead. PATHETIC!!!!

I am reading that some software update added actually might have been the reason for the Appslib to never appear, and if you look at Amazon site, they pulled the 160GB version.

For that, I give it NEGATIVE STARS…TERRIBLE service and TERRIBLE that this device did not come preloaded as advertised.

I am sending it back and will use my Toshiba Netbook to watch movies on the plane rides for now. I’m really disappointed. The device itself was really nice and sleek looking. The interface was nice.

The resistive keyboard was kind of annoying as it took a pretty good finger press to make it respond, but worked well enough. I learned to type pretty well on it in 2 days.

I’m ANNOYED!!!

I would have bought the ZuneHD but the screen is too small for movies, as well as the Ipod touch..

I’m now considering the Viliv ex70 as I’ve heard great things and it’s gotten favorable reviews.

I’ve read Archos history but wanted this device to work…The Android platform has a lot of potential and anything google touches pretty much works as advertised.

Now, I’ll have to shop around a little.

I can tell you one thing…unless people start giving this device 4-5 stars when the bugs are worked out, I’ll never buy another thing from this company.

EDIT TO REVIEW:

I have downloaded a new firmware update and the device is no longer needing to be reset constantly. It also does not lag any longer and seems a little more snappy and responsive. I’m going to hold on to it for now and see how this plays out over the next 3 weeks. I’m actually flying to CA for a sales meeting next week and so it’ll be tested well. If I find it is just needing more debugging it’s going back and I’ll also update again.

I have 2 movies that I just loaded to it from Unbox. Wolverine and The Dark Knight…Both look very good, although I’d love to get my hands on a HD version of these movies to push to the device.

I’m nervous, however, to buy the HD plugin because I’ve read somewhere that it does not work or does not read that you have purchased it.

One last thing:

I also just read now that on the Viliv you can actually run Windows 7. It has a camera, and if that is the case, you can snap photos and then ink on them which I do when I’m on job sites taking photos and marking up buildings and plans. That seems practical to me. However, it’s expensive (around $800-$900) and this device would be GREAT if these bugs go away.

Let me also so, GET THE 32GB NOT THE 160GB model. The 32GB runs SSD and it very snappy. It’s also half the weight and thin.

I’d say it’s as thin as my wife’s iphone and as heavy as holding a large starbucks coffee. It’s light and thin.

I have yet to try the GPS software but plan on downloading it from the disk provided to get the 7 day trial out of it. I’d LOVE that to work. Has a lot of potential when the 3D maps are available for the US in 2nd quarter of 2010.

BEWARE, not matter how much you want something…BEWARE

UPDATE #2: Done with it. It is going back NOW. I did the firmware update and it did NOTHING to help this machine. At first it appeared to make the system work faster, but then, it has frozen up 2 more times. Furthermore, I tried to install the GPS 7 day trial using the disk and the device again froze up. Sorry, but I cannot believe that these people would let these go out the door KNOWING it has issues. How the hell can they NOT know? If everyone here but one person has given this thing pretty poor marks, are they only using fully functional and perfectly tested devices?

Literally, look at the reviews and you will see what I am talking about. It’s amazing to me that a company would do this. Yes, large companies have devices that periodically are returned defective. But at the rate that these people are getting complaints, you have to wonder how this could go on for the period of time that it has.

So, Archos will never get another dime from me, unless of course they come out with a fully functional non brick like device that people are raving about. I believe my next device will be a Viliv. I have read review after review on those devices and they are almost all positive. The machines perform the way they were intended to, unlike this one.

And it’s too bad…this is such a nice looking and feeling device. The screen is nice, it feels really easy to use in the hand…It’s a shame it just does not perform.
Rating: 2 / 5

Pamela K. Gitta:

There is one sure fire way you can guarantee to reduce your technology options, and that is to irresponsibly slam everything that’s not an Apple product. There are companies out there, (like Archos), that are trying to give you options. It’s not easy to do. It takes a lot of money, and there will inevitably be hiccups and bugs. But people are so spoiled and impatient these days, they are willing to sell their souls to one company for a few pieces of MAC crack. Their loss.

Now to the Archos: I purchased the original Archos 5 a couple weeks ago, and while I found that device intriguing, the fact it used a hard drive (250GB) for storage, and made unsettling clicks and pops from time to time, made me paranoid enough to return it and order the FLASH Memory 32GB Android version instead. Also, the Opera browser on the older unit did reset often while surfing for no apparent reason. But it did work, and in full screen mode…and I could play my videos FROM my computer which my wife’s Itouch couldn’t…well, touch. It did everything her’s did, just not as well. In fact, using it as a book reader was pretty much a joke. The biggest shortfall was the way fonts were rendered in every application. They just looked cruddy compared to the Itouch.

Well, I scoured reviews from all over the web to see if I could find a comparison between the old and new Archos from someone who owned both. I couldn’t really, and what little I did find in comparison went pretty much like, “The new Android is OK, but not so much different from the first version in the end”

Now I know there are those like me out there that want to know if the upgrade is worth it.

Listen up. This is like the jump from a Yugo to a Cadillac. This device rocks! If I were to rate the original, I’d give it a “3″…this one gets an “8″

The web browsing experience is probably the most shocking. I have never seen a full sized computer load and display web pages faster. The rendering is beautiful. Ever bit as crisp and lovely as the Ipod. All in full screen spender! The scroll is not quite as fluid as the Ipod, but Archos is almost there. The sheer amount of additional real estate makes up for anything else.

Bottom line: Archos brought the web browser light years ahead from the previous model.

Media: (Video, Music, Photos) are all pretty much unchanged and for good reason: They were fine the way they were.

Bottom line: Media experience is the same as it was. Nice music player, nice photo viewer, and by far the most awesome video playback no one, not Apple, not Microsoft, not anyone can match.

Touch Screen: Many people seem to have a lot of complaints about the resistive touch screen. Yes, it takes a little more pressure than the Ipod’s capacitive screen, but I know people that have complained of those screens getting less responsive over time. The Archos screen is fine after you learn how to use it (and really, even before) Women will love it because it works especially well and is perfectly suited to using a fingernail where capcitive may not work as well via that method.

Applications: This is where Archos with Android is I guarantee you making Apple very nervous. Are they there yet? No. Are they gaining fast? You bet. Every day more apps appear.

Bottom line: There’s a new kid in town. A bigger, better looking, and soon to be better all around, kid.

Other features like FM receiver (Pod don’t got it) FM transmitter (Pod don’t got it) GPS! (guess what? Pod don’t got it) and I could go on and on about what my wife’s Ipod CANT do that the Archos can.

Darn, but it hangs occasionally, or maybe a screen will freeze once in a while. Get the torches!!! Burn them out!!!! Archos must die!!!! We demand PERFECTION!!!!

If I had a nickle for every time EVERY ONE of you people’s computers hung or froze or what not. Why aren’t you throwing THEM in the trash? Huh?

I am not in love with Archos, nor do I hate Apple. The Itouch is a very classy machine that does what it does just about as well as it can be done. But it is not without it’s faults. You don’t really own it, Apple does. Why can’t you see it like a hard drive? Why do I have to have their software on my computer to use it? Why have they banned Flash? Why do they mess with your legally purchased music and lock it down like it’s in Fort Knox?

I feel like Archos sold me their device and by doing so signed ownership over to me. They don’t restrict what I can do with it. They don’t tell me to load anything on my computer to use it. They offer an infinitely more versatile device. Yes, with that sort of versatility and complexity there are bound to be snags. They are working on them.

Archos 5 was the crude foundation.

Archos 5 Android is the real deal.

Rating: 4 / 5