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 Posted: February 26, 2004
Author: Hellfire
Manufacturer: Archos
Source: N/A - Search PriceGrabber
The weight of the device is a little heavy, weighs approximately what 30 CD’s (just the CD’s) weigh. Not TOO much, but a little heavier than I expected. The overall dimension of the player is 4.5” x 3.25” x 1.1”. Not terribly large, but not small enough to be considered a small player.
On the front of the unit are the controls, most of which are all multi-function buttons. Going from Top to bottom:
Power-On (hold for on), Play, Select
Power-Off (hold for off), Back-Up Menu
Joystick – Navigate menus, Up/Down for Volume, Left/Right for forward/backwards during play
Bottom three buttons have many uses, too many to list. Nice thing though, since they change depending on what you are doing, at the bottom of the screen, it will show you the options. IE: During MP3 Playback: (from top) Setup, Playlist, Browse
The menu is very clear and easy to navigate. Even though the screen is small, the icons are large enough there shouldn’t be any issue navigating to what you want (unless you’re blind, and even then it’s easy to navigate). You can’t scroll from one side to the other (ie: scroll from the left icon, and appear at the right icon). You have to go across the player, which means you can navigate even without looking.
MP3 Operation:
MP3’s are generally the electronic format standard. Everybody knows what they are (if not, you need serious help). MusicMatch does a great job setting the ID tags on the MP3’s, and even encodes in the album cover. To play a mp3, you select the “Music” icon on the main menu. From there, it lists the files you have stored on the unit in the ..\music\ directory. It’ll list sub-directories, then the files. If you have the play lists in the same directory as your music files, they’ll get mixed up. I just put my playlist in the main “Music” directory, and all my music into sub-directories.
To play a song, you just have to navigate to the song you want, and hit the select button. After that, it will open the player interface, which gives you pertinate information. Artist, Album, Song Title, Encoding information (kb/s and kHz). Along with a graphical view of the volume level, and sound intensity bar. Then comes a slide time position indicator. Finally at the bottom of the interface, it lists how long the song has been playing, how much time is left, and total length of the song. You can also see the cd cover (assuming you’ve got it associated with one), if one is not available, the song information just expands so it looks like it doesn’t have a space for the cd cover. The navigation controls, allows you to “fast forward” the song, as well as advance to next and previous songs. This is determined by how long you hold joystick.
If you chose a playlist it scans the playlist before playing any music for problems. This is good and bad. It’ll block out bad songs so the player doesn’t stop playing. But if you have a long playlist (my current one is 1,000+ songs) it takes a few minutes for it to scan through it.
Something else that I found a bit annoying, you can look at your playlist, scroll through the songs, or anything when you’re listening to a song. But if you choose a song you want to play, it doesn’t play it, it does another random search for the song you play, if you’re in shuffle mode. If you’re in normal mode it plays the selected song without problem. If I select a song, I want it to play, regardless of the mode I’m in.
Next annoying thing is when switching songs it takes approximately 3 seconds for it to update the display, but the music plays immediately. If you’re not staring at the player you wouldn’t notice this. But if you are skipping a song or two, it takes a minute for it to show the title. Not a device breaker by any means, but it’s annoying.
The last issue here is there’s not an advertised “pause” button while playing MP3’s. But after sending a support message, I got a reply (in under 24 hours) that the power-on button also acts as a pause when playing MP3’s. Darn multi function buttons and they’re undocumented uses. Ok, that’s not an issue now. But it should be well documented…
If you happen to be on the road and feel like making or editing a playlist, you can do this without a PC. When you’re playing music, choose the playlist feature, and then you get a little split screen, files on the left, and playlist on the right. Choose the song you want to add/remove and press the appropriate bottom button (again listed at the bottom of the screen). It’s very easy to make/edit playlists on the road. But I still prefer doing them at my PC and importing them.
Photo Viewing:
Since this unit is an AV unit it has the ability to show pictures. I found this to be incredibly well done. Once you select the Photo option from the main screen, you get presented with either a list of photo’s or directories. All depends on how you have your directories set up.
This will view either JPG or BMP’s. Both are standards, so there shouldn’t be too much of a problem here.
You have several options of viewing your photo’s. Either select a photo you want to view, or run a slideshow. The slideshow is customized in the play settings of the menu, it can go from 2 seconds to 30 seconds. More than ample time for a picture slideshow. You can also just select a photo and it’ll view it.
While in the photo section, you can also, delete, rename, move and get info on the photo. The info on the photo consists of file Type, Size of file, File creation Date/Time and Resolution. Again, all standard stuff.
Video Playback:
The biggest advantage of this device is the video capabilities. It will playback XVid and Divx. This is both good and bad. Good because these formats allow for high quality video, but small file format. Bad because they aren’t a standard Windows format, although Divx is moving up very quickly, and is becoming a standard.
As with the other file types, you select Video, and choose from the directory listing what you want to play. Once it starts playing, it will begin playing in a small window, with the file information at the bottom. But once it gets playing and the file information at the bottom goes away, the video goes to full screen.
As you would expect there is occasionally some places where you can tell it’s an electronic video file. Some of the dark colors are pixilated, and sometimes scenes where there is a lot of fast action it can get a little choppy. Overall, for a hand-held device the video is very good.
