I received the Archos Jukebox Studio 10 as a Christmas gift, and overall I am pleased with the device.

I wanted an MP3 jukebox with large storage capacity, and this device has a 10GB drive, which has allowed me to store 1,900 songs with 750MB left over. For the price, you can't beat the storage capacity.

Sound quality is very good, although don't even try using the cheap headphones that come with the unit. I have been using a pair of Sony noise canceling headphones with it, and am very pleased with the sound. The unit ships with Musicmatch Jukebox, which makes the process of ripping CDs and organizing music on the unit much easier. You can create playlists with Musicmatch and copy them over to the unit, which is a nice feature. The USB interface makes connecting to the unit very easy (compared to Firewire on the iPod), and the ability to use the unit as an external hard drive is very handy.

My biggest problems with the unit are that is is pretty heavy, the controls are not very easy to use, the menu system is difficult to navigate, the documentation is awful, and the USB drivers shipped with the unit were really buggy (I downloaded new drivers from their Web site). Also, when the unit is charging, it makes an obnoxious buzzing noise. I have also had problems with creating playlists that were too large, causing the unit to "reboot" itself in the middle of loading the playlist, and the process of copying playlists over to the unit is entirely manual (you have to copy the file from the Musicmatch directory on the PC over to a directory on the Archos). Not a major problem, but annoying.

Overall, I am pleased with the unit, and although I would have preferred an iPod, the price/performance ratio of the Archos is superior.


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 100