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(More customer reviews)I ordered the Archos 101 Internet Tablet from Archos' own website about a week ago with the first release and received it a few days ago. I was excited to get my first tablet, and the price tag didn't make me fear starvation as a college student, a fear which the Galaxy Tab is all too enthusiastic to give. I had expected a little more from the device, and my own possibly defective unit may have hindered my experience somewhat. It's being replaced soon, and if my problems are not present in the next unit I'll probably keep it.
We all know that Android isn't really ready for tablets, or so Google has told us, but we're all a little anxious to see what the experience would be like. Us early adopters know no bounds, and our research has led us here, to the Archos 101 Internet Tablet. It's price tag makes it a prime choice in comparison to most of the major-brand tablets being released as you read, but that price comes with certain drawbacks that any informed consumer should be aware of. To begin with, the problems:
The digitizer on the touchscreen is not particularly sensitive, and operates at a very low operating resolution. It also loses its calibration quite often (about every 20-40 minutes) and I was unaware that a capacitive touchscreen even could lose its calibration. Unfortunately this loss of calibration isn't always slight, and sometimes it will seriously take hours of fiddling with different points on the screen to navigate through the menus to recalibrate. I called Archos about this and my unit is being RMAed, so this could just be a feature exclusive to my dud.
The build-quality is unbelievably poor. Seriously, you don't want to take this tablet out of the house. The metal plates covering the two small areas on the back are incredibly flimsy, and even changing your grip on the tablet causes a cascade of ripples through the LCD. The LCD also sports pretty narrow viewing angles, severe enough to cause saturation and brightness distortion between your eyes' different perspectives when held in portrait mode.
The Wifi isn't particularly good. Signal strength is poor and intermittent, and I can't actually even use a wireless connection unless I am in the same room as my router without it dropping out. Unfortunately the speed of the connection during those fleeting moments of connectivity also leaves much to be desired. I haven't run any benchmarks on it's networking speed, but you definitely don't need to worry about breaking any records.
Worst camera man has ever made. This wasn't really a big deal for me, since I don't really see using videochat on a Wifi-only tablet being much of a selling point here, but this camera is horrible. Poor color reproduction, a ridiculous level of noise being picked up by the sensor, and poor contrast makes for a washed out lifeless grainy facsimile of your face. Not good for self-esteem. And now, the good:
It's pretty fast. I don't have to worry about running programs eating too many resources, and the browser is quick and snappy.
It's ridiculously easy to put Google Marketplace on. Seriously, I did it using just the tablet. Download gapps4archos, enable sideloading apps from the settings menu, and you're good to go. It takes about 3 minutes from Google to complete, and you can do the whole operation without touching your computer.
The screen is huge. I was back and forth between the Archos 70 and 101 for quite a while, and I finally decided that the 101 would be fun to try, being essentially a netbook sized tablet. The added space, both in terms of the increase in resolution and the increase in actual size, is fantastic. I always fall for high-resolution devices, and while I wish I could get something with a resolution higher than this in a 7 inch package this definitely serves both its purpose and my desires.
HDMI output. Need say no more.
Good playback of both video and audio, with a pretty wide selection of formats supported right off the bat.
Good 3D acceleration. I don't know who the manufacturer of the "Open GL acceleration" feature is, but it seems to work pretty reasonably. The game comes pre-loaded with some half-baked racing game. While the free game is bad, the visuals in it are pretty decent.
Good battery life. I've only charged it twice over the last 3 days. Considering the amount of poking, prodding, and fondling I've done - and as I'm sure any good nerd does to their new toy - it has held up pretty well. I'd estimate somewhere around 4 hours with wifi on and about 6 with it off. I had the back light at about 50%
Decent little speakers. The speakers on the back are pretty loud and only mildly tinny, about the same quality or a little better than most net book speakers.
MicroSDHC slot and usb host connectivity. Those familiar with Android wouldn't really make a huge deal about this, but those looking at iOS devices should consider the benefits of the alternatives, singe going beyond your default storage capacity is always useful when you need it.And that's about it. I'm returning the unit for a replacement over the next few days, and I'll see how that pans out and update this review as needed. If the problem with the capacitive touchscreen digitizer isn't present in the next one I might consider keeping it, but the Wifi issues might just be too much. What use is a tablet that can't go online? Hopefully both problems will be addressed by the replacement.
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Offering a unique tablet design with the latest Android operating system, the ARCHOS 101 Internet tablet features a 10.1-inch multi-touch display with pinch-and-zoom capabilities, a fast 1. GHz processor for fast web browsing, HD multimedia playback, and multitasking across applications. With the Android 2.2 OS (dubbed "Froyo"), the ARCHOS 101 provides support for the Adobe Flash 10.1 player, enabling you to view the web and streaming video sites without compromise.
The Android-powered ARCHOS 101 with 10.1-inch multi-touch display and 8 GB internal memory (see larger image).
Click here for more information about ARCHOS 101 Internet Tablet 8GB
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