Tour & Design
**Front
**The front of the Archos 7 is dominated by the glossy 7-inch screen. The only other item on the front of the device is the Archos name printed below the screen.
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](../../images/upload/Image/Reviews/archos/7/tour-front-1000.jpg)
**Left
**The left side of the Archos 7 has only the 3.5mm headphone jack.
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](../../images/upload/Image/Reviews/archos/7/tour-left-1000.jpg)
**Right
**The external speaker grill is the only feature on the right side of the Archos 7.
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](../../images/upload/Image/Reviews/archos/7/tour-right-1000.jpg)
**Top
**On the top of the Archos 7, you'll find the charging light indicator, power button, and volume rocker switch. There's some small text that reminds users that the power button can be held down for 10 seconds.
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](../../images/upload/Image/Reviews/archos/7/tour-top-1000.jpg)
**Bottom
**On the bottom of the Archos 7, there are the accessory connectors and the reset button.
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](../../images/upload/Image/Reviews/archos/7/tour-bottom-1000.jpg)
**Back
**On the right side of the rear of the Archos 7is the flip-out stand. Other than this, there are no other features on the back of the Archos, save for model name, model and serial numbers, and other required certification symbols.
[
](../../images/upload/Image/Reviews/archos/7/tour-back-1000.jpg)
**Battery Out
**The battery can pop out when you slide a gray switch on the bottom of the device. As it turns out, the entire right half of the Archos 7's back is battery. Taking out the battery doesn't reveal any secret corridors or hidden treasure, but it is nice to air out the device every once in a while. That battery burns hot.
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](../../images/upload/Image/Reviews/archos/7/tour-battery-1000.jpg)
The Archos 7comes with a USB cable used for charging and connecting the tablet to your computer, as well as a set of earbuds, a screen cleaning cloth, and a plastic DVR station adapter for use with the Archos DVR Station (which must be purchased separately).
**Durability*** (6.00)
*The Archos 7seems pretty solid except . The two main durability issues are scratching and the stand. The screen and body tend to pick up scratches very easily. The stand seems robust, but it's also a thin moving part.
**Aesthetics*** (6.50)
*The Archos 7 is impressive looking. It has a giant screen, a glossy finish, and looks like it eats smaller, weaker media players. Due to the touchscreen, the device appears to be somewhat minimalist, despite having a more ports than usual. Overall, the thing looks pretty cool.
It will also look greasy. The back of this thing picks up fingerprints like crazy.
***This is supposed to be an unblemished, mirror-like surface, and this is the amount
of fingerprints we got on it from handling it for 2 minutes.***
**Portability*** (0.73)
*The Archos 7 is not really portable. Maybe if it had to plug into the wall it'd be less portable, but we honestly can't see a device much bigger than the Archos 7 being produced. It's just gigantic and heavy. This is not a media player to put in your pants pocket. Maybe if you have a cargo pocket and you just lost a bunch of weight you can shimmy this thing into it, but otherwise you're going to need like two suitcases.
[
](../../images/upload/Image/Reviews/archos/7/portability-handling2-1000.jpg)
Seriously, it's gigantic.
**Supported File Types*** (7.88)
*The Archos 7 supports a good array of media files. It will natively play back your MP3, WMA (protected, unprotected, and pro 5.1 surround), and WAV files, and you can opt to get a plug-in for AAC/AAC+ or AC3 files. Video files are set up the same way, with MPEG-4, WMV (protected or DRM-free), and M-JPEG videos supported out of the box, and the option to get a plug-in for HD support, MPEG-2 files, or H.264. The photo viewer will support JPEG, BMP, PNG, or GIF files. The device will also let you view PDF files.
Though we would've preferred those audio and video files supported out of box, we were impressed with the ability to view PDF files.
Hardware
**Physical Controls*** (6.25)*
The only physical buttons on the Archos 7 are the power button and the volume buttons. They are located on the top of the device, towards the right-hand side. All three buttons are slightly raised and have an engraved symbol. The symbols are mainly aesthetic, however, since they aren't pronounced enough to provide your fingertips with enough information as to their whereabouts. In terms of play (tactile feedback from pressing the button) and travel (the depth to which you have to press the button to activate it), the keys were fine. They could've used a bit more snap to them, but since you aren't going to be using either of them to control anything particularly precise, these issues are negligible.
