By Unlike some comapny’s with their sprawling display full of flashy lights and HD television monitors, ARCHOS’ booth at this year’s CES was quite modest. It may have to do with the company’s new focus on helping consumers define their tablet experience. Rather than showing off a range of devices that more or less all accomplish the same thing, we saw products that all aim to please a certain segment of the market.
The ARCHOS Home Connect is a portable Android desk clock and music player. Over WiFi it gains access to a large selection of internet radio stations or you can store your own music on the device’s 4GB internal drive or expandable microSD memory. While the Home Connect can perform the basic function of its Android 2.2 operating system, it isn’t meant to act as a go-to email reader or web browsing device. It’s default display mode is a desk clock launcher that provides plenty of information at a glance.
The ARCHOS 70b is an update to the company’s 7-inch device line and looks to please the same folks who might be interested in Amazon’s Kindle Fire. It comes in at the same $199 price point and features a 1GHz CPU. Media and web surfing is king on the 70b, but the newly updated G9 series aims to please users looking for more power. It was recently updated to a 1.5GHz dual-core TI OMAP chipset and will receive an update to Ice Cream Sandwich in the first week of February.
All I really want is a 4″ or less device with 120gb or more on board for music and maybe some video. I hate relying on 3G and WiFi on my phone to stream music, and I can’t stand leaving my house without my full music collection. I absolutely love my Zune 120gb, especially its nice interface. And there’s no way in hell i’m going to succumb to iPod and that crap-shoot that is iTunes
The Archos 70 is nice, and while I can get a clumsy car-mount for it, I still can’t comfortable jam it into my pocket. I like the smaller Archos devices, but they don’t come bigger than 8gb, and 32gb on an SD card won’t cut it.