The Archos AV400 has been pronounced the world's best portable PVR, but we sceptical types at Crave don't take such claims lightly. Not only have we got hold of one to give it the thrashing of its little life, we've got the new upgraded 80GB model. Apple iPod 60GB? Ha! The Archos laughs at such puny storage.
First impressions of the AV400 are good -- it has a nice weight that will certainly hurt an opponent should we need to use it as a weapon, but with soft rubbery corners to help protect it when we inevitably drop the thing. We've built up a library of DivX files from all the portable players we've had in, and when we loaded them on the Archos there were some definite problems. The first episode of 24 looked amazingly crisp, but it was dropping frames and looked incredibly jerky. As a result, Kim Bauer's constant running wasn't nearly as satisfying to watch.
We'll spend all weekend loading the Archos AV400 up with new stuff though, and while we probably still won't even come close to filling it up, we'll let you know how it fares in a full review. See below for another PVR contender. -GC
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