The (approximately) 7-inch touchscreen is what you'll be using to interact with the device. The touchscreen is pressure-sensitive, which means it won't feel nearly as responsive as the iPod Touch's screen (we generally prefer capacitive touchscreens to resistive). The other concern is the size of the device iteself. Hitting touch-areas in the center of the screen is often awkward and requires hand repositioning. The device is big, heavy, and borderline unwieldy. If you put an Archos 7 in the hands of famed concert pianiast Oksana Kolesnikova, she'd appear to have the alacrity of a newborn.
[
](../../images/upload/Image/Reviews/archos/7/portability-handling-1000.jpg)
The hands pictured in this photo are average, maybe slightly larger than average. The device is large.
**Screen resolution***(12.39)*
The Archos 7's screen boasts a resolution of 800 by 480, which rivals lower-end computer monitors. Such an absurdly high resolution carries with it the potential for a great amount of detail.
Although the stated 7 inches is a bit optimistic, the Archos 7 still has the biggest screen out of any media player we've reviewed to date. The only reason you'd have to squint at this screen is if you have a pre-existing vision problem, in which case we urge you to look for a nearby optometrist before reading any more media player reviews.
The giant screen size and high resolution only averages out to about 135.70 pixels per inch, which is about average. Pixel density can dictate the sharpness of lines or vibrancy of color. While you shouldn't have any issues on the Archos 7, we did think it was interesting that the Archos 5 and Archos 7 had the same resolutions despite having vastly differently-sized screens. Although it's a bit smaller, the Archos 5 will appear to have a slightly sharper picture than the Archos 7.
**Screen brightness***(5.60)
*There are two levels of backlight intensity (in addition to 'off'): dim and bright. In addition, there's a brightness slider that ups the display's brightness levels. Although this doesn't necessarily up the screen's luminosity, it can make colors look somewhat less murky.
We clocked the Archos 7's brightness at 339.73 candelas per square meter. This is very bright for a media player, and the giant surface area outputting the light should mean the Archos 7 could double as a lamp.
**Built-in Speakers*** (7.56)
*The Archos 7's built-in speakers were capable of outputting 92.2 decibels. First of all, most media players don't even have speakers. Secondly, which is pretty good for a portable media player. Most media players out there don't have any built-in speakers.
**Cable Connectivity*** (4.50)*
The Archos 7 has a proprietary port on its underside that will let it connect to myriad add-ons (GPS, DVR, etc.), but also serves as its USB port. We don't award points for proprietary connectors, unfortunately, because they're a pain to replace. If you lose a device's MiniUSB cable, chances are you have 12 other ones lying around. however, since they usually limit you to accessories sold by the device manufacturer, and almost always at a premium price.
The Archos 5 does at least have a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, widening your options well beyond the stereo headset that comes in the box with the device. This is an area where we particularly don't like proprietary connectors since the headphones that are included with most multimedia devices are far inferior than those that can be purchased separately.
**Internal Storage*** (13.02)*
The model of Archos 7 we reviewed has a manufacturer-stated capacity of 160GB. Once you convert that number to actual Gigabytes (typically on a specs sheet, 1 GB refers to 1 billion bytes, as opposed to 1,073,741,824 bytes) it turns out that the Archos 7 has 148GB of memory. Percentage-wise, this isn't a huge drop, but just know you're getting 12GB less capacity than advertised.
The Archos 7 doesn't have any slots for external storage.
We're still conducting our battery tests, because the Archos 7 is being a big baby and keeps conking out some time in the middle of the night even though its batteries aren't dead yet. We'll update this section as soon as we can get some reliable results from the finnicky thing.
UPDATE: We just got the music battery test to finish to completion, and wow... when 1/2 of the backside of a device is battery, it has remarkable longevity. The Archos 7 was able to play music back, at max volume, nonstop for 42 hours and 37 minutes. This is a really, really long time, by far our longest result for music playback. We're in the process of testing video and wifi connectivity at the moment, so check back in a few days for another update.
