Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (160 GB)

The Good:
-the best thing is Archos gives u a 1 yr Warranty no matter where you buy it from just goto the site and register yours instantly and your good to go!
-screen size and quality are great for vids and pix
-music sounds great, not low at all
-plenty of space compared to the ipod touch which does what the Archos does...and a bit less
-NO SOFTWARE NEEDED!!! u dont need archos marketplace or archos-tunes lol
-its a external HDD with a Screen and a few buttons, so u can store back up of things on here too! not just music, vids, and pics!
-the touch screen is great
-great web browser with Flash 9!($30 plug-in)

The Bad:
the ONLY bad thing is the charge TIME for the few few times, its kinda long....about 8 hrs long....
the battery does actually last about 17-18 hrs long if ur listening to music using headphones and not using the speaker, the speaker cuts some time out, movies with speakers last about 5-6 hrs maybe so that should add more time using headphones

Overview:
i love it, i dont see why many people have a problem with its battery, im not even awake 17 hrs long lol, i say buy this product!
i would just like to state i love this damn thing! its awesome, it does EVERYTHING i need it to and more, i can hook it up to the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 and watch my vids in full screen, if my headphones have a short i can use the speaker, or you can use both at the same time! it reads PDF files which is great for book reading people that know how to get books in PDF format! i have about 25 movies on here all AVI and MPEG, i also have all the plug ins available, im getting the DVR station as soon as the 2 new plug ins are released, and the helmet cam! i also have both seasons of The Boondocks, and a few of the Spiderman Series, all the Harry Potter movies and books, and much more and still over 100GB left cuz well i know what im doing :)

First, there is a major problem with the batteries on these things. It took over 12 hours to fully charge the first time, after that no amount of time charging was enough to fully charge the batteries.

Forget all the features they advertise, almost none of them are supported out of the box. You wanna play a movie? you need a $40 plugin, ya wanna go on the internet another plugin, ya wanna record anything? $100 more for the dock etc... etc...

Forget about their online store for movies, unless you are into PORN.

The interface is clunky and VERY slow, movies stopped and started, the volume was so week I had to buy amplified headphones to hear it if there was ANY kind of background noise, the hardrive failed two weeks after I started using it and their customer service department at first refused to honor the warrantee, was rude, inept, and would tell me one thing one day then something else the next day.

If you buy one of these, my conscience is clear - I WARNED YOU.

This product sounds great and if it worked as it was supposed to, it would be great. However, the battery only lasts about 6 hours of music play and just over 2 hours of video play, just enough to watch one movie. In addition, the system seems to crash quite often needing a system reset. I returned the first one I purchased as the company told me I had a defective product, but the second one did the exact same thing with the same poor battery performance.

I asked the company to provide me with a free battery docking station to make up for the poor performance and after a long runaround; I was flatly turned down. I then asked for the $70 I had spent on the plug-ins returned and they refused; I had to dispute the charges through my credit card company.

I would highly recommend you not purchase this product until they at least fix the battery problem, but don't take the companies word for it!

This is a product that is crippled by its low volume level that cannot be increased. Don't plan to use this on a plane or really any kind of travel unless you get a headphones amplifier device... inconvenience and added price.

Oh, while I'm talking about added price, get ready for Archos to get in your pocket. Want to web browse? You have to buy the browser. Want to play certain kinds of video or audio? You have to buy the codecs... I'm not kidding. And they aren't cheap.

After a few of these prompts, I wanted to throw the thing through the wall, but I knew I'd have trouble returning it if I did. Just skip this and get the better products from Creative, Cowon, or others. You'll be glad you did.

This is an excellent product. It has some really good points with one really bad point, The PRICE. It does get expensive but in the end, if you are ready to spend it, you will surely enjoy the product.

Pros:
Video quality is excellent. Just a hint, when recording off of the DVR station, turn up the recording volume. You will not be able to hear the movie when you are in a busy place without crancking it up almost all the way.

Audio quality is great. I am part of a high school baseball team and i can play my audio tracks a few notches below the highest(in terms of sound volume) and can hear it over a bus of roundy high schoolers. And that is without noise canceling headphones. The equalizer is also a nice touch and very useful.

The OS is excellent. You can do just about anything on this player.

The touch screen is very durable, or so it looks. I have owned this player for about 2 1/2 weeks now and havent had any scratches or problems with the screen.

The DVR station works really well. The recording quality is superb and playback quality is really close to the quality you would recieve with a regualr DVR.

The internet i was really curious about. It costs an extra 30 dollars but it is actually decently fast and shows the majority of websites just as you would see them on your computer.

Also, another note regarding MOVIE playback: you can stop and pick back up where you left off. Bookmark your position and when you go back, choose the bookmark option from the menu and click resume. You can do this with 32 files so it is very useful.

Backgroud. This is minor but for the simple fact of mentioning it...you can watch a video an take a pic in the clip and use it as your background. It is a neat touch to the player and helps you personlize it.

Cons:
MONEY. This is not an inexpensive player and shouldnt be bought if you are planning to travel once every two months or so. Just go by a cheaper player with not so good video wuality and svae your money.

Durabilty:
I came back to this review to update it. The item is still great just some surability issues. Like all MP3 players, DO NOT LEAVE IN HOT CAR! I did this cause i am an idiot and ignored the warnings and it killed the HD. No biggy, Archos is taking care of it. If you buy through a company like CircuitCity, be sure to get insurance on it. Eases your mind alot thinking you have archos and circuitcity backing the product.

Battery. Though this is really not bad when you look at how good the screen is, it is really not that great. It last for about 4 hrs viedo playback. If you look to play mostyl audio, it isnt that big of a deal. The main idea here is battery conservation. Dont make the screen do more than it has to when you are listening to audio. By that i mean, do not use the backlight to see how far you are through a song. You are simply wasting batter when doing that.

JPEGs. You better have the right size JPEGS. When i first uploaded my pics to it, the device couldnt handle the size. I sized them down to the equivilant of a pic taken with a 4MP camera and it worked great.