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10 reviews
AV 500
I've invested alot of time and money on this French company Archos, enough to know their products inside and out, take a look at my Archos 504 160GB review if you ever get the chance.
Pros
100GB of Storage
Firmwire Upgrades
Fair Amount of Pre-Loaded Codecs to play; .AVI,WMP 9,
Record Off of TV Right Out of Box and Built in Microphone
Cons
Dual Menus Confusing and Annoying
Buttons are Too Small
Weight and Bulkyness
Screen Can/Might Give Way If Dropped Too Much/Hard
Ok, lots to talk about, and only 2900 characters or less to explain, here goes.
I bought the AV400, but it broke on me and was sent this as a replacment due to the 400 stopped production. Lots I like and hate.
Size
It's big, it's bulky, it's thick. It has a hard time fitting into a pants pocket, but not a inside coat pocket. It gets tring hold the damn thing all the time due to no place to put it. It's not meant to be an iPod, it's a Moblie Video Recorder, key word there VIDEO. It's meant to play videos and record video. With it's 4.3 inch screen it's big enough, if your looking for large screens, look into the 7" on the Archos AV700.
Memory
It's a 100GB(Roughly 93GB after formatting) and it's great for the person that has or needs an large amount of MOBILE storage. This thing is awesome. Everyone else on the market in not only the PMP business, but the whole Moble Audio and MP3 Players, ect are playing catch up with Archos. I have an almost endless list of Discographies from A to Z and it takes about three and half minutes to scroll down my whole music collection, and I still have space left for more! Only drawback is the formats this supports, MP3,WMA,WAV, and thats it. That means NO Flac, NO Loseloss, NO Ogg, Ya pretty much a small limited audio format selection.
Buttons
I could go off about how Archos really screwed up in this department. I mean Wow. Ok, First you have the upper right with the Up,Down,Left,Right buttons. ALong with two in the corners and the middle square buttons. Simple and easy layout, quite useful, only for the fact that their smaller than hell. Sometimes they won't respond, get stuck, ect.
Then you have some buttons on the button that control the menu setups and opitions along with the Stop button. They as well don't work so well due to getting stuck and being too small. At first you had to physically press on them to make them work, now all I have to do is slide my finger without applying any pressure what so ever and they work like an iPod wheel.
Archos recieve lots of hate mail about the button size and quickly fixed that in their 4 Series (404,504,and 604) with HUGE buttons on the right side.
Battery
Ok, Recharable sounds all good, but it has it's ups and downs.
1. You have to drain the whole battery every time before recharing. Recharable doesn't always mean it will rechrage back to 100%. These batteries have "Recharge Memory", if you have say 75% battery left and hook up to recharge will remember that, and then say you drain the battery, it wil go to 75% and not 100%. About once a year you will have to buy a replacement battery for $29.99 Music will last about a day or maybe two if your lucky, and video will last about 8 hours to maybe 12 before having to recharge.
Note* If you go into the opitions and set the Screen brightness to 1 or 2 you will get longer battery life.
Dual Menus
I don't understand why. Why have two menus? Just simply put all of the 2ns menu opitions into 1 folder and have 1 menuRead full review...
Great player, user friendly
I have had the player in use for about a month now. It is easy to operate, loading music had some issues on a PC with Windows media player 8 but my winmp10 loaded in a snap. Loading DVD's onto the player was even easier. Just plug in to the player and hit record. The screen clarity is excellent The player I bought came with the cables, dock, protective case, remote, headphones and manual. I am very pleased with the item. I have only found two areas that can be improved. The player (even with headphones) does not have very high volume and this unit would be complete if it had a built in radio feature.Read full review...
"The absolute, very best PVP/PMP on the market.
OK, first thing I want to point out is that I purchased my AV500 online for $395.95, no shipping or tax. Now that's out of the way, where do I begin?
I love this gadget. It almost does everything. My primary reason for buying is the fact that I can backup my DVD's on the unit, w/o using a computer. When I was looking to upgrade from my Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 30 GB, I was looking at the Creative Vision M (30gb) and the Cowon A2 (30gb). I was that close to buying the Creative Vision M (never once considered the Ipod Video) until I happened upon the AV500 in Frys and compared all the features. Except for the price tag, the AV500 eclipsed the Vision M in all areas imo. I initially held off buying the av500 because of the steep price, but when I finally found it online for under $400.00, I was all over it.
I can honestly say that I am yet to experience any of the flaws that some reviewers have posted. My unit has never frozen, not once. The fact that I now don’t have to lug around my huge DVD case and the fact that I can play my movies on a regular TV at work are huge pluses in my book. This little gadget in the one to have. It’s funny how I used to be in awe of one of my fellow co workers RCA Lyra and the videos he had on board. Not anymore, that’s for sure. This is a great product and one that I’m glad I purchased. I highly recommend this product, Monkboon….