**UPDATE AGAIN: **We got test results for both video playback and wifi connectivity. The Archos 7 managed to last 5 hours, 6 minutes on our video test and 4 hours, 23 minutes on our wifi test. Both of these times are average.
Media Interface
Users will be issuing basic playback commands through the touchscreen. There are onscreen buttons for play/pause, skipping forward and backward, or searching within a song. The onscreen buttons are gigantic and spaced apart, so the only input error you'll run into will likely be caused by the sometimes unresponsive screen. The volume can either be controlled onscreen, or via the physical keys on the unit's top. There is no hold button, just an option in the menu to lock the screen.
**These onscreen buttons will be your main method of control. **
This is the video player's interface. It'll automatically hide.
**Advanced Playback*** (9.25)*
The Archos 7 has some great tools for customizing your playback. You can set your play mode to all, queue, intro, single, or folder. The intro mode will let you set how long you want the 'intro' clip to be, which is great if you want to make a Power Hour mix or some sort of non-drinking-game-related medly. Another cool feature is the ability to bookmark a specific point in a song, so you can skip back to it later. Most audiobooks nowadays come in chapters, but this is still a great tool for keeping your place in any long audio file.
***The button in the top right is the menu button, which will let you find additional
information on a song, set a bookmark within a song (good for audiobooks or
really long podcasts), set the song/video's rating, lock the device, or fool
around with the settings. ***
**Here's the settings menu for the music player. **
While you're on the playback screen, you can see the name of the song playing, the artist, album, album art, playlist position, previous and next songsWhile a song is playing, you can see the name of the song, the artist, the album name, the album art, the song's position in the playlist, the previous song in the playist, the next song in the playlist, a clock and slider bar depicting the current position of the song, and the volume. The feature we don't usually see is the previous/next song's title displayed to the side of the previous/forward skip buttons. You can also select 'info' from the menu to get a ton of information about the song or movie you're playing.
**This is the list of info you can dig up on a song. **
This is the only info you can find on videos.
Media Management
Navigating through the Archos 7's library is similar to how you'd do it on the iPod Touch, only slightly worse in myriad ways. For one, as will be mentioned many times throughout this review, the touchscreen requires a bit of pressure to register commands and the software is sometimes sluggish to register. This means that sometimes you'll mean to scroll but accidentally click and vice versa. Also, unlike the Touch, there's no way to scroll through an extensive list of items (the Touch lets you skip to a specific letter). Also, to select something you have to double-tap, which is annoying yet necessary given the sometimes spotty controls. The giant screen does help navigation a bit, since you won't likely misclick, but unfortunately this boon doesn't circumvent the responsivity issues.
***This is what the Archos 7's libraries look like. This is the video library, and those
thumbnails by the photo will animate when highlighted, which is awesome. ***
We were able to perform our standardized browsing test in 6.79 seconds. To put this number in context, the iPod Touch got 4.23 seconds and the sluggish iPod Classic took 8.27 seconds. Most non-touchscreen media players get 7-9 seconds. The Archos 7 is definitely better than a lot of other media players out there, especially those that still have d-pad browsing. It isn't the best, however.
The standard stable of sorting options are all available on the Archos 7: artist, album, genre, song title, and year: basic options. If you've created your own folder structure on the device, you can also opt to search out a song in the file browser. If you've created your own ingenius folder structure, you will undoubtedly enjoy this feature.
You can assign a rating to your song, from 1 to 5. Unlike some media players, where the number you give a song is just for your own bookkeeping purposes, you can actually sort your songs by rating. Selecting the rating (or 'Unrated') will give you details about how many artists, albums, and titles in total are under that category, and also the total length of all songs from that category.
The Archos 7 will let you 'flick' through menus, which is a lot quicker than using a d-pad to navigate the same distance. There's also a full QWERTY search, which will let you sniff out any song by typing in either its title, artist, or album. The only limit to the QWERTY search is your own imagination or maybe your spelling capability.
