Archos 7 Review

I don’t know where to start this review because I’ve got a ton of good things to say about the Archos 7 but an equal amount of bad things. I guess I will start with the bad things.

The Archos 7 is extremely buggy plus I think I have a problem with mine. There are three brightness settings on my A7, low, medium and high. When I put the brightness on high the back light flickers between low and high constantly. I checked online and some people faced this issue when the screen was set on low brightness but I am the first to report this issue with the brightness set on high. Luckily for me I don’t have any problems when the brightness is set on low or medium, the two settings I will be using most while traveling. I read this issue could get fixed with a firmware update but so far since I got the device over a week ago there’s been two firmware updates and both haven’t solved the flickering issue.

As I mentioned earlier the device is also buggy. I haven’t used the A7 much but so far its crashed with me while watching a movie once. At times it just crashes while getting charged or while its on sleep and I need to reboot it, a quick process but nevertheless it shouldn’t do that. I had it connected to my Mac for over a day now and it was working fine until awhile ago I tried to turn it on and it wouldn’t. For some reason it wasn’t charging over USB which it should have been and the battery got completely drained. URGH! The last negative thing I have to say is that the Archos is pretty heavy. I love using my iPhone after I am done with the A7 since it makes my iphone seem tiny and ultra light. Oh and one more thing, I can’t seem to remove the battery, its like jammed or something!

Yeah there are A LOT of issues but… I still love the Archos 7! I love the screen, the battery life, the ability to just drag and drop my movie folders onto it, the way it plays ALL my files without needing to convert them, the touch screen, the browser, the web TV, web Radio, the stupid flash games, the little stand on the back of the device, the way Archos keeps improving the device with firmware upgrades and finally the fact that I can stream videos off my main server at home over wifi and watch them on my Archos from anywhere at home. When I bought the device I didn’t know I could do that but it turns out I can and easily. I just browse my home network from the Archos, find a video file, double click it and it starts playing instantly.

When I purchased the Archos 7 it was because I thought it was the best portable video player on the market but now I know it is. As of this post I am not aware of any other device on the market that has the same features and abilities as the Archos 7 and thats why I have no regrets. Final score is a 3.5 out of 5. Yeah it has a TON of issues but at the end of the day all it needs to do is play movies for a very long time without running out of battery and that it does perfectly. Of course I am hoping Archos will work out whatever bugs I have with the next firmware update.

160GB Archos 7 is for $272. [Amazon Link]
320GB Archos 7 is for $412. [Amazon Link]

By the way there is also a smaller version called the Archos 5 which sells for $280. Its the same as the Archos 7 in every way except the screen is a 5inch and the battery lasts around 5 hours. [Amazon Link]