Archos 48 Internet Tablet - Tablet - Android 1.6 - 500 GB - 4.8" colour TFT ( 800 x 480 ) - Bluetooth, Wi-Fi

Anybody who is looking for a top of the line, iPod touch rival should look away now, the Archos 48 is in essence a glorified music/video player and nothing more. What should really influence your decision in whether or not you should buy one is what you need from a portable tablet, if you're looking for something to play music/videos on the go this could be exactly what you need. If you're looking for something to utilise the latest apps and surf the web, you're probably better off with another device.

I've written this review in a simple 'pros and cons' list, if anybody should have any questions just leave them as a reply to this review.

Pros:
- Excellent storage capacity. At 500GB it is probably the largest sized (in memory) small media tablet available, perfect for anyone with a large music/tv/film collection.
- Price. I paid £155 for mine and at that price you would be lucky to get an 8GB iPod touch from Apple. Even if you only have a moderately sized media collection that can fit on a 32GB iPod it's going to cost you twice as much.
- 4.8" Display. The display is large enough to make watching videos an enjoyable experience and yet not so big that it becomes a hindrance to carry around.
- It looks pretty good, and I would argue that it's more desirable than yet another Apple product because it's just a bit more obscure. The black finish looks great and doesn't look cheap.
- The touch screen works, which is more than I can say for many other products that rely almost completely on a touch screen for an interface.
- What alternatives are there? The Archos is in a section of the market that no other manufacturer has catered for. The most memory you can expect from a top of the line Smart Phone right now is around 16GB internal storage and an extra 32GB with expandable memory, combined this is only a tenth of the storage you get from the Archos.

Cons:
- Outdated Android operating system. This is no secret, the 1.6 'Donut' Android it runs on is prehistoric by comparison to current versions such as 'Ice Cream Sandwich' and 'Honeycomb'. Basically this means that it will not run as smoothly as more recent versions and the app store is relatively barren. This may or may not be a big deal depending on what you need from it, personally I don't use apps other than for checking emails (I'm only in college and I have a million and one ways of procrastinating as it is; piling on a few cheap games/apps onto that list would just whittle down any time I have for studying even further).
- As nice as the finish of the product is to look at, after around 2 minutes, half of it will be covered in smudges, diminishing the overall aesthetic quality of the device somewhat.
- At around 6 hours, the time spent charging is quite painful. I do try to sleep at least once a day so I usually just leave the Archos charging while I'm asleep, meaning that while this charging time isn't ideal, it's not a major problem. This issue can be addressed by purchasing something such as the DVR station but seeing as this is an optional extra that costs £50 I don't think it's worth considering for the purpose of this review.
- Videos that run with flash (thereby including Youtube) will not run on the Archos. While I agree that this is a large problem for a product that claims to be an 'internet tablet', it's never really affected my use of the device. Seeing as it obviously doesn't connect to the internet with 3G, whenever I'm connected to the internet via WiFi, I could just as easily use my laptop or a college computer.
- Battery life is not as good as the iPod touch I used to own.
- It is not possible to both charge and transfer files onto the device simultaneously. Once the majority of your media is put onto the Archos this is a problem that won't arise again, but it is quite annoying for the first couple of days seeing as (if you have a large library such as myself) you will have to charge the device, transfer files until the battery is drained and repeat.
- It's not quite as easy to use as an iPod. The interface isn't as 'clean' or intuitive as some other products, and certain faults have been known to arise such as firmware not installing properly, so if you aren't at least a little bit tech-savvy you may want to steer clear of this one.

The Bottom Line: The Archos 48 has it's faults and it doesn't quite perform as a fully capable internet tablet, so this probably isn't something to buy if you already have a decent Smart Phone. Where it does succeed though is as a portable media player. 500GB, a great display and the same price as the cheapest Smart Phones currently available make this a sound investment if you have a lot of media that you want to load onto one device.

I give it 4/5 as a portable media player, and 2/5 as an internet tablet. What you should take away from this review is that the Archos is as good as what you need it to be, and for myself, it was almost perfect.

opened up this 500gb media player gadget and was looking forward to using it quickly. The set up instructions state you should charge up the battery fully before first use, and via teh included USB to micro USB cable through a PC. Well i did try, but for nearly 20 hours and the battery is still not fully charged! in fact the last three hours has seen the % charged FALL from 85% to 81% while plugged into a desktop PC, even though WIFI has been disabled. Anyone else have this problem?
also instructions say it only works with PCs with Windows Media player 11

If you buy one of these for the right reasons, you'll probably not be disappointed - I bought it to store all my music, pictures & movies in one place, then watch or listen on the move. This machine really does do everything, but some things it's not really the best. I have bought the extra DVR station, which although expensive is well worth it for playing back through the TV.

Lets deal with the negative first - if you want an Android pad, this isn't the machine for you, it only uses v1.6 & many of the basic functions don't work too well, like YouTube. However as a nice interface to get online & maybe check you emails, it's a great add-on. Whilst using Android, not whilst playing music & movies, it regularly resets, not caused me to much of a problem so far, but annoying none the less. It's incredibly frustrating that with 500Gb of storage you get told there's no space for new apps, when I've only loaded a few extras. Archos don't let you access the full market place & have instead given you a very limited version, there are work arounds though. The screen isn't multi touch, but having said that it is quite receptive. Final negative is I can't seem to get this to load on my laptop as an external drive, it's a device & tends to be very slow in transfers (could well be user error though). On the whole the negatives don't really detract from a great bit of kit.

As alluded to at the end of my negative comments this a great bit of kit, it feels solid & has a very good screen for movies & viewing pictures. For all media playback I've found it simple & fast to use. It's got a huge amount of storage & it's pretty easy to access once it's on. Coupled with the DVR station it plays back through the TV very well & I love the little remote - the DVR station also seems to charge the unit better than the USB cable. Seems to be very good battery life, although the battery meter isn't very accurate.

This machine does almost everything it say's on the tin, very well & much of it is better than I'd expected - think it would be unbeatable if they'd only upgrade the system.