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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic, 1 April 2004
A very solid piece of equipment, well worth the money. I was sceptical that the conversion of video to the AV380 would of high quality but my fears were unfounded. I hooked the player upto my DVD player, via the recorder that comes in the box (an absolute breeze with all the supplied cables), and just pressed play and record on either machine and hey presto high quality (practically DVD level, you won't notice the difference unless you are a geek).The screen clarity is perfect, but I do worry about the screen getting scratched so I would advise spending a little more to get a screen protector for it. Hooking the player into my PC was also hassle free, just plug in the USB and it appears as an extra drive on your computer, no need to set up or anything. Then it was a matter of using windows explorer to transfer my MP3 over. The variety of cables that come in the box allows you to hook to player upto most anything that has audio and/or visual standard jacks as connectors. My stereo, TV, DVD anything and it's really easy to use. The photo viewer is really clear and if you are used to a windows explorer then you will find all of the archos functions easy to master. It is worth spending the time reading the manual and loading numerous films onto the hard-drive. At present I have 2,200 songs and 10 films, with tons and tons of space left over. I estimate that it takes 1GB for every hour of film/video when it is set for high quality. So I can cram even more films onto the player before it fills up. On the road the video playback is superb, crystal clear and no shaky images. I use mine to commute across London, 1 train, 2 tubes and two 10 minute walks either end and no jumping tracks or stop/starting video either. Although holding the unit you can feel slight vibrations as the hard drive spins, but it is really nothing. The unit does warm up slightly, but as I have an i-pod style player I am used to this happening. Not to mention you look a bit weird staring at your walkman when watching a film, but never mind. Battery power has so far been about 4 hours, with still a bar left on the meter, using a combination of video playback for nearly two hours, with MP3 playback for the rest of the time. It suffices for me to travel to work and back. Now onto the niggles, not many, but worth pointing out. I would have expected a carry case or some sort of protection. The video playback, whilst great doesn't allow you to restart at the point you left the film. So at the next restart I had to scroll through to the place where I stopped previously. Get yourself a decent pair of headphones as the supplied ones are a bit cheap, and let the side down a little bit. One final factor is that the OS is upgradeable and hopefully Archos, or other enterprising souls, will put out new updates to include text readers (to download books and newspapers off the internet, etc) and other utilities. Essentially this has great potential as it is an 80GB computer in your pocket, and that may just be more powerful than your home PC. This upgradeable feature alone means it is not going to be out of date for some time to come. Overall I really rate this product, get one if for no other reason than you can show up all the snobby i-pod users as you watch a film on the train.
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