Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome!!, 20 Nov 2007
WOW! I bought This in replace of my Archos 404 which i broke(!) earlier this year..After researching this for hours on the net i finally decided to give in and buy it...and what a GREAT decission that was! This was bought as a 100% video player (i use my IPod for music)and it does that job amazing! First off it DOES play Divx as standard. It also plays divx movies with subtitle files(SRT) and with multiple audio tracks!!... The touch screen is excellent, i have been using it for 5 days now and it's responsive and feels extremely natural to use..I have the optional DVR station and watching a standard 700MB Divx movie using the RGB output option looks awesome, Almost, if not DVD quality! The WIFI is Great and fast. The option to stream movies from my PC to my Archos 605 is excellent and having viewed 2 movies this way with no problems..The web browser looks great on the 4.3 inch screen.The bad points are few but the optional plugins you have to pay for (MPEG playback, web browser) Really should be included or at least cheaper!! You are talking around an extra £50 for all the plugins!!.. Overall this is the BEST gadget i have ever bought! Get one for xmas!!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Two steps forward, one great leap back?, 5 Jan 2008
I am slightly disappointed with my new toy, I'll try and explain.
I'm a gadget freak! I buy things that I don't really need from time to time (I'm not the only one, right?).... but when I do fork out the best part of week's wage (after the plugins, docking stations etc) I get a little peeved when it doesn't live up to my expectations.
What's the problem? well, the main thing that bugs the hell out of me is Archos have upped the screen resolution on the 605 (great?!) and indeed it is a mighty nice resolution however they have somehow sacrificed colour saturation in the process. The 605 has a pretty 'washed out' look when viewing video content and there's no option to raise saturation levels either - everything I have viewed on the 605 looks lacking in vibrancy and when compared to my brothers 604 with the same files - it's quite noticeable, better resolution yes but poorer colour.
One other slight gripe I have is with the wifi connection - it's not great and takes around 12 seconds to connect up on my home network & pretty slow I have to say - my laptop & even my iPod touch connect & browse much, much faster with the same router/connection. If there's any flash content on a webpage (i.e. You Tube) the 605 crawls before finally sorting itself out, so frustrating!
It's fine as an occasional web instrument, just not as good as it should be and imho nowhere near as good as Apple's latest gizmo's for the web browsing side of things.
As has been mentioned in other reviews you will need to buy the browser plug-in for another £20 or so, pain in the bum but not exactly a shock if you read reviews before buying.
OK, so I've slagged off it's video & web abilities? No not really.
Video playback (apart from the colour issue) is truly stunning!!! the 605 is without doubt the best PMP I have ever used in that respect, it's played everything I've thrown at it, even 1080 HD encoded DIVX/XVID files - the pain in the rear comes when you chuck a VOB or MP4 file at the unit - then you have to purchase the 'cinema plug-in' for 20 euro's then there's the other plug-in for certain audio formats for another 20 euro's, both of which I knew about before getting the 605 and won't be buying as almost everything I want on the device will be in DIVX anyway.
I mentioned the iPod touch earlier and I'm not an Apple fan boy by any stretch of the imagination but there are comparisons between the devices to be made - I'd read a few reviews on the 605 where it was claimed the touch screen was as good as that on the iphone/touch - I guess the people who wrote those reviews might have something against Apple? (or simply have never compared both side by side!) - I own both devices and have no affiliation to either company whatsoever but I can, hand on heart state here and now that the touch screen on the 605 is exactly the same type of touch screen you will find on 1000000 sat nav units, it is nowhere near as nice to use as the screen on the iPod touch - on the Apple devices you barely need to touch the screen but on the 605 you have to prod and push or resort to using the stylus. It's simply not as good so I wish people would stop saying that it is, don't get me wrong the 605 touch screen is NOT bad but again it's just not as good as it should and could have been!
The device itself is pretty solid feeling although being all plastic, no metal casing as on earlier models here and the buttons down the right hand seem a little delicate to be honest and would not take much 'snapping back' if one wasn't careful.
As for the case that comes with it, it's fine! nothing amazing but it's rigid and fits well and I certainly don't feel the need to spend another 20 or 30 quid on a leather one anyway.
One other thing, charging the unit - it comes with only a usb charger and takes 12-24 hours on it's first charge, no idea of subsequent charge lengths but they are likely to be very slow via usb - I've a mini-dock coming!
The 605 has many cool features that I'm still exploring and if you want the best handheld video device out there with occasional web use/MP3 playback then there is non better despite my concerns above, it's much better than the iPod touch in respect of video playback certainly but nowhere near in terms of internet use or indeed MP3 usage (storage yes, ease of use no).
I'd still buy the 605 though, I wanted a good video playback handheld device and do have one but just not the perfect gadget quite yet, maybe the 06 series? shame.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Best media device I've ever used, 12 Dec 2008
Simply as it can play pretty much any video file without any converting makes this the best device for videos I've come across (especially for the price!) Although plugins are required for some features I really don't think this is a bad thing, the functionality you gain from using them is worth the money, and I think they have probably made them optional to allow the main product to be cheaper and therefore people who wouldnt use the plugin features dont feel like they'd be paying for something they wont use.
If you're not happy paying a small amount extra for the convenience to play video or music files without converting them, simply find a free converter on the internet and convert them to something the device supports out of the box, thats what i did with my few .m4a files, however i did buy the cinema plugin as i had alot of mpeg files and it was more convenient to have it play them rather than convert them all (music conversion takes barely no time at all anyway).
I use mine for listening to music mostly and watching video. The music player is perfectly easy to use/navigate (either with touch or with the side buttons(i skip tracks with it still in my pocket which is made easy by a raised skip track button)), it has all the features and options of a regular mp3 player such as play all/shuffle, and looks quite good too (with customisable themes/background)
Charging time with supplied usb cable is 8 hours, but the fairly cheap mini dock reduces this to only 3 hours
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