CNET Editor's rating: 8.7 out of 10
Reviewed by
Donald Bell
Review date: 08/30/07
Release date: 08/30/07
The good: With top-notch video resolution, incredible viewing angles, and integrated support for wireless movie downloads, the Archos 605 WiFi is the best of its breed.
The bad: Battery life is only average. Many users will need to shell out extra for software and hardware accessories they'll wish were included.
The bottom line: The Archos 605 WiFi portable video player is one of the best mobile distractions money can buy.
If you ever want to excite a gadget fiend, just walk up and whisper these words into their ear, "Touch screen...WiFi...high-resolution...Mac-compatible..." If remotely human, your friend should be salivating on himself just as we did when we read the specs for the Archos 605 WiFi. Starting at just $229, the Archos 605 WiFi refines the screen resolution and usability of its previous effort, the 604 WiFi, and sets a new standard for affordable, exceptionally designed portable video players (PVPs).
Design
Only a few companies can compete with Archos when it comes to both product and interface design. The 605 WiFi is as elegantly conceived as anything we've seen from Apple or Sony. Measuring 4.75 inches wide, 3.25 inches tall, and just a hair more than a half-inch thick, the 605 strikes that front-pocket sweet spot; it's big enough to do video justice, yet small and thin enough to comfortably fit in your pants pocket. The recessed 4.3-inch TFT LCD screen is not only bright, colorful, and glare-resistant, but it displays at a resolution of 800x480, making it one of the highest-resolution PVPs on the market. We're also happy to see that the screen valiantly resists smudges despite its dual-duty as a touch screen.
While screen quality alone puts the Archos 605 ahead of the pack, small touches such as a built-in kickstand and an internal speaker really put this player over the top. Our only disappointments with the 605's design are the scratch-prone metal panel on the front, the lack of a universal USB connection, and the choice of white buttons that will surely pick up grime and discolor over time.
Nothing makes watching a movie more impractical than having to hold your PVP in your hand for more than an hour. The Archos 605 WiFi's hearty fold-out metal kickstand is a small but essential design touch.
Features
With most portable media players, what you see is what you get. But with any Archos product, the gear you buy is a base to which you can add additional features, for a price. Some accuse Archos of skimping on features to maintain an artificially attractive price, but you can also think of it as Archos allowing their customers to purchase only the features they want. Either way, the out-of-the-box 605 comes with most of the features people want in a PVP, and plug-ins--such as high-definition video playback, Internet radio, and others--cost only $20 a pop. Unfortunately, to truly take advantage of the 605's Wi-Fi, you need to spend an extra $30 for the Opera Web browser plug-in.
For your $30, thankfully, the Opera browser is Adobe Flash-enabled (unlike a certain iPhone) and works exceptionally well. Need to type in a password or a URL? The 605 WiFi's touch screen presents a responsive, iPhone-esque QWERTY keyboard. If you need one good reason for paying the extra $30 on the Opera Web browser, it's that any Flash-based video from sites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, and CNET is automatically detected by the 605 and presented in full screen.
Of all the accessories for the Archos 605 WiFi, the most expensive, and perhaps the most worthwhile, is the Archos DVR Station.
Even if you don't intend on giving Archos a single extra penny for plug-in features, you'll still love the player. The 605 WiFi comes with an MP3 player, a video player, a photo viewer, a PDF viewer, and the Content Portal feature, which uses the Wi-Fi connection to grab content directly from a handful of providers such as YouTube, Cinema Now, and BurnLounge. In particular, Cinema Now offers a great selection of mainstream movies that can be downloaded to your device for as little as 3.99. (It's worth mentioning/warning that Cinema Now also offers an exhaustive selection of adult-video content.)
Archos seems to have thought through almost all of the 605 WiFi's features. By default, the music player supports MP3, WMA (including DRM-protected files), and WAV files. You can purchase support for additional formats, such as AAC. During playback, the music player displays album artwork, allows for your music library to be sorted by ID3 tags, and gives you the ability to bookmark long files such as lectures and audiobooks.
The Archos 605 WiFi comes packaged with a case, a pair of styli, earbuds, and a proprietary USB cable.
The Archos 605 WiFi's video player is equally polished. It supports playback of MPEG-4, AVI, and WMV formats at up to 30 frames per second, covering most of the bases for common video files. You can buy optional plug-ins at $20 a pop for formats such as H.264 and MPEG-2/VOB files. Once you're actually playing video, you can bookmark, resize, and skip through your movie with ease.
If you're willing to shell out another $99, Archos offers a hardware accessory called the DVR Station that unlocks the 605's ability to act as a sophisticated digital video recorder. By docking the 605 in the DVR Station and connecting it to your television, the 605 effectively becomes your home entertainment system. Instead of using the 605 WiFi's 4.3-inch screen, the DVR Station displays content on your television, allowing you to browse your music and movie collection, flip through photo albums, and even surf the Web from the comfort of your couch, using the included remote control.
