Curious about how well the new
Archos 3 Vision portable media player stacks up to its bulkier, more voluminous predecessors? Perhaps the video review after the break courtesy of
Archos Fans forum user roylovelock will satiate your curiosity -- it will, at least, make you a bit queasy thanks to the handheld camerawork. Placed next to an
Archos 5 the thing looks positively lilliputian, but its 3-inch touchscreen seems more than adequate and, while 8GB of storage may not be much, microSDHC expansion offsets that. The review praises the device's functionality, including integrated FM receiving and broadcasting as well as its seemingly solid hardware design and upwards of five hours of video battery life. Not so highly regarded is the non-responsive UI, with a curious on-screen thumbwheel that looks highly unintuitive -- at least when used by this particular thumb. The video below is informative but a bit painful to watch, so feel free to skip straight to roylovelock's written impressions on the other end of that read link, which are rather more easy to take in on a Monday morning.
[Via
Archos Fans]
posted Aug 31st 2009 10:41AM
Painful to watch? At least the guy's talking which is much better than those amateur device reviews done by a mute guy doing nothing more than fiddling through menus for 5 minutes.
don't see this really making a dent in what Apple has going on, not even coming close to the Zune HD. I'm more interested in what they're going to do with Android come september 15th.
The Archos 3 Vision's main selling point is its price. $99 MSRP for 8GB model, should get below $80 at the cheapest resellers like Amazon, Best Buy, WalMart and other such sites. Compared to $199 ipod touch (8GB) and $219 zune hd (16GB), some consumers should find there being something valuable in this one.
Uh, sorry but the A3 isn't even in the same class as either the Zune nor Ipod. Its more in line with RCA, Ematic and Phillips. The A3 shouldn't even be compared.
At least all Archos users not so dependable on iTunes like iPhone and iPod users. And they are way cheaper then iPods. Do made in same Chine but some how quality much stronger. I have both iPhone and Archos. Iphone lately using just for calls, stock and emails - the rest is just crap and temporary fun. Archos using from 10AM-10PM and yes, no problem for 3 years already. Compare to iPhone? Had to change 2 times already.
RCA, Ematic and Philips are 1.5" screens, so no, Archos 3 Vision with a 3" touchscreen cannot be compared to those. Archos 2 Vision can be compared to those if you want.
The main competition in 3" touchscreen Mp3 players are from apple, samsung, cowon, samsung and microsoft.
Archos 3 Vision is cheaper than half the price of those at the same capacity.
If screen size is your only reason for comparison then you have issues. The software makes the hardware. Archos can't do software that even comes close to Apple, Zune nor even COWON. Yeah its cheaper, I'll give you that. In the computer world though cheaper doesn't mean better it just means cheaper. Either cheaply made or cheaply designed. Archos is guilty of both.
Also : Archoslounge review
http://translate.google.fr/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.archoslounge.net%2FTest-Archos-3-l-audio-et-video%2C8995.html&sl=fr&tl=en&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8
Argh. Hard to get a sense of proportions when it looks long and skinny when held in one direction and short and fat in another direction. Anyone else having this problem?
And yes, I'm aware of the "that's what she said" jokes that I've just invited...
Yup roylovelock encoded in some wrong aspect ratio a bit it seems, perhaps he can re-upload it in a compatible aspect ratio..
I wish Archos would get back to just making PMP's - instead of dicking around with this whole netbook thing they've been into lately.
Completely argee. They also need to realize that they can't make OS' either, they need better customer service and they need to keep their grubby paws out of peoples pockets, with all of their nickle and dime'ing their customers.
This is a PMP, cheap low resolution small screen one.
When Archos makes netbooks it's because they can bring something new and special to the market. Such as the Archos 10 Ubuntu, the worlds first Ubuntu netbook with 500GB hard drive and 2GB ram for about the same price as a Windows XP netbook with 3x less storage and 2x less RAM. Or for the Archos 9 Tablet, the worlds probably best tablet netbook device at probably half the rumored price of Apple Tablet.
I think Archos should do cheaper ($100-$200) and better laptops (15-20 hours battery, instant on, sunlight readable), based on ARM processors, Android and Chrome OS as soon as they can.
