The Apple Juicer

Author's Rating:

Pros: 60 GB, Gorgeous screen, Supports almost every file type

Cons: Fingerprint prone, Slow charge, Sometimes theres a feeling of nickel and diming

The Bottom Line: 
I love my Archos 5 and would encourage anyone who's looking for a media player to take a look for themselves. 

Author's Review
Almost everyone either has an iPod Touch, knows someone who does, or has at least heard about one. Alas, if you are like me and don’t WANT one, but are in the market for a media player then the Archos 5 might be your Apple solution. Now, let me make it clear that the two devices aren’t just clones of each other and while this review is centered on the Archos, it would be most beneficial to compare it to its greatest competitor, the iPod Touch. 

The design of the Archos 5 is very sleek looking, coated in a bronze gunmetal all the way around. It is held horizontally, and because of its larger size looks like a really slick GPS unit. The Archos 5 stands at 5 x 3.1 x 0.5 inches, making it a bit bulkier than the iTouch and heavier. Though not as pocketable, the size of the Archos allows for a gorgeous 4.8in screen that displays in 800 x 480 resolution. In fact, it is the video playback that dominates its competitors to the greatest degree. The quality and clarity of the video is astounding, and the device can recognize and play almost every file type out there. (For a complete list of compatible video files visit www.archos.com.) The screen is responsive, but the Archos 5 certainly does not flow as smoothly as the iTouch. The screen and the entire device for that matter is very fingerprint prone and requires a cleaning after seemingly every use. The back of the device, which is like a bronzed mirror is EXTREMELY scratch prone. It took me a week or so before I realized that the scratches that kept popping up were from sharing my pocket with car keys. 

Audio playback is very nice as well, also recognizing the vast sea of files available. Adding and removing files onto your Archos 5 is a piece of cake. Acting like an external hard drive, files are adding by the simple drag and drop method – no conversions or 3rd party programs necessary. The Archos 5 also stores and views pictures allowing you to see your albums with a swipe of your finger. Zoom and rotation of pictures is available but the screen is not multitouch like the iTouch (rotation is achieved by a vertical swipe while a horizontal one cycles through your photos.) 

Navigation of the various menus is easy, and the home screen is much more organized than on the iTouch. At the home screen you will be faced with 6 options: Play, TV, Internet, Media Club, Tools, and Add-Ons. All of these, by the way, are up against one of the many downloadable backgrounds that you can get for your devices, many of which can move. This does tend to slow the device a little though, so I chose one of the many really cool looking static backgrounds. One other quick note on the backgrounds, the Archos 5 allows you to take a screen shot from any of your videos and use that as the background which struck me as a cool idea, albeit one I haven’t used yet. Though the homescreen is clean, it is quite rigid and you really can’t change any of the buttons. You can some create some shortcuts to widgets and the like but the Archos decides where to put them. This lack of control can be frustrating at times. 

Clicking on the “Play” button reveals 6 options. This is where you can play your videos, music, and photos. Also available here are games offered for download. Archos sells their games in packs of 4, costing around $20 per pack. Do not fret however, due to Flash 9 support for the Archos 5, plenty of free games are available. The easiest way to find them is through that magical portal that is google. You’ll find that not all of them work perfectly so it can be a bit of a trial and error procedure when adding games. Another feature under play is the “Flash Apps.” Free bundles of flash applications and games are offered online and range from Family Guy soundboards to ping-pong. Lastly, one of my favorite features in the Archos 5 is the Web Radio. Any time you are connected to the internet via wireless Wifi you instantly have over 10,000 internet radio stations at your disposal. What I was most impressed with is that these are not just junk stations no one listens do. Rather, I was able to find all of the stations I listen to normally in my car, streaming on my web radio. This means now that I am in college, I can still listen to all my favorite radio programs and stations live as if I were back home. Archos is a European product so the device is a bit worldlier. For instance, the web radio not only allows you to filter channels by genre and popularity, but by location as well. 

The Web TV feature on the Archos is no where near as developed as the Radio feature however. Most of the channels are local news broadcasts that show traffic cams when there isn’t anything live to broadcast. I remain optimistic however, at least the technology is in place. Archos has also released an add-on to allow for digital TV reception. However, the signals that it picks up are standard in Europe and sadly not in the United States so it does no good for me. 

This brings us to the “Internet” features. Archos has chosen not to call their model an MP3 player because it does so much more. Instead, the correct term is Internet Media Tablet. The Archos 5 comes with a built in wireless card allowing you to connect to nearby wifi. I was disappointed in its effectiveness however. The wireless strength seems so poor sometimes that I wonder if I have a faulty wireless card. When I am connected, the Opera powered, flash enabled browser is leaps and bounds better than the mobile browsers found on most other devices. Because of the screen size, website can be displayed as they would appear on a computer (though it might be a bit small for some people, in which case 2 levels of zoom are available.) The browser operates fairly quickly, though facebook in particular runs slowly. The Archos 5 also allows you to sync your email accounts into your device, allowing you to check messages or compose them quickly, avoiding the need to log in through the browser. Note to all Yahoo users: Unless you pay for your email account, yahoo does not allow you to access it through the Archos Email feature. You can still however log in to your account through the browser like you would normally do on a computer. I decided however, to just change everything over to gmail which works seamlessly. The final feature is a nice Contact list, allowing you to store names, nicknames, emails, IMs, phone numbers etc. One unique thing about this list is that you can save a picture to each name, so next time you see someone and can’t remember their name…there you go. 

The Media Club is also accessible via the home screen and is basically the Archos version of the Apple store. The Media club is a place to purchase your Movies, Music, Games, and News subscriptions. In a similar fashion, the Add-ons button lists all the different add-ons to the Archos 5 and there are quite a few of them. The ones listed include: GPS, DVR station, DVR snap-on, Remote FM, TV Snap-on (Doesn’t work in the US and many other countries), and a power dock. I do not own any of these so I will not review them, as they each could be a review of their own. 

Finally, the Tools section of the Archos is actually quite handy. There are a multitude of settings, from setting an alarm clock (I really like being able to wake up to music I enjoy rather than an obnoxious tone from a cell phone) to parental settings, to setting up power usage. On that topic, the Archos 5 claims to have a 22 hour audio playback and 8 hour video playback battery life. Personally, I have found the actual numbers to be a bit lower, more like 20 and 6ish probably because of other various settings. Needless to say, running out of power hasn’t given me to many problems, except for when I’m watching a lot of video. Also in the Tools menu lie a various assortment of widgets that are available for offline use. Adding new widgets is similar to free games, you really just have to add a bunch of them and see what works. The widgets that are provided however do all work – my favorites include the calendar, birthday reminder, To do list, and calculator. The last item of note, is the PDF reader. Not a lot to say about it, other than it works, albeit a little sluggish. To be honest I haven’t used it for much yet but I do anticipate having to do so soon. It is a nice feature to at least have and I will update this review when I’m in a position to. 


Please comment if you see anything wrong with the review or have something to say.
My other reviews at: http://g2reviews.blogspot.com/