The Android tablet revolution has most definitely started, with Archos the latest to show its hand by launching no less than five new devices, with one under £100. All of them will run Android 2.2 Froyo and have 3D graphics acceleration.
The most noteworthy of the five is the Archos 28, which is priced at only £99 for a 4GB version and £109 for an 8GB one. It has a 2.8-inch touch screen, which as our sister site CNET remarked, does suggest that it is more wafer than tablet. It also has a 320 x 240 pixel display, multimedia support, and an 800MHz Cortex A8 processor.
Next on the list is the Archos 32, with a 3.2-inch touch screen for £129. You get 8GB of storage and a rear-facing camera that records 720p video. The Archos 43 has a (slightly smaller than a Dell Streak) 4.3-inch touch screen and comes with a more powerful 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor. This is available with 16GB of storage for £199. The Archos 28, 32 and 43 are out this month.
The Archos 70 is a 7-inch version, which is the same size as the Samsung Galaxy Tab and ViewPad 7 we saw yesterday. This has a front-facing camera and has a mini-HDMI port so you can output video to a TV. It is £229 for an 8GB version and £269 for one with a 250GB hard drive.
Last but not least is the Archos 101, which at 10.1 inches is bigger than the 9.7 inch iPad and slightly thinner and lighter, according to the Guardian
One thing to note is that the Archos 28, 32 and 43 have resistive touch screens, which will make them less responsive than the two more expensive tablets in the 70 and 101 which have capacitive screens. Once we get in these to review, we'll tell you how much of a difference it may make.
Previously, Archos has restricted access to the Android Marketplace on its tablets -- we're waiting to see if that's the case with these new models, or whether they will only be able to run apps from Archos's own AppsLib store.
Phew. Excited about these? Let us know.
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anonymous 1 September, 2010 13:18
Not at all... I had the Archos 5 IT for a white, I'll be surprised if Archos's glitchy and poorly managed "appslib" will have gone, the resistive screens were horrible, only made up for by the high resolution meaning multitouch capability wasn't entirely necessary when browsing the web. The 3.5mm jack on my 5 IT broke after 5 months of use, the battery life was appalling and the device frequently crashed and froze on running Archos's own updates. The apps lib crashed on start up and the few apps that were featured weren't actually well filtered, many I downloaded during the first few days of ownership included games which required physical buttons or multitouch support, and poor screen resizing to the WVGA resolution of the 5IT, which were actually the two reasons Archos cited for introducing the appslib market instead of a standard android market.
Archos don't seem to be a company that care too much about fixing past mistakes, seing as they're still pushing resistive screens our way, so I doubt they'll do much better this time around, though I am open to being proven wrong.
anonymous 29 August, 2011 01:36
Having owned an Archos 7HT with resistive screen I found no problems at all. It was quick, played video/ music and had a great ereader installed. It was very useful on a recent holiday to France where we used the hotels wifi to research the sites and train tickets. The only drawback is that the power pin inside the tablet has fallen out... because it fell off my bedside table last night during charging and must have landed on the carpet badly. I am missing it already! I would recommend steering clear of non-brand name devices given the superb system on the Archos that was only improved on by an update. I just wish that ipad owners could see and use these tablets... what could they have spent the £300+ on that they "wasted"??