Lol, Charbax... Archos' own biggest walking advert...
This is a PMP. The other things you referred to and I referred to are not PMP's. Archos used to make half decent PMP's and PMP's only. They were usually ahead of the curve in terms of feature set - although typically the firmware always sucked and you had to wait for several iterations of this before Archos finally got it right. (Which they usually never did in the end anyway).
Still, it terms of feature set it was still often worth it to own a higher end Archos PMP regardless of this.
The netbook market is much harder for them to clearly define themselves. It's already badly overcrowded with 'samey' specification hardware and the competition in this market is likely to be fierce.
In any case there's no point comparing any Archos tablet with an Apple tablet, if for no other reason than the Archos tablet isn't an Apple tablet. The legendary Apple tablet, if it ever happens, is pretty likely to be in a device category of its own, and simply for the fact of it being an Apple tablet, it will be difficult to find anything else to compare it to.
The Archos tablet on the other hand, is just another tablet - and not the best possible tablet PC choice available if reports are to be believed.
I don't want to get into a long debate with Charbax, as he probably thinks the guys at Archos could walk on water, but if Archos went back to exclusively doing PMP's (which is what they're good at), it would be interesting to see what they could come up with.
Lol, I forgot just how mental Charbax was for Archos products. This guy takes obsession to entirely new levels. I hope he has his life savings invested in them or something, as this is the only way any human being could be so crazy about a company. Charbax makes even the most ardent of Apple fans look totally lame.
One other thing will say - I would hate for Archos to go down as a company, since they always were good innovators, but I will mirror what everyone else says in that they probably have the crappiest customer service in all of history.
Charbax may not have encountered this, but most of Archos's customers (both past and present) almost certainly have.
Nothing special. Archos had the chance to beat Apple with this but FAILED, again. Ipod killer as said on the archosfans website? LOL not even close, heck probably gave Apple more reason to be the number one mp3 player. Not that I am for Ipod. Creative Zii is where I am leaning towards. Yeah! Go open source! This thing couldn't even beat Microcrap. This and their poor service is going to kill them. I will be there dancing on there grave; doing my little kooky dance.
Creative Zii is $399 for about the same as this device. So that's about 5x more expensive.
This beats ipod touch and zune hd on price. And price is a more and more important factor in the decisions of consumers when they buy such small 3" touchscreen basic Mp3 player devices.
This is going to sell for $80 (cheapest street price)!!! Consider that! $80 for a 3" touchscreen Mp3 player with 8GB or a bit more for a 16GB version. With video, photo support and even a few extra goodies like built-in FM transmitter (to listen in the car without cable), voice-recorder (good for recording voice notes when you get ideas). And this one is USB mass storage so no itunes or Windows media player synchronizing is needed, just copy and paste your audio files. Ogg Theora, Flac is supported as well!
If you absolutely want WiFi, Applications, HD video playback on HDTV using HDMI, then Archos will have the Android devices with 3x larger 4.8" screen, with 3x larger 800x480 and 720p output resolution for a bit more expensive prices.
@Charbax
Did you really just compare a bare bones (glitchy) pmp to a zii egg, a high end mid with crazy specs and 32gb of memory? You're a fool.
The Zii egg is a developer model and won't be sold to "the general public". Its $399.99 price point isn't for the device its for the SDK, the device is free to developers. The starting price point is $199 for the zero GB built in model and goes up to 32gb ($399.99) model. It is open source so it wont need special sync'ing software. The stem cell based processor (can become any type of processor instead of limited to specific processors for certain things. eg music= sound processor) which can do any encoding/ decoding of any format as long as their is someone out there who will write the open source codec for the processor. Even if the A3 could do all the popular formats it'll charge you $19.99 per codec. This raises the $80 price point you suggest to well over $399.99 if you want it to do all of the things it advertises to do. They did this with the A5 they will do it again with the A3. Please get your facts straight before posting. Also you can go troll your own web site. Please do not troll your brain washed, Archos is God feelings, on Engadget. We all know you work for them.
Brdystyls, perhaps you should get your facts straight.