The Archos 7 will let you make a playlist on the device itself. The playlist creation process is easy enough, but not the most intuitive process we've come across. Basically, the screen will split in half, where the left side of the screen shows the file browser and the right side of the screen, lists all the songs currently in your burgeoning playlist. You can toss songs from the left side to the right side by double-tapping them. If you want to add an entire album or folder, you have to single-tap to highlight them, then hitting the menu button > Insert in Playlist > All Files.
One feature to be aware of: the menu in the top-right is context sensitive. Depending on which side of the screen you were last in (either the song window or playlist window), the menu's contents will change.
**Equalizer & Filters*** (8.75)*
There are five equalizer presets in addition to the default, 'flat' setting that equally emphasizes all frequency bands: rock, techno, jazz, classic, and live. You can also create a custom equalizer setting, which consists of five mysteriously unlabeled bands. Each of these bands can be boosted to +6dB, or dampened to -6dB. We typically see more equalizer presets on media players that have them, but the custom equalizer makes up for a slightly less granular list.
There is also a balance setting, which will skew volume towards either the left or right channel. It has six stops on either side of the neutral position. We're not sure why you'd want to use this feature on a handheld device, but we're nevertheless grateful for its addition.
***This is the audio settings menu, that'll let you fiddle around with how the speakers
behave, customize the equalizer, or for some inexplicable reason, make the left
speaker louder than the right. ***
Other Media Software
The photo album looks absurd on the Archos 7's screen. The device can display up to 63 thumbnails at a time. Aside from helping you browse photos easier, it just looks impressive.
Seriously, this is a lot of thumbnails. Most devices give you like 15/screen, tops.
The rest of the album software is also excellent. You can string photos together into a slideshow, which you can then control with a play/pause button, previous/next photo buttons, and a progress bar you can slide to jump to a certain point in the slideshow. You can also set the duration each picture is shown for, any transitions (fade, slow fade, opening, 3D, vertical wipe, horizontal wipe, dissolve, or none), enable shuffle playback mode, or toggle the viewing format between original size and full screen.
These are the controls for the slideshow feature.
When viewing a picture, you can tap and hold to zoom in, then tap and drag to pan around. This isn't as intuitive as it sounds, since you need to remember your dragging motion requires you to maintain pressure on the screen, rather than just dragging your finger along its surface. You can also rotate pictures, but you can't crop them. There are no true editing features, such as sharpening or color adjustment.
The Archos 7 doesn't have any software that specifically facilitates your podcast experience.
**Audio Recording / Voice Notes*** (0.0)*
There is no microphone built into the Archos 7. It cannot record voice.
Performance
**Frequency Response*** (9.70) [
](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/mediaplayers/content/How-We-Test.htm#Frequency_Response)*
Frequency response refers to how well the media player can play back any given frequency. Unlike the headphones you use to listen to your music, the media player shouldn't take any creative license with the original sound file. The graph at right shows how well the left and right channel stick to the game plan. The left channel is red, the right channel is green, and both lines would ideally be on top of each other and totally flat.
While the lines at right don't overlap 100%, they are remarkably close, so much so that you wouldn't perceive any difference. They're also remarkably flat. Although there's some bumps towards the right side, they're so tiny that they won't make any difference. Overall, the Archos 7 has excellent frequency response.
](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/mediaplayers/content/How-We-Test.htm#Distortion)
Distortion refers to any difference between the original sound file and what the device actually outputs. On the graph to the right, the left channel is once again red and right is green. The numbers on the left represent the percentage of distortion. Anything close to 3% distortion is noticeable and bad. Distortion can be caused by over-worked amplifiers or some sort of digital-to-analog problem among other things.
The Archos 7 didn't have the lowest distortion, but it did perform a lot better than the Archos 5 did.
](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/mediaplayers/content/How-We-Test.htm#cross_talk)
Crosstalk refers to one channel's tendency to bleed over into the other. For the Archos 7, there really isn't much crosstalk at all. If there were, you'd see the red and green lines at right acting far more independently of each other. There were some issues towards the middle of the frequency spectrum, but nothing noticeable.
