Archos 605 Wifi 4gb Reviews

Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (80 GB) - commelec.net ...

155 of 159 people found the following review helpful:

It’s not perfect, but I’m pleased with it, October 19, 2007

By ScrewTheDaisies (North Carolina, USA) –

This review is from: Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (80 GB) (Electronics)

I bought this to replace a Creative Zen Vision:M 30 GB MP3 and Video Player (Black) that had been stolen. I really liked my Zen, but I wanted to see what new stuff had come out in the time since I bought it. This led me to getting the Archos 605 80GB instead, mainly because of the discretionary TV hookups.I never liked watching movies or TV shows (or music videos, even) on my PC monitor because I can not relax and enjoy something passive while I'm at my computer. I would also never used the video capabilities, the Zen is because the screen was too small. The Archos 605, on the other hand, could be hooked up to a TV (with the DVR station or other accessories–I bought the DVR station), which would allocate me to watch downloaded TV shows and movies in comfort–and even better, with other people (it’s hard to crowd around a computer desk to watch a movie), plus I’d be able to watch stuff on the go with its larger screen. The wifi access, web browser plug-in and PDF reader also helped sell me on the Archos 605. I above all looked forward to being able to read ebooks in PDF format. So when I ordered the Archos 605, I was thinking of it as an MP3 “with benefits.” When the Archos 605 arrived, I found out that its screen was perfectly large sufficient to watch video comfortably. Shortly after I got it, I watched two and a half seasons of Weeds on it. It’s fantastic! I can carry a TV show into the kitchen to grab a snack, etc. When I’m home alone, I’m even able to rely on the built-in speaker–for TV shows, I don’t need fantastic sound feature; I just need to be able to hear what they’re saying. It’s very cool; I’m very addicted. Like I said, I bought the DVR station with it. I had wondered how a video file from the Archos would hold up enlarged on a TV screen, but no doubts–the picture feature is excellent (we have a 32″ set). I’ve recorded some stuff from our TiVo onto the Archos, and the picture feature is excellent in that direction, too. Since we do have a TiVo, I haven’t used the Archos as a DVR (with the downloaded TV listings and scheduled recordings), so I can’t say how simple that is to use, but it’s certainly simple to manually record something, and I was pleased to see that I could tell it how long to record for. As an MP3 player, it’s not as excellent as the Zen, simply because it’s not, primarily, an MP3. One way the Zen (and probably most other MP3 players) is a better MP3 player than the Archos is that if you power the Archos 605 off while you’re before a live audience music, it doesn’t automatically start up where you left off when you turn it back on. Instead you boot up to the main screen, and then you have to tap the “resume” icon; otherwise nothing happens. In this way it’s less “plug and go” than my Zen was; sometimes if I’m only going to be driving for a few minutes (like a hop from the grocery store to the gas station), I won’t bother starting it up at all. Also, the way you lock the reins takes a few seconds longer than the Zen did. With the Zen, you just slid the switch to the lock position. With the Archos, you hold down the TV button until the lock icon appears on the screen. If you’re before a live audience from a playlist when you turn the unit off, and then you hit “resume” after you turn it back on, it doesn’t seem to resume the playlist–it does indeed play the song you were on, but it’s before a live audience it from the album instead of the playlist, so the next song after that is the next song on the album, not the next song on the playlist. Possibly this is glitch that will be fixed in a firmware update (or perhaps has been–I haven’t simplified my firmware in a couple weeks). Irrevocably, changing the play mode (normal, shuffle, repeat one, repeat all), takes a lot more navigating around than it did on the Zen. It really shouldn’t take that many clicks. Sound-wise, the Archos is excellent as the Zen was, and its drawbacks as an MP3 player aren’t so onerous that I’d consider buying a separate MP3 player. The Archos does well sufficient. The PDF reader, but, turned out to be a disappointment. First, it takes several (loooong) seconds to go to the next page. Second, there’s no way to bookmark where you are so that you can pick up where you left off. I figured I could just remember what page I was on and use the Go To Page feature to get back to it, but the Go To Page feature uses a slider, which is nowhere near as quick as if they’d let me type in a page number, and it takes a long freaking time for it to then load that page. Ugh. So this thing certainly hasn’t replaced my Palm Tungsten for e-reading. I haven’t used the web browser or wireless much.

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