Most helpful client reviews
122 of 132 persons found the following review helpful.
This is the tablet I’ve been waiting for!
By Eric Laffoon
First off I’m not new to Archos. I initial purchased their gen 5 device that made other personal media players look ludicrous and had wifi and a touch screen. Each new generation impressed me. Last year I purchased the primary Android tablet I ever saw, the gen 7 Archos 5 IT. It was launched in Oct 2009 with a lot of flaws, but was a compelling device. By early 2010 it had become stable and very impressive but I always wanted a larger screen. I purchased their gen 8 7 inch A70 and the 10.1 inch A101 as soon as they were available on the Archos web site. I wanted to buy on Amazon but the demand for these tablets has been so intense they have been merchandising out each shipment in hours or days.
Before I get to the good and bad let me address galore remarks here. It is essential to realize with engineering that your experience may or may not be the norm. Some humans said they have trouble with wifi. I have had this on my home system with 35 Mbps Fios and WPA2, my Clear WiMax with WEP and my Rooted Vibrant mobile AP with WPA2. It is brilliant at finding, locking and keeping signal and may find signal further than other devices. Having said that Archos lately acknowledged a problem with WPA AES they are working on with the chip set manufacturer. Also the touch screen is very sensitive, a lot of have said more so then their phone. Now for the bad…
The screen has to be the worst thing, and at that not a single soul I have showed it to has complained. Unlike my A70 which has splendid watching angles the A101 I received not only has fixed angles but it seems to favor being tipped away from me and gets bad from straight on in landscape mode. It also has a lot of glare under lights. I’m going to get an anti glare screen protector. There is also a cross hatch pattern visible when it is off and black. This is the introductory Archos product I considered exchanging, but queerly sufficient once I started using it I didn’t seem to notice. In use it is bright and sharp. Showing it to people not anyone said anything regarding observing angles or screen problems. I standard archosfans forum and I’m not convinced my looking at angle observations are universal to all A101 tablets. Ironically before updating my A70 was not as crisp as my A101 as far as lag. Keep in mind my phone is blazingly fast. The Froyo update made things quicker but galore people noted it was beneath clocked at 800 Mhz, altho performance is the same or better. I used Z4Root to temporarily root and another program to set the CPU max back to 1 GHz and it is rather smooth. Additionally Flash on the Froyo release is less than perfective but Archos declared they are waiting for their agreement with Adobe to be finalized to release their authorized Flash that is hardware optimized. If you’re not a geek that means once the legal contracts are in order rather of using the central processor for intense calculations it passes it off to the graphics processor which may handle it with less work and frees up everything else at the same time. The net result must be much nicer and smoother.
Now for the good. First off Archos is known for buggy firstborn releases that get a lot better with a few of their continued updates. Several months in with their last tablet they freed hardware graphics drivers that netted the tablet amid the very best scores of any Android device for graphics. This release has been good and must get even better. Still it helps if you are more than willing to putter around a bit, install the market hack and go to archosfans.com if you have a problem. Archos has decent support, but the community help is awesome. The new media players are excellent. Other Android gadgets are left wanting but Archos has been working on the core media player for 10 years and it shows with a wide assortment of codecs handled flawlessly. Archos likewise performs to the battery specs they list. For this tablet you may play with it all day long, browse the web and watch videos and not have to charge until late. Charging is very fast with the AC adapter.
The best part of this device is the huge screen real estate for a tablet and how responsive it is. The built in stereo speakers are astoundingly good, full and loud. The kick stand is great. What genuinely gets impressive though is what it may do extra. Yes, you may add memory with Micro SD. You may likewise play media over UPnP and SMB. Beyond that you have a full size USB host plug. Take your nice high end camera, take a great deal of pictures and plug it in to your A101 to download and see it in big screen glory, or grab a 500 GB drive and take your entire media collection with you. Get a micro HDMI cable and you may not only play movies out to your TV but your entire experience moves to the TV with the Archos getting a touch pad. Get a game control or Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, even a USB controller. You may browse the web in 720p on your huge screen from the couch or do a slide show or whatsoever for friends.