We measured the crosstalk at about -65.2 decibels, which is more than, say, the iPod Classic's -104dB, but still isnt' a bad result. The vast majority of listeners won't notice any crosstalk.
](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/mediaplayers/content/How-We-Test.htm#Output_power)
Media players all output power that's used both to drive the headphones and boost the volume. Since many higher-end headphones have big impedence, the more output power, the better. If the player has less output power than the headphones need, you're out of luck with that headphone-player combination and stuck using different headphones.
The Archos 7 had disappointing output power, which is likely due to the EU's volume limit laws. We were only able to squeeze a paltry 4.6 milliwatts out of this thing. This is just too bad, because other devices manufacturered outside of this law are capable of far more. The US version of the iPod Classic mustered 29.5 milliwatts and the tiny little Shuffle managed 18.6 milliwatts. Our recommendation is you either hack the thing silly (Google gives good hints on how) or get an amp for your headphones.
](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/mediaplayers/content/How-We-Test.htm#Output_power)
Noise refers to any sound added to your music that shouldn't be there. This could be caused by the internal circuitry buzzing, a bad connection, or one of many problems. While all media players add at least some noise, we really didn't have a problem with the Archos 7 in this regard. We measured the Archos 7's noise at a very low 85.1 decibels. This is quiet enough to be totally overshadowed by any music you put on.
**Included Headphones*** (3.31) *[
](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/mediaplayers/content/How-We-Test.htm#Included_headphones)
The Archos 7 might be a fancy, expensive media player with a grotesquely large screen, its headphones are just plain bad. The things had a bad frequency response, huge problems with distortion of the low end, and didn't isolate well. In an interesting twist, they could output quite a good deal of volume, but since the Archos 7 won't ever be able to output those levels, this one redeeming quality is rendered moot. Overall, you should really be buying better headphones; just make sure they have a low impedence so this thing can actually power them.
Internet & Wireless
**
Wifi / Bluetooth*** (5.00)*
The Archos 7 does not have Bluetooth connectivity. It does let you connect to the internet via wifi. The Archos 7 uses Opera as its browser, and it also has a lot of web-based applications to let you look for media. One interesting feature is the device only connects to the internet when you use a web device. This means every time you want to search for a music video or tool around the internet you have to wait for the device to connect over wifi. Every time. This has the tendency to be annoying, but is probably less rough on the batteries than a constant connection. Still, we would've liked to see some sort of automatic connection option buried in a menu somewhere.
If you hate wifi then you can simply turn it off by switching your Archos 7 to airplane mode.
**Choosing your wifi connection is a standard affair. **
**Music Store Client*** (1.00)*
The Archos 7's music store consists of a single 3rd party web application by Jamendo. Jamendo is a site where musicians post their music for free, likely because they don't have enough money to sue Kazaa, or Morpheus, or Ares, or whatever the hip kids are using for P2P music thievery nowadays.
The 'Media Club' is where you'll go for downloadable and purchaseable content.
**This is the movie portion of the Media Club, which lets you download additional content. **
**Streaming Audio / Video*** (8.00)*
The Archos 7 supports both streaming audio and video. You can also use the device to listen to internet radio. These features aren't necessarily surprising on a wifi-capable device, but are great abilities that not all internet-enabled players have.
Synchronization
**Synchronization Ease of Use*** (0.0)*
Archos doesn't offer any sync software, which isn't necessarily a horrible thing. You'll have to drag & drop your songs onto the device yourself, using your computer's file browser. Including sync software for the less savvy, but making it optional instead of mandatory (iTunes) would have been the best route.
**Synchronization Features & Support*** (3.00)*
Since there's no sync software, this section is a big blank except for one area: the device being recognized as an external hard drive. In fact, it's a good thing that the Archos 7 has this feature, or else you couldn't put music onto it. While many users will prefer to just drag & drop music themselves, the presence of sync software would've been nice. If you really love sync software, you can always use Windows Media Player.
**Other Synchronization Software Features*** (0.0)*
If there's no sync software, then how can there be sync software features?