You want to compare this $80 Archos device to a $399 Creative Zii device. You're welcome.
Then just don't deny that the Creative Zii costs 5x more than this.
Also, for a mass market consumer who doesn't really need WiFi, Applications but just wants Mp3 player and basic PMP features, if you put the Archos 3 Vision and the Creative Zii on the table in front of that consumer, good luck trying to argue that the Creative Zii is worth paying 5 times more money for.
The average consumer who ONLY wants Mp3 and basic PMP features will not really see the difference.
I understand Android is COOL and AWESOME and all that. Archos does Android devices as well, which I would argue are much better value than the Creative Zii (3x better screen, 10x better storage, cheaper price), those Android devices are just not sold for at $80 at this point.
I am not comparing such a crappy device to the Zii. You are. You said it your self this has Android on it and the A3 doesn't. Can't compare the two. But if I am going to spend my money on another pmp it isn't going to be the A3, for one it isn't a pmp. It is a mp3 player as much as the Ematic, Phillips and RCA. This will never even come close to being comared to even the Ipod classic let alone the Zii.
Secondly you can't read, obviously. The $399.99 is for the developer model and the 32gb model.
The MASS market being people who buy Apple wants those extra features. The average joe might not want those feature but the MASS market for this kind of device; wants more features out of the box. Not tacked on for $20 a feature. Yeah tell the customer you sitting with that to get A3 to do anything you must purchase codecs to play music or movies in good quality to make the screen even worth the paper the idea was written on. If you want the thing to charge under 10hours (yes the A5 takes 10hours to charge via the usb your are given) you have to buy a separate $50 minimum dock. You want the GPS feature you originally bought this device for thats another $160 dock. You want to be able to record TV, well you need yet another dock this one is going to cost you another $100. So yes it's cheaper but to get it to do half the things it advertises you will be shelling out well over the $399 for the Zii.
You bring up the Creative Zii, thus you compare Archos 3 Vision with it.
Brdystyls. you seriously need to get your facts straight.
Archos 3 Vision has all codecs included for free.
Archos 5 has a codec pack h264/aac/mpeg2/ac3/720pDivX/720pWMV for $30 all codecs included. GPS Dock for Archos was available for $60 not $160.
Archos charges on USB charging just as fast as any other consumer electronics product that uses USB to charge. The fact simply is that a wall charger charges faster than USB, especially computers that output lower power on USB.
You bring up the Creative Zii, thus you compare Archos 3 Vision with it.
I brought it up yes but I didn't compare it. Two very different things. I just said I buy this over the A3. With no comparison intended.
Archos 3 Vision has all codecs included for free.
Except for AAC and DRM. Thats not ALL.
Archos 5 has a codec pack h264/aac/mpeg2/ac3/720pDivX/720pWMV for $30 all codecs included. GPS Dock for Archos was available for $60 not $160.
Still have to pay more your point being. Secondly WAS is the key word here. Its $130 at radio shack.
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3225115&CAWELAID=215600026
Archos charges on USB charging just as fast as any other consumer electronics product that uses USB to charge. The fact simply is that a wall charger charges faster than USB, especially computers that output lower power on USB.
Uh the zune and the ipod can fully charge under 2 hours via usb and thats with a weeks worth of listening to music.
I chose Archos in the past because of the features of their products (big screen, lots of codecs). I'm afraid this one seems like nothing special.
In the past Apple has been accused of milking their fans with updated versions of mediocre equipment that their fanboys would buy enough of to keep them in business.
Cowon and Archos' latest products seem to fall in that same category.
Let's see some innovation.
Archos Android A5 series will be shown on 15th September and provide a different type of innovation. The Archos 3 Vision (8GB) is innovation because you can find it starting now at less than $100 in stores, towards $80 at the cheapest stores. And the Archos 2 Vision (8GB) is innovation as well cause it's less than $60 towards $45 in the cheapest stores.
Archos innovates both on features in their high end Android products coming out, and in price for this Vision line of cheap basic Mp3 player and basic PMP type of products.
