New Archos 2 Vision PMP pictured, priced, and predictably short on battery life
Meeting what we'd call the bare minimum for being able to say there's "touch capabilities," the new Archos 2 Vision PMP has quietly stepped out of the shadows and onto UK retailer MyMemory's website. Just under the 2-inch, 220 x 176 resolution display is a tactile slider for menu navigation and volume control. The credit card-sized player also sports a FM tuner and recorder, a microSD slot in addition to internal memory, and support for MP3 / WMA audio and AVI video -- nothing too fancy here. Battery life is a depressing 10 hours for audio and 4 for video, which at €60 / $85 for 8GB and €99 / $140 for 16GB models, is just a tinge south of acceptable in our book. Europeans still intrigued can pick one up now, while US consumers will either need to pay a premium for import or just wait patiently.
[Via DAP Review]
[Via DAP Review]























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Seriously Archos? Instead of making this, can you just focus on your Archos 3 and tablet PCs?
Archos are better to focus on their suck ass customer support
Archos has only been great with sound quality, but this player showcases their weaknesses by basically screaming, "unimpressive".
What an excellent mobile I like it very much.
What a terrible comment. I hate it very much.
Shame about the battery life.
99 Euros and micro SD slot are cool, I just don't get this ridiculous battery life - and no AAC?
C'est merde
I heard you can play AAC audio with a $20 'plugin'.
10 hours audio. Archos have finally caught up with the battery life of MP3 players from 5 years ago.
Both my cell phones (HTC touchHD and NokiaN97) are better media players.
Next week I will get delivery also of an HTC Hero , and then I'll be able to say that all three of my phones are better...
To make a log story short: this thing sucks
Advantage of a regular player is that you can drain it and still make calls with your cellphone
And what I think is the biggest bonus: it can't be used to track you 24/7 everywhere you go.
Shouldn't the difference between audio and video battery life be a bit bigger?
You can guarantee that it if it says Archos on it, that it will sucks ass. I don't even bother reading the reviews. They never test it long enough to find out that it has 10,000,000 bugs and glitches. This company is complete crap. How are they still in business? And who ever said they have great sound quality is on crack. That is one of the major complaints with every piece of crap they shove out the door. Ridiculously low volume and always a horrible hissing noise in the background that only becomes more noticeable with better headphones. If you want sound quality go look at a Zune or Ipod.... they both do circles around anything this crap company makes.
Wait, are you saying Ipods have good sound quality?
Compared to an Archos? Hell yes I am. A 1950's transistor radio has been sound quality than an Archos. I wish people would stop praising this company based on PROMISES and after using them for 3 hours. I was a long time fan, but the past 3 generations have all slide downhill -- further each time. My Archos 5 is a complete piece of crap. The software is just so buggy that it makes using it painful. You know it is going to crash within each hour at LEAST once -- sometimes as much as 5 times. I could go on and on, but seriously, do your self a favor -- just avoid this company and just go to Apple or Microsoft. I have owned all three and the Zune and Apple are superior to this garbage in so many ways. I am a Zune fan, but as much as I don't care for the ipods, I would pay a $1,000 for one before I spent $50 on an Archos again.
I never heard anything about a hiss, I think even the most bribed reviewer would mention a hiss right? If not they should be put in jail IMO.
Hiss is completely unacceptable this day and age.
But I'd like another person mention a hiss, not here though because you'd just get a pal or a new account, sorry for being cynical but it seems so incredible.
Here is a link describing such problems
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f15/archos-605-wifi-sound-quality-256107/
Now S T F U, little boy.
@Wwhat
I actually have a 605 wifi, and I can confirm that there is a hiss. It's pretty faint, at least with a pair of Sennheiser CX300s, but it's definitely there. Heres a headfi link from 2007 (http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f15/archos-605-owners-hows-sq-271564/) and another one from iaudiophile from 2008 (http://iaudiophile.net/forums/showthread.php?t=22087). Both are about the 605s, can't really find too much about anything newer. (And don't worry, I'm not a pal/alt login of missionsparta or anything, just pointing out the hiss.)
Well you convinced me, and it's outrageous, if there's one thing an audio device should NOT have nowadays is a hiss, there's no need for that unless it's an AM receiver or something.
There's a 3 vision already, the 3 vision has a higher res screen, so the 2 vision is the 'budget 3 vision' AKA the 'touchscreen 2'.
3 vision: 3" 400 x 240 pixels
2 vision: 2.0" 220 x 176 pixels
The 3 vision supports: MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, FLAC and MPEG 1/2/4, WMV, FLV, AVI, RM, RMVB
But the 2 only MP3, WMA, WAV, TXT, JPG, LRC
And the 2 vision also seems to have much less choice, mp3, wma, wav, jpg
Give it up Charbax... we know it is you.
Who's' charbax and is it bad to be thought of as him? A quick search seems he's posting about archos on techvidoblog, so I guess he's some archos fan?
I though the visitors of engadget knew by now I'm not any archos guy, in hundreds of posts I never mentioned archos I think.
But as a joke I get it, I sound too much like an archos enthusiast, but I'm not because I understand the damn things have a hiss, that's insane and unacceptable.
It's weird how many famous brands have some issues that should disqualify them but their marketing seems to be able to stay ahead of dismissal, and I don't get why they don't simply fix obvious flaws but instead spend time ignoring them and hiding them, I mean a hiss is simply correctable by moving to another opamp which probably is available for the same price too, and so-so audio quality can also be improved by just paying 20 cents more on a better chip, there's whole threads on many forums about audio devices where you unsolder the opamp and replace it with a better one, why don't the damn manufcturers do that from the outset already and leave the being cheap to the no-brand devices.
...What made them think they could sell this again?
*Expandability: Micro-SD card slot
*native USB mass storage mode
*radio
*audio recorder / radio recorder
About the only positives I could mention after having a look at this matte-challenged gloss unit. Codec support is primitive. AVI being mentioned is not telling us much about what it actually supports, codec and bit-rate and resolution-wise.
Non-removable battery?
Do Not Buy ARCHOS
I have Archos 605. Plays video and MP3 wonderfully.
My problem is with browser. I can watch youtube, yes. 10 million 3 min videos.
But I cannot watch NBC.com, CBS.com ABC.com, Fox.con, USA.com, TNT.com, SyFy.com, FXnetwork.com, comedycentral.com, History.com, Most other TV media providers.com, HULU, FanCast.and 100s of thousands of (Flash?) based websites.
Archos has promised to do a firmware update for more than a year, yet thousands (millions) of hours of content remain not viewable. Get off your ass Archos, give the people who gave you money the support they deserve.