Archos 705 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (80 GB)

I would recomend the Archos but the customer service lacks in every sense,If you call the cust/service no one will pick up!(I tried 3 times for more than half an hour each time)The e-mail response is a little better,it only took 6 days to get a response on my defective unit.they told me it would be weeks to wait for them to see if it could be repaired.It was only 4 days old but(i was told)thats thier policy.I called Amazon on sunday,u.p.s. picked up the defective unit on Monday,and on Tuesday u.p.s. dropped off my new player!Archos should take note on how Amazon does business. ANYDVD.com works verry well with Archos,I recomend you look at before you BUY the DVD add-on.

Well, this thing does everything you'd expect it to do, exept for one thing: sound output volume is terribly low. I bought mine for entertainment for my kids on a road trip to the USA. For normally recorded mp3 or video: you'll hear aboslutely nothing on an airplane. Inside a moving car, you'll hear something, but you'll miss half. Headphones don't change that. It renders this product prettymuch useless for travel.

There are some workarounds, like completely re-encoding all your movies and mp3's and movies with a 3x higher level sound output, but that can compromise the quality. Besides, it's an annoying hassle you shouyldn't have to go through with an expected quality product.

Dissapointing.

I bought this device based on my good experience with the 605. The 705 had on paper looked like a great little device.


The test files I used are made from DVDs 720x400 at 257kbps 29 frames per second. I did my tests based on my typical usage... riding the subway. This required volume to be cranked to 99 and the Backlight to be turned all the way up. I used AVI files because that is what you can use without wasting money on the plugins

THE GOOD
-They use non-proprietary USB ports - a change from previous models
-This battery is user replacable... important since recharging eventually beats up a battery and because as shown below the battery life is not great.
-Hard drive is a respectable 160G.
-Case has a place to hold your stylus so you might take longer to lose it.
-There is a direct AC charger instead of trickle charging via USB as on previous models.

THE BAD AND UGLY.

-Nowhere to store the stylus on the unit itself.
-Even at volume 99 it was hard to hear on a subway. I imagine you would have similar problems on a plane.
-Even around the house you have to have the volume between 60-80.
-Battery life is horrible. They claim 5.5 hours in the specs. Using the settings above (necessary due to the VERY low output of the amplifier and the drakness of the screen) I got 2:02 and 1:59 on two tries after a full charge.
-The earphones leak sound, are mediocre, and fall off when you move around.
-It is a Wifi device with no browser unless you pay $29 for a plug in
-It is a video player that does not have much in the way of format support without another $38 for two more plug ins (no .mpeg-2, .vob, .mpg, .ps, .mp4, .m4v, or .mov)


All in all... as much as I liked their other products (in spite of the plug-in scheme) I would look for alternatives to this unit were I you.

The quality of music played back from Archos players is terrible. This should not be advertised as an mp3 player, it's that bad at music playback.

The quality of music played back from Archos players is terrible. This should not be advertised as an mp3 player, it's that bad at music playback.