iPod Killer
Written: Jun 17 '03 (Updated Jun 17 '03)
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Pros: Mac/PC, hi-capacity, lo-price, no software required, no copy protection, recording feature, open-source OS
Cons: A little bulkier than the iPod
The Bottom Line: A little bulky, but excellent battery life and many more features than the competition: Mac/PC, no software required, no copy protection, recording feature... a winner!
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| Andyman's Full Review: Archos Jukebox Recorder 20GB MP3 Player |
Let me run down the long list of praises, offer some criticisms, and briefly include an iPod comparison.
For just over $200, you're not going to find a better feature set than this device. Highlights:
Every unit is Mac and PC compatible: Maybe I have this wrong, but it appears to me that if you want an iPod, you have to choose Mac or PC. You can't have both. Most other players, such as the Creative line, have no Mac support at all.
No drivers or other software required: Just plug it into the USB and it appears as an external hard-drive. That's it. Use the MP3 player of your choosing, you don't have to use any one program in particular. Manage files the way you want to. You don't have to do it IN your MP3 player program, or with any other proprietary software. I really enjoy this kind of freedom.
Hard drive capability: Use it to back up or transport essential files of any kind, not just MP3s. Toss out your Zip disks forever.
No copy-protection: Apple has implemented a controversial "feature" which prevents you from synching your iPod to multiple computers. This often means you can't synch it up with work AND home AND your girlfriend's house, or take it over to your friend's house and suck down his music collection, or give him your music. Some might think this is evil, but you can plug the Archos into as many computers as you like, and upload/download music to/from any of them as often as you want. No intrusive copy-protection scheme of any kind. Yipee!
USB 2.0: I just put a USB 2.0 card in my PC, and hoo-boy transfers are quick. An hour of music comes off or goes in in just a few seconds. Not everyone will enjoy the USB 2.0 benefit, but pretty much any modern computer has USB 1, and the Archos is backward-compatible. This means super-easy connectivity to most all computers, and super-fast connectivity if you invest $20-$50 in a USB 2.0 card.
Firewire is nice, by contast, and fairly ubiquitous in the Mac world, but hard to find on most PCs. Again, the Archos is just so much more flexible across platforms than any of the iPods. I am confident that I can hook up to 99% of the computers I will encounter, and be able to fully exchange all my music with them. Can any iPod model make the same claim?
Recording: with a built-in mic and line-in, the Archos enables you to make quick and easy MP3s from pretty much any audio source. Use it as a voice recorder. Us it to digitize your LPs. Creative and Apple are playing catchup in this regard.It records in VBR, at up to 192kbps in 44.1kHz Stereo. It will also record at much lower quality, and much higher compression. I've used it as low as VBR 80kbps for recording voice. An hour of audio at that rate comes out to about 30MB. Not bad.
Capacity: 20 gigs is more than I know what to do with at this point. It's always difficult to say how much music you can fit into a certain storage capacity, since it varies so much on the quality of MP3 compression you use. But let's just say that 20 gigs is... a lot. Some have offered the ballpark figure of 300 albums. I think that's easily true. I've put every single MP3 I've been able to gather in 3 years of P2P, plus a few dozen albums I've ripped, and only come to 11MB so far. I'm sure I'll run out of room eventually, but 20GB is a lot to carry around.
Size: This is where I have to take my hat off to the iPod. It's definitely smaller and lighter. The Archos is more of a "pants pocket" device, and the iPod is more of a "shirt pocket" device. Take a bow, Apple, the iPod is truly the sleekest in the land. However, the Archos is still small enough to take with me everywhere I go. And I do.
Battery Life: What you get in exchange for the larger size is a LOT of battery life. This unit, when fully charged, lasts me about 5-6 hours of playtime. It uses 4 AA rechargeables. I use it at least an hour a day, and generally just plug it in once every few days. It's never actually run out on me, so it's hard for me to judge the total battery life. I consider this a good sign :)
Operating System: Archos made an interesting decision when they designed their platform. They made it open-firmware, which means that people could write their own operating systems for these devices, changing the way the menus work, adding features, etc. One such community of programmers has designed a truly superior operating system called Rockbox, and I loaded it up almost immediately. It makes better use of the screen real estate, it adds playlist functionality and additional features such as a sleep-timer and volume-jump guard. It makes the Archos better in a million ways. The feature comparison is too long for me to get into, but you can read about it here:
http://rockbox.haxx.se/docs/features.html
They even squeezed Tertis onto it!
If Tetris isn't enough to win you over, the final Archos advantage is price. This device is selling for just over $200. The high-capacity iPods, with fewer features, cost $500!
This was the ultimate deciding factor for me in taking a risk on a brand I didn't know. The reviews I read were positive, and I have been truly converted now. I only hope that someday Archos rebuilds the player/recorder and makes it a wee bit smaller.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 230
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Andyman
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Member: Andy Hilal
Location: Oakland, CA
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