Archos Internet Media Tablet 5

Product Introduction
Archos Internet Media Tablet 5 is a wonderful kit with immense audio and video features. The design itself is outstanding and unique with royal black finish. Archos 5 has a 60 GB traditional HDD storage. In short it is an iPod clubbed with many multimedia facilities. It provides best quality audio and video to the user.

Design and Features
Archos 5 has a 4.8 inch touch screen with very high resolution 800x480. The black stylish finish adds to the equipments glamour. This tablet is 99mm in width and 62mm in height. The most outstanding feature of this tablet is its video quality. Most of the features are controlled using touch screen interface.

Archos 5 support wide variety of audio formats like MP3 CBR, MP3 VBR, WMA, Protected WMA, WMA pro 5.1, WAV, AAC, FLAC and OGG. This is one of the very few devices to support both Wi-Fi and WMA. Because of this audio is heard quite clearly when the device is synchronized with TV or computer.

Coming to the video part file formats like M-JPEG, MPEG-4, WMV are supported and AVI, WMV, MPEG-4, MPEG-2 file formats are supported for multimedia effects.BMP, GIF, JPEG and PNG image file formats are supported. This is the only device to support such versatile file formats. Because of its huge compatibility, recording and viewing videos and images in this Archos 5 is a pleasure.

The battery life will last up to five and a half hours. The tablet does not have a flash memory however, and uses the traditional HDD to store the information. Archos 5 could be fitted in easily to any system with a windows XP operating system.

This helps in sharing data very easily. Again this is one of the rare devices supporting Windows ME and 2000. It supports advanced operating systems such as Macintosh and Linux also.

Performance
The audio quality in Archos 5 is excellent. The overall score for sound quality is 82%. However the video quality is the highlight of the device. Archos 5 was created with the sole aim of providing digital entertainment in the palm top. Archos 5 serves the purpose well.

With its high storage space and very good screen resolution watching videos in Archos is never tiring. The large 4.8 inch screen serves its purpose well. Any TV show or video or movie clip could be loaded into this and watched anywhere, anytime at the user's palm.

The device is completely touch-sensitive and hence the display screen is liable to catch lot of finger marks and will need somecare and proer cleaning to retain the excellent image. But because of the size and quality of the video it is easy to handle. There aren't many controls as the navigation is mainly through our finger tips. The menu controls are quite easy to follow. Only a handful of menus are present, so that the user does not get confused.

Use of few free plug-INS allows the user to watch high definition movies in the tablet. Also H.264 video podcast with AAV audio file format is supported. FM radio and Web TV could be accessed. An effective and secure web browser is used to surf the net. DVD's and cinemas in MPEG-2 video formats could be viewed.

Wi-Fi facility is included in Archos 5. Hence desired music or games could be easily obtained from any wireless hot spot. The overall performance score for Archos 5 is 81 % which is one of the highest given to the best products in market. The video quality alone scored 90 % for its enhanced technology.

Another remarkable feature is the audio. The sound is very clear without any hissing noise in the background. The audio synchronizes particularly well with videos giving a real time movie experience.

Main features of Archos Internet Media Tablet 5
The huge 4.8 inch high resolution display screen is the first highlight.

The home page, menus, settings and all other applications downloaded could be customized easily.

Movies could be watched on this tablet and TV shows could be rented. Videos recorded could be edited and viewed immediately as well as shared. Web browsers enable easy browsing and podcast support. Numerous other online activities like sharing office documents and checking mails can be done. Our favorite TV shows or Radio shows could be recorded, saved and enjoyed at leisure.

Videos downloaded directly from the net or transferred from other Wi-Fi spots can be viewed directly.

The good
The large screen with very good resolution is the first attraction. Very good resolution with perfect color gradient provides sharp video. The audio quality is also excellent. This device has scored the highest score amongst the all the other iPods tested. The overall score is 81 %. This is a very advanced device which has all the next generation features like WMA support and Wi-Fi access.

The not so good
The battery life is average. When the user tends to use the device for watching videos a higher battery life woudl be expected. The whole device is quite bulky. It is a heavy tablet. The battery lasts for only four hours time.

The iPods score for battery usage is 63%. The device has to be handled very delicately due to its sleek design. H.264 plug-in should be downloaded to avail all the facilities of Archos-5. There is no built in software for video conversion.

Areas that can be improved
The conversion software should be included and the battery life could be slightly increased. Also additional plug-in downloads could be incorporated in the device itself.

Verdict
Archos 5 internet tablet is an excellent device with high quality audio output, wonderful video quality and good wireless synchronization. The device supports many of the advanced audio and video file formats. It has scored the highest in terms of video technology compared to other devices in market.

Score: 81%
Price: $699
Capacity: 60GB

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