For people who don't need WiFi, Applications, HD video playback, then this product is good for them, cause it saves them half of their money compared to similar form factor products by apple, microsoft, samsung and sony.
hummm
I want one! The shakey-cam I mean. They're THE standard for photographing UFO's.
Um, Tim:
"...bulkier, more voluminous" is, um, repetitively redundant...
Charbax.... GO THE F*CK AWAY. We know you have all your life savings in the stock for the lemon company known as Archos. Why do you feel the need to defend this crap, when everyone know that all this company does is pump glitchy crap out the door as quick as it can and then leave the consumer high and dry. For crying out loud; you have made 20 of the first 25 posts on this garbage product.
For everyone else... DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM THIS COMPANY. You will regret the hell out of it.
Seriously Charbax listen to this guy. Leave no one cares for your half of cent.
I agree completely go troll somewhere else. Know one wants you here touting about a crap product from a crap company.
Anyone if you think Apple is bad go try Archos. You will think Apple is actually a good company compared to Archos. Take your money and run elsewhere, far away from Archos and Charbax.
All my posts are constructive and informative.
I think it's pretty obvious, everyone can see who's the anonymous troll.
That would be you I have a pic you don't. You troll your own web site. And if some one expresses an opinion against Archos you ban them from the web site. Seriously go away. You can tout about Archos on your own site. leave us alone here.
I always post under my same username on the whole web.
You two are one of very few banned users of the archosfans.com forum, not because you constructively critisize Archos, but because you constantly troll the forum with stupid, pointless and meaningless trash talk.
You setup accounts under other anonymous usernames and you are still trolling in the archosfans forum, so why are you complaining?
WOW. LOL. WOW.
Charbax seriously. No one cares what you say. Everyone knows who you are and how freakin' mental you are. Go away. No one likes you. And you seem to have serious problems with that. Please go seek a shrink. The Internet nor Archos will help you. You need professional help. Archos isn't God. I will repeat this ARCHOS IS NOT GOD. Now go tout you BS somewhere else.
If you add $10 to the price you can get a Latte Comm Expresso pmp with double the memory and better features and screen, no thank you Archos.
Archos 3 Vision (8GB) will be $80 on Amazon, the Expresso machine you are talking about is $140. So not exactly just a $10 difference, more like a $60 difference, or nearly double the price.
$80 or $5; when you are dealing with Archos it does not matter -- you are just throwing your money away. They could make this thing as cheap as they want, and it is not worth the aggrivation and time you will spend trying to get it repaired, only to just finally decide that the unit s are actually just that garbage. You have a pole on your own website about the Archos 5 satisfation, and the results are disgusting. If Apple posted that bad of statisfation numbers, you would be parading those numbers around this site. How come you don't talk about that now? Archos is a horrible, horrible company that steals your money and runs.
I give you a +100 point for that one.
missionsparta and Brdystylz probably work for competitors. Since they spend all their time for the past 2-3 years doing nothing else on the Internet than trash talking Archos products, setting up fake accounts on forums to vote multiple times on forum polls and to make it sound like more people are having their opinion.
@Charbax
Maybe you need to shop on more sites than amazon, I've see it as low as 100 bucks, so revise my $10 more to $20 more ,but the point still stands this thing is pretty low quality for asking price. Even in the demo video the UI is sticky,slow and no responsive.
What would temp someone to buy the A3? Seriously any number of asian pmps and mp3 players are more feature rich (and have better apparent quality) for similar money. What is the standout feature that besides it being from archos that you like?
Also it has a screen lock that doesn't actually lock the screen. It locks the UI.
No AAC nor DRM codec. Probably have to buy that separately.
No bookmark feature.
No SD expansion slot.
TV out cable NOT included, have to buy separate, more than likely $20 a pop. Add that to the total price.
The A5 can't read the A3 through the USB host (non)function.
No playlist
No search mode
Poor battery life.
This is quoted by your own Admin.
If you want to compare pricing of devices, a fair way to do that is to compare the price at the same store, Amazon usually has good prices that are usually lower than manufacturers suggested retail prices. Proof, your espresso machine is $40 cheaper than the $199 MSRP pricing.
Archos has $99 MSRP and your suggested espresso machine has $199 MSRP. Double the price.