I had the A70 in my booth at a holiday show and a lady asked regarding it as I was recording sales over wifi and said she had an iPad. I asked her to give me an opinion of my A101. She was mesmerized and I handed it to her and she was amazed how light it was. It is actually 20% littler and 30% lighter as well as thinner and 16×9 rather of 4×3… even even though the iPad has a littler screen technically at 9.7 inches. She didn’t see a problem with how the screen looked, though the iPad has a nicer screen. However when she saw the connectivity choices and expandability she without delay asked where she could get one. She had the look of somebody who had expended too much cash for too a heap of limitations.
Tablets are hot items. Once you try one you will realize that you may not drag your laptop around the house but you will with a tablet. Other companies will formulate more impressive hardware lists or do one thing or another better, but the humans who have purchased a heap of of the new dream spec sheet units are also on the Archos forum and resigned to the fact that the experience Archos has means they have the more polished user experience. Additionally while some new commence up may or may not support the device and provide updates Archos has modified my gimmicks regularly for the opening months and has freed updates at over a year after launch on the last 3 generations of devices. Archos listens to clients better than one might imagine for a little French company and they recognise how to make compelling devices.
I close with this. After ditching my BlackBerry for a Galaxy S variant (Samsung Vibrant) I thought I would move away from Archos for the Galaxy Tab. While it is an impressive device it is too expensive, and I likewise heard the rounded back made it slide off things too easy. I realized I could get two Archos tablets for that price, a 7 and a 10, so I did. Last year I paid $370 each for 32 GB 5 inch tablets. This year I paid $275 and $300. Next year I suppose these tablets to be working just fine, but being a gadget whore I recognise Archos will have a new Eagle quad core tablet running Honeycomb and I will just have to buy it. My A101 will not be seeing as much love and won’t be worth selling, but might make an astounding gift to somebody who has been lusting after it. The necessary point is I won’t be paying $25-$40 a month for a $600 device on 2 year contract consumed with lust and remorse. I will plop down $250-$350 for the new one.
If you may find this in stock get it and enjoy!
37 of 38 humans found the following review helpful.
This would be a great tablet, if the screen wasn’t so awful
By Tom Digiurco
I owned an Archos 101 for a few hours before speedily returning it. For me, the device did not live up to expected values nor was it an worthy of acceptance or satisfactory product for my intended use. The caveat to this is that this type of device is intended to be employed in a assortment of ways (gaming, Internet browsing, eBook reader, standard time killer, etc.) and not every one is going to have the same user experience as me. Having said that, I intended to use this device as a comic book reader, eBook reader and web browser. For the most part, the Archos 101′s 1Ghz Hummingbird processor, 256MB of RAM, and Android 2.2 (Froyo) lived up to expectations. I thought the guts of this thing performed admirable, other than a heap of wifi issues (the 101 does not like WEP security … but then, Archos states that explicitly in the user guide – the user guide even recommends a wifi security type). Browsing the web was speedy, comics loaded speedily using my favored Android comic viewer (Comic Reader Mobi) and I had zero issues looking at YouTube videos.
HOWEVER, (and it’s an all caps HOWEVER), the watching angles of this screen are abysmal. I did my homework on the 101 before I purchased it, and knew that this was a mutual complaint. But, stating that “some observing angles are bad” is an understatement. Unless you hold the 101 in landscape mode at a very specific angle, the colors shift and, in particular, black colors appear to be what I would call “solarized”. When keeping the 101 in portrait mode, this is noticeable at ALL angles, which makes it very difficult to read anything on it (much less comics or eBooks).
I find it unfortunate that Archos chose to use a 1024×600 TFT LCD screen for this device. Everything else with regards to the 101 is excellent. It feels sturdy, even altho it weighs in at just over 1 pound, and the kickstand is a nice feature. The processor was peppy sufficient to handle it is advertised functionality and the software (including Flash) operated smoothly. (At least for me. I have an Android phone and am employed to Android’s “quirks.” Users of other operating systems may feel differently in regards to this.) But, at last it is the screen that you end up staring at when you use the 101, and on that front (pun intended) this device is a failure to me. Hopefully Archos’ gen 9 round of tablets will feature bettered screens. If they get that right, I believe that they’ll have a decent product at a reasonable price point. Unfortunately, the potential for future releases of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and 3.0 (Honeycomb) for the 101 is lost because the screen is just too difficult to look at.