+’s:
(1) 100GB of memory (More that any computer in our house)
(2) Can backup/rip personal DVD's w/o the use of a computer. (My primary reason for the purchase. (Now I don't have to lug around DVD's and cases everywhere.)
(3) Can be used as a DVR to record your favorite TV shows from your Cable box, VCR or basically anything you can think of.
(4) Complete ease of use.
(5) Has a picture viewer.(Holds like a trillion pictures.)
(6) Has a voice recorder. (I'll never use it, but it's there if I need one.)
(7) Can pretty much record any type of video from many different formats. (I recorded my kids playing XBOX games just to fool around with the video settings)
(8) Replaces your current MP3 player. I just transferred 5714 songs and it's barely using 8 gigs.
(9) Easy to transfer files and navigate.
(10) Screen is larger than most video players of this caliber.
(11) Can view movies from the unit on your Television.
(12) Can create and edit play lists on the fly.
(13) Exceptional battery life for this type of device.
-‘s:
(1) Not really a -, but something that would have been nice is if there were a FM tuner.
(2) Missing a hole for the AC adapter when the unit is in the closed case. (nit picky)
(3) One must connect the unit to the computer to access the “real” user manual.
(4) Terrible speaker, you will need headphones (I have BOSE) unless using quality external speakers.
(5) Had issues syncing with WMP10 and play lists. Had to use Creative Media Player to transfer 5500 songs from my computer. The WMP10 issue is more than likely my inability to do anything worthwhile with Windows Media. So again, this may not be a con.
(6) Some movies/DVD’s will not play on the unit or television.
As I spend more time with my unit, I’ll update my review whether it be +’s or –‘s. So far, I’m extremely happy with my purchase.Read full review...
Haven't put it down.
Don't buy the 30gig! Get this one! I spent an extra $150 for 70gig.... Well worth the extra cheese. This unit is impressive and very convienent. Sound and video playback is awesome! It's very easy to synch to WIndows Media player to download all your files. This can also be used as a hard drive. The Archos DVR isn't for everyone because it FRAGILE. The buttons are confusing at first and are hard to see at night (not back lit). Another drawback is that you can not browse pics and listen to music at the same time. Make sure you have neat and organized files before synch. If you don't, it will be hard and confusing to locate them on the device.
I was at the DMV yesterday watching a movie, that alone made this worth every cent.Read full review...
Superior Build Quality at a great bargain
Simply amazing. this device packs a ton of features into a very sleek and compact form factor. Brushed metal, crisp LCD screen, built in MIC and Speaker, easy an intuitive navigation, DVR functinality. Its pretty amazing when you look at this device to imagine the were able to fit a hard drive AND the LCD in there and still have room for a battery with such long life. Very happy with it overall.Read full review...
The best gizmo in 10years!
This thing dose it all. If you like TV This will be a cherished wonder. This is an old model but the best working one of the whole Archos line. I have bought the whole line up of Archos devices.The sound is exactly in sync with the picture.The newer ones are not and the picture on the newer ones is dull. All the extras are included in the box, no expensive extras to buy. The picture is the brightest of all the archos as well as resolution. Very durable and made for daily use.Easy as pie to operate. It also makes live sound recordings ,stores picturs and everything that your computer can store.It is seen by your computer as an external storage device,which makes the possibilities endless. I have bought many of these AV500 models just for different applacitions. Just don't drop it! It is a very complicated thing with a masive hard drive in it. The hard drive ,of course,,can be damaged by extreame shock. These used but not abused AV500s can be found on ebay for about 200.00. They are wonderful,, The greatest device on earth,,The best model built by archos!!!So glad you asked me! ChrisRead full review...
Awesome Gadget
I can't say enough about this great gadget. Ive owned it for about 4 months now and I'm still impressed by it everytime I watch a movie on it. The screen is very nice, even in direct light. All the options are great on this thing. This blows away any type of ipod video player, there's really no comparison. Well worth the money in my opinion. Only thing that I wish Archos would add is a TV tuner for this, I think that would be awesome, but maybe I'm asking for too much 8)Read full review...
It goes everywhere I Go!
Very good product, large storage hard drive is excellent. Easy to use controls. Easy to find all files and plays most popular file formats. Thanks
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what i think of the Archos AV500 100GB PMP
i cannot change or remove things on it with windows XP.
it works better with windows 7.
it stops communicating with PC when copying to it for more than 15-20 minutes.
the archos AV500E is much better, even though it's a 30 GB drive.Read full review...