As for the list of supposed bad points by Brdystyls, ipod touch and zune hd have none of these features. So why should a 2x to 3x cheaper Archos device have all these features included to be regarded as a good value product?
Manual song Bookmark and playlist management as well as the screen lock feature are firmware fixable things if crucial. Even if they don't come in a firmware, bookmarking songs is only a feature the minority of users absolutely wants. Resuming last played song/video works fine. Plalist management on the device is also only a feature that a minority of users need, most users shuffle or play all songs from an album folder. 14 hour battery life is not poor. AAC/DRM are not for sale separately.
Yeah we all know how well they make firmware. Let alone actually fix things. They usually make it worse.
The zune and ipod even the classic of both have always had tv out. I have never had any problems with them not playing any of my music. The A5 doesnt even see half my music unless I browse via harddrive. Then it wont play half my music because you need the codec pack to play it. Converting several terabytes of music so the A5 can play sucks. It takes weeks to get it to a codec that it can play. They both always had playlists whether you make them yourself (which archos only supports one format of this) or you can make it on the player. The battery on both the zune and ipod can last me a week on music. The A5 and more than likely the A3 only last me 10hours. Not the touted 20 hours on their web site. The screen lock actually lock the screen out of the box. Archos releases buggy firmware and like with the A5 never fixes it biggest most loathed problems. They both have a search mode. Do you really think Microsoft or Apple would still be selling these if they had problems like Archos 5 60GB where the battery BENDS the board enough to snap the headphone jack? I dont think so. They would have every john and sally riding their butts until they fix it. Archos just ignored this device and its problems. Don't worry they will replace it. After they keep it at tech support for a month.
ipod and zune obviously probably require you to pay for the TV out cable as well.
Good luck having DRM on your $399 Creative Zii.
FM Transmitter to listen in the car without cable is much more mass market friendly than a song Bookmark function. People enjoy resuming at position of last played song well enough.
Archos 5 has a huge high resolution screen. So if you keep turning the screen on to select other tracks, obviously that the music battery life will be lower. Archos 3 Vision has 3x smaller and 3x lower resolution screen, so obviously the battery life for music can be longer. 14 hours is more than enough for a weeks use for most consumers. Listening to music more than 2 hours per day is not healthy. Most consumers sit by their computer once a day, remembering to connect your Archos to charge on USB is easy thing to do, cause users may as well transfer some new podcast files or downloaded songs to it as well.
Wow! an archos product that does not reboot or freeze for 5 minutes, they made huge improvement compared to my Archos 5. Yeah, i know that i'm stupid but they won't catch me twice, Archos have the worst custumer service in the world and the worst product support also. Accessories for the 5 and 7 that were supposed to be available in summer 2008 arrived in the first half of 2009 and they don't work as they are supposed to. GPS software is crashing when you go in the menu (every single time) , PVR dock does not record half of the show you want, 3 time out of 5 the Archos 5 does not charge, wich is frustrating after a 4 hour of waiting. I sold my iPod touch for the 5 and i deeply regret. I hate iTune, but at least the player work. Now if the Zune HD is as good as it look, this archos will go to the garbage, i wont sell it, i really want to see it in the trash can with a broken screen, damn pos.
Charbax.. you questioo my sanity? Need I remind us all of who we are dealing with when we mentino our name?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML5RW7QJdFs
You may be the biggest quack out there. This video says it all, about your mental stability and destroys any crediblity you have in terms of sanity.
LOL nice one. This guy is such a douche!
I'd like to see you in a video do anything that is artistic, funny, a dance or anything. You won't do it probably cause you are too fat, ugly and unfunny to want to be filmed, ever.
Yeah keep showing us your a idiotic douche.
Fat? I work out 6 days a week, little man. You can question anything you want about me. But do not question my physicalability compared to yours. We have seen you. Out of shape??? Jesus... it looks like you have been hawking down hoo-hoo's for weeks on end. You don't look like you could bench press 25 lbs with that bird chest. Everythign on you is a twig, except for the beer guy you are hiding under the oversized clothes. Just go away.. you are a mental case.