Other Software
For the most part, the Archos 7 is intuitive. All the non-settings menus are just lists of files and folders. Navigating around the highways and byways of the Archos 7 is done by tapping and dragging your finger across the screen to scroll. Navigation is made slightly awkward by a combination of the resistive touchscreen and inconsistent lag. First of all, needing to physically push in on the screen will be downright counterintuitive for iPod Touch veterans. Sure only light pressure is necessary, but sometimes the device is slow to respond, making you constantly unsure of whether or not an issued command has been recognized. The touchscreen seems especially sluggish when you want to scroll. Again, it's not like you have to punch the screen to get its attention, but we often tried to scroll and accidentally selected a song. While the iPod Touch and its fancy electron field have a better interface due to hardware superiority, the Archos 7 is still leagues better than other, non-touchscreened media players. Plus, during the winter you can operate the Archos 7 through your mittens while you laugh at all the Touch users' frost-bitten fingers.
The ony other gripe we had interface is mainly aesthetic. Behind any given item in a list, the top half of its row will be white, while the bottom is transparent. Not only does this make the top half of a menu item a bit hard to read (white on white), but the alternating white and black (well, clear) makes you think that each white bar represents one option and each clear bar represents the next item in line. Until you get used to this aesthetic, it can be slightly disorienting.
**Personal Information Management**
The Archos 7 has quite the comprehensive address book for a device that can't make phone calls. For some inexplicable reason the Contacts app is in the Internet menu on the home screen, so our journey starts there.
Yes, the internet tab, home of all things internet and... the contacts application.
Each contact holds enough customizable fields to make the average smart phone jealous. You can enter in the following tidbits: nickname, first name, last name, company, phone number, email address, web site, IM handle, physical address, a note, and two fields for dates that have corresponding note fields. All of these fields (excepting the date fields) can accept multiple items. Each contact can be lumped into a group, either professional or personal (if it's both, you have to choose one). These group designations can later be used to filter through your contacts.
Here's the first screen of the contact entry process.
... and this is the last screen. We hope you enjoyed the ride.
Feel free to enjoy your freshly-made contact.
We have a few qualms about the software, however. The keyboard doesn't default to capitalizing the first letters of the name field, which is annoying. Even worse is number entry, where you have to hit Alt to access the numbers, where it should really just default to that setting. Also, hitting the back button erases any changes you made so far without a 'hey, you should prolly save this' prompt.
You can import/export contacts in v-card format. Exported contacts can be found in the Data folder on the device. This is the main way you'll be importing/exporting contacts, since the Archos 7 won't sync with Address Book or Outlook.
While the Archos 7 keeps track of the date and time, for some reason it doesn't come with a calendar application.
There's no todo list application built into the Archos 7.
**Memos & Other Documents*** (3.00)*
The Archos 7 has a notes application in Tools > Widgets. Creating a note will flood the screen with a gigantic keyboard that is just slightly too small to type on like a full-sized keyboard. These notes are purely character-based: don't think you can fingerpaint on them using the touchscreen. Your saved notes will be listed by date, and there's no sorting or searching options. The notes application is fine, albeit a bit awkward to use since the keyboard is so large and slightly unresponsive. Our main gripes involve the lack of automatic controls. The letter after a period isn't automatically captialized, which is a minor gripe but annoying nonetheless. The more offputting issue is the lack of predictive text or word completion or automatic spelling correction.
***Although it's hard to tell from this tiny screenshot, this keyboard is probably
larger than your face.***
The notes application is squirreled away with the other widgets.
There is also a PDF reader on the Archos 7. With this app you can view PDFs, but you can't edit them. We found the device sometimes distorted images, but could handle table of contents links. The one interface quirk here was that hitting the back button from inside a PDF kicks you back to the home screen as opposed to the file directory where the PDF was located. Since there's already a home button, we think the back button could've been used to better effect here. Despite its shortcomings, we were just pleasantly surprised to see a PDF viewer existed.
The PDF viewer is located in the Tools menu.