As an aside, there have been numerous reviewers that have commented when it comes to the lack of Google Market and how easy it is to side load. I had zero issues installing Market and installing apps from it. There are a couple dissimilar solutions for getting Market on the 101 – one worked for me and one didn’t. If you’re attempting to install market and the initial one doesn’t work for you, don’t give up. And, be sure to read the installation instructions because it is not as straightforward as merely sideloading an .apk.
35 of 37 humans found the following review helpful.
Excellent bang for your buck!
By Thomas
***Update 12/15/10*****
After a lot of tinkering, resetting Android and more tinkering: I did pair and tether this with a bluetooth phone. Media cataloging and UPnP media streaming, while slow to connect, does work perfectly. Not sure what changed other than a lot of patience. Some items that I thought were not working just necessitated to be left alone for a bit and in the long run would go thru. However Wifi seems to only connect at G speeds when all my other widgets connect without apparent effort at N speeds. One tablet of the two still seems buggy and is locking up – I’m sure I may get it sorted out at last – I keep searching the archos fan forums and reading what others have gone thru and what fixes they recognise of and it helps a lot. With a little more work, both of these will be perfective tablets.
***Update 12/11/10***
Upon further use, I have realized that a great deal of things aeem to not be working with the latest firmware release, and in searching the forums I am reading where others have the same troubles – I still like the tablets, and hopefully these issues will be fixed in future firmware updates, but please be conscious that:
Bluetooth – So far I may pair these with bluetooth phones, nonetheless they both say not connected no matter which phone I pair them with – seems to be an issue with the tablet itself and no matter what I’ve tried, I can’t actually connect them to cell phones using bluetooth (for tethering, or using the phones GPS)
UPNP media streaming seems to be glitchy – at times it streams just fine, other times not at all. Media cataloging likewise seems glitchy – once in a while it includes and indexes video files on the micro-sdhc card and on occasion it doesn’t – they are always accessible, it just from time to time randomly seems to not pick these files up as videos and makes you browse to the sd card itself to play them. Performance seemed to improve rather a bit when I moved all apps to the internal storage as opposed to the system storage.
SO, while I still actually like the tablets, I am not rather as enthusiastic as I was in the beginning – but I am optimistic that they will release an altered firmware to address these issues and then I will rate them 5 stars again.
******Original Review***** – I love these tablets – I purchased two and have tried both out and they are fabulous. First off, you will have to install modified firmware to upgrade to Android 2.2 (Froyo) as doing this later will cause you to have to re-set everything up later. Initially I was disappointed because there was no access to the Android Marketplace and the Archos apps were buggy, crappy or borderline pornography (not cool Archos – I purchased these for kids!), but then I googled and found gapps4archos2 – make sure it’s the latest because the basi doesn’t work on Froyo – and after installing it I then had the Google Marketplace, which is actually what makes or breaks an android tablet – from there on out, it was all good – great apps, great functionality, etc. Some things are not there yet – for instance, why can’t I skype video chat on a tablet? it has a webcam, it’s not due to the tablet limitations – it is all Skype who is behind the times – come on Skype – we want video chat on android thru wifi!!!! Facebook works well, youtube does not due to the lack of included flash, I supposed. However I loaded flash 10.1 and video was choppy – so I just installed the Dolphin Browser app which is a must have browser alternate which then plays youtube videos perfectly. It plays mp3′s perfectly out of the box, and divx movies out of the box with no issues – which is a big will have to for me. I want my kids to be capable to watch divx movies on the device while in the car. Lots of little games available from the marketplace. My kids are gonna be 2 happy campers this year at Christmas! As for touchscreen calibration that numerous say they experienced, I have had none of that – it is very exact and very responsive. Likewise I have no troubles with the MicroSD reader that another reviewer complained regarding – both read my card effortlessly with no issues. I purchased these as a mobile video/entertainment solution for my kids that also works outstanding as a study helper for looking up data on the fly and this fits the bill exactly. I likewise installed the Kindle for Android app so my kids may read the classics available free from Kindle Store – and I must say, it is an splendid e-reader – very clear print! I wish I had ordered 2 more for my husband and myself. When you figure out the price of a kindle reader, a movie player, an mp3 player, a game player, plus internet and homework helper, plus email and facebook (what have I left out? seems like it does it all) then this little tablet works out to be an unbelievable value.
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