To get a file on the unit, you can either run it through the included software (or your own Divx encoder), then just move the file from your PC to the unit.
Another option is the included “bonus” DVR 100. This is a little device that connects any S-Video / RCA connection to the player. Running a signal into the player, then pressing record will cause the recorder to encode the signal as Divx. As I said above, while this is great for the end user, this is causing problems with the MPAA (Movie companies).
Voice Recorder:
Since the unit has a built-in microphone, there’s an option to use the microphone and the player as a voice recorder. It’s not a very powerful microphone, and you have to speak directly into it. So it wouldn’t be very useful at meetings, conferences, classes, etc. But if you want to use it to record personal notes, it works great. Just make sure to speak clearly and directly into the microphone. Takes a little getting used to exactly how to speak into it, as you don’t want to be too far away and have it not be very loud, but you also don’t want to be speaking too closely to it, then it picks up too much other noise from you, and wind sounds from your voice.
File Storage Unit:
Since this is a 20 gig hard drive based unit, you can use it to move files between locations. Nothing truly groundbreaking, but it’s a handy option to have if you work on large files, and need to move them between computers, or work/home.
Other Add-Ons:
When I bought the unit, I saw it talk about expandability and upgradability. I figured this was meant towards upgrading the software as improvements came out. Boy was I wrong…
On the main menu, there are three options that hints at what you can expect from the add-ons.
Camera
Camcorder
Ok, now I’m curious. I go out to their web-site and check these out.
The Camera option gives the unit the capabilities of a 3.3 Megapixel digital camera. 3.3 Megapixel is certainly good enough for photo quality prints. The camera add-on connects to the same port as the DVR-100 and wraps around the back of the unit. I imagine this lets you use the screen on the unit as the viewfinder.
The second unit advertised add-on is the Camcorder. As with the Camera, you can turn your unit into a digital camcorder, storing the video as Divx. I didn’t find much information on the Camcorder option, other than what’s available on the Archos site. Sounds like it would be a nice add-on.
Since there were two add-ons, I went searching for other add-ons. This is a memory card reader for Compact Flash, and Smart Media. This solves a major problem for me when I go on vacation. No more do I need to have several memory cards to switch when one gets full. Also, since the player is small, I can pack it in a pack so I don’t have to run out to the car/hotel to use the laptop to unload the pics. I can stop for something to eat/drink and unload the pictures. This will be a godsend when my family and I go on vacation for a week at a time.
Since this has the ability to use hardware add-ons, I’d like to see more become available. Such as a keyboard, which would come in handy if you’re renaming files, or creating playlists.
Conclusion:
If all you want is a plain MP3 player, you can get one cheaper than the Archos AV320 (Archos makes a cheaper unit called the Gemini that has a similar layout but is geared towards MP3 only). But if you want to use it to show pictures, or video, you can’t beat this little unit.
There are a few things I’d change about the unit, most of which are minor issues, only the first two are critical.
1. Headphones – Spending $500 on a player, give me some decent ones
2. Cover – Since the LCD is critical to the unit, a simple cover for the unit would be very nice. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just something to help protect the screen (wonder if the extended warranty covers the LCD). There is one you can purchase from Archos (no picture available).
3. Features – Document all the features. I shouldn’t have to email support regarding a pause option.
4. Available Stand or Relocate Plugs. There are two plugs on the bottom of the unit. The USB2.0 and the Power connection. At this location you can’t stand the unit up to see the screen at a desk. Moving the plugs to the top of the unit or the side would alleviate this and let you prop the unit up. I did find on Ebay a stand that somebody made out of plastic for this device. I might have to get one for work.
5. Other file formats – With the power of this unit, I’m sure it is capable of playing other file formats as they become standards. Would have liked to be able to use MPG, WAV, Gif, Tiff, etc. This is a bit picky but sometimes you don’t want to have to convert stuff.
6. Battery life – This is advertised to have 10 hours of MP3 playback, should be noted that’s only if you don’t use the display. If you use the display, expect 3 – 6 hours of playback. Thankfully there’s a screen saver that comes on when you’re not plugged into the wall, this is of course fully customizable for the length.
I compared this to a similar RCA device and in terms of quality they don’t even begin to compare. The RCA was lighter, and felt cheaper (costs about $150 less), doesn’t have the expandability capabilities, screen resolution isn’t as good, and is pickier about their file formats. Plus it won’t record video directly to the unit. You have to use a PC to do that.
Finally, I recently read that several other manufacturers are preparing to release similar devices, using proprietary file formats. Such as how IPod uses the .aac format, although the Video IPod will probably use Quicktime. Creative Labs is watching the sales figures of the Archos and RCA unit as well. Both companies is rumored to be planning on a Fall 2004 release of their new units.
After using the device for three weeks, if I was able to return this device for a cheaper model, I wouldn’t return it. It’s a great device and does everything very well, with few issues.
I’d have to give this player 4 out of 5 stars. It would have been 4.5 if it had included some kind of cover for the player.
Final Rating (4 out of 5 stars): 
Please drop by the BigBruin.Com forum, and feel free to discuss this review.
A special thanks to Hellfire for taking the time to share his thoughts on this product!
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