The Archos 7 comes with a number of free third-party games. Some are ok, some are bad, but their presence is welcome nonetheless. There are classic games like Solitaire, Mahjong, and Sudoku along with sports, puzzle, and platforming games. Overall, while the graphics are leagues ahead of most non-iPhone games, the gameplay of all these games is remarkably simple. Still, a lot of the games are fun for what they need to be: a way to kill time when you don't feel like watching movies. Again, the main issue we found was the controls were sometimes unresponsive, but we didn't run into problems nearly as often as we thought we were going to. Other than the odd situation where you tap too lightly or your finger 'falls off' of a drag gesture, you should be fine.
***This is the game client. Remember to press the blue arrows to skip from game to game;
trying to swipe the screen will likely register as a tap.***
This is a circuit-connecting game that operates kind of like Tetris.
The Archos 7 is like a modern-day Voltron, only all the separate pieces cost hundreds of dollars and aren't included in your initial purchase. The Add-on and TV headers on the main menu are filled with short advertisements that explain just why you should buy the DVR dock or TV tuner or GPS or helmet cam adapter.
*** The TV Receiver add-on also gives your Archos 7 makeshift arms so it can give you a
robot hug to show its appreciation! You want your Archos 7 to be able to hug you,
don't you? What kind of a person wouldn't want a robot hug? Order now!***
Peer pressure aside, you can also dump Flash apps onto the Archos 7, which opens up entirely different realms of extensibility. Just toss a Flash app into the appropriate folder and enjoy. This addition gives the Archos 7 a less focused level of extensibility than the iPod Touch, but opens the doors of potentuality far, far wider.
Aww man! Look how awesome my Archos 7 **could***** be with an additional investment!***
Really, in terms of both hardware and software extensibility, assuming you don't mind getting your hands dirty (buying add-ons or finding standalone Flash apps), the Archos 7 is arguably more extensive than Apple's offerings.
The Archos 7 comes with a bunch of widgets that provide some minor fucntionality. There's a calculator, a few unit converters, etc., but there's also some that add major functionality. The Archos 7 comes with a version of Opera, an RSS Reader, a weather app, a POP/IMAP email client, and a password storage feature.
***Here's a washed out picture of Google.com in the Archos 7's browser. We would've
retaken the picture, but you already know what Google looks like anyway, don't you.***
You can set up either a POP or IMAP email account on your Archos 7.
This is the file browser, which looks a bit plain, but lets you browse files nonetheless.
Conclusion
[
](../../images/upload/Image/Reviews/archos/7/vanity-1000.jpg)The Archos 7 is a gigantic piece of technology. The screen is just about the best one out there for (somewhat) portable video. Sure it's not as portable as the iPod Shuffle, but the ability to view decent-sized videos is great. The Archos 7 is also very extensible, letting you toss on Flash apps like it's no big deal, or download additional content via one of their web-based applications. Not only is the Archos 7 software extensible, which the iPods are quickly becoming, but it has impressive hardware add-on options. The Archos 7 can digivolve into some sort of all-in-one contraption with DVR, GPS, a helmet cam, hot plates, and a fully funcitoning sawmill. This level of expansion gives the Archos an edge over those annoyingly adept iPods.
The Archos 7 did ok on our audio quality tests, but not perfectly. It has a very weak output power and a lot of distortion. It did well on other tests, however, like frequency response, crosstalk, and noise. The packaged headphones are bad, but that should be any buyer's assumption.
Overall, the Archos 7 is an impressive device that could really use a firmware update to make it as slick as the iPods of the world. If it had some slightly better controls and a new coat of software-based paint, the Archos 7 would be an Apple killer. As it is, it's a bit awkward to use and not as user-friendly as it could be. It's also almost prohibitively expensive at $450 for the 160GB version and $550 for the 320GB version. Sure those are huge hard drives, but most consumers just don't have that kind of money. While we'd definitely recommend the Archos 7 to those who want a giant screen that can optionally have GPS and DVR, we really some firmware update makes the thing a bit easier to use and a bit easier on the eyes.
Ratings & Specs
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Meet the tester
Mark Brezinski works on the Home Team, reviewing refrigerators, minifridges, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, air conditioners, air purifiers, and fans.
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