Performance
First and foremost, the Archos 605 WiFi is a video player, and an unrivaled one at that. Portable video players such as the Cowon A2 or the Creative Zen Vision:W simply don't offer comparable video resolution, not to mention the capability to download movies wirelessly or act as a full-fledged DVR.
As a music player, the 605 weighs in at the bulkier side, but its sound quality equals that of most of our preferred MP3 players. Both the customizable five-band equalizer and independent Bass Boost controls err on the side of subtlety, but we think they offer just the right amount of sonic sculpting without mangling the sound into an overprocessed mush. (The same sound enhancement features apply to movie audio playback.) For those of you pulling media files from both a Mac and a PC, you'll be happy to know that the 605 WiFi can boot in multiple USB modes, both MSC and MTP, allowing it to work as both a drag-and-drop hard drive and a Windows Media Player device.
If we have a single complaint about the 605's performance, it's the battery life. Rated at 16 hours for music and 5 hours for video, Our lab tests came up a little short of Archos' expectations, with just 13.5 hours of audio playback and 4.7 hours of video. The results aren't bad considering all the power that gets sucked up by the 605's high-resolution 4.3-inch screen. Although similar products such as the Creative Zen Vision:W have better battery-life scores, they also work at a lower resolution than the 605 and don't have the power demands of a Wi-Fi antenna to deal with. If you're looking to extend playback time on the 605, you'll need to invest another $49 for an Archos external battery pack that plugs into the bottom docking port.
Final thoughts
The Archos 605 WiFi is one of the most impressive portable video players we've seen all year and its low price tag makes it very hard to resist. You may end up spending another $100 or more on extra features and accessories, but 605's ability to take the sting out of road trips and air travel should make the investment all worthwhile. While many of us are waiting to see what Apple conjures up for the holidays, its doubtful that anything in the iPod family will include the 605's drag-and-drop hard drive support, wireless music and video rental, or DVR functionality.
7 out of 10 - Very good Improves on the 604 significantly
I have owned the AV120, AV 500, 604 WiFi, and an IPod. Just got the 605 WiFi and played with ...
I have owned the AV120, AV 500, 604 WiFi, and an IPod. Just got the 605 WiFi and played with it for a couple of days. I am not an IPod fan, primarily because of the proprietory codecs and the lack of a bookmark feature. But, it is definitely the easiest to use (load music/video and go). That being said, and despite the fact that I really didn't like the 604, I have been mostly pleased with the 605 wifi. The browser is better (don't know why Archos didn't upgrade the 604 to provide the same function). The resolution is better. The variety of codecs is still excellent. The ability to stream audio and video through the wifi is still the best feature. (Beware - it will not stream VOBs - the bit rate is too high). Divx video, even at fairly high bit rates (1500 Kb/s), is handled very well (Haven't tried Divx HD). The need to purchase additional software is fine - it helps to keep cost down. Though I suspect it is very rare that anyone would buy the 605 wifi and not intend to use the browser. I don't like the fact that as shipped you have to connect it to a computer to charge it. This really limits portability...If you are going to be carrying around a computer, why not just use the computer as your PVP? You can buy the docking station (okay, adds significant functionallity but not vital so offer it as add on) and take your docking station with you or buy a travel adapter (actually, I can use the USB adapter with my car audio's powered USB). Finally, they have no satisfactory cases ... wait, they have NO carrying cases. The shipped "case" is just a sleeve. Archos has a reputation of poor support for their devices. If they choose to actually support their Generation 5 devices with consistent and useful firmware updates as well as accessories this could be a 9. (It could only get a 10 if it worked with 802.11n so that it could stream VOBs).
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by dkdavis5252 (see profile) -
September 28, 2007
4 out of 4 users found this user opinion helpful.
4 out of 10 - Mediocre Great screen, very poor UI and usability
I bought the 605 WiFi based on the CNET review and after using it for a couple of days, I'...
I bought the 605 WiFi based on the CNET review and after using it for a couple of days, I'm very disappointed in the product.
The main problem (and, in hindsight, an aspect not covered at all by the CNET reviewer) is that the user interface is terrible. Touch buttons are all different sizes. Some functions you can do via touch, some with the dedicated keys, and some with both. You have to double-click in order to select an item with the touch interface, and who would realize you have to click "X" in the corner in order to simply go back a level in the interface? (Windows user would, I suppose.) The options for each app are communicated by tiny indecipherable buttons. And the touch interface itself is not very responsive at times (which, combined with the need to double-click some times, but not others -- makes you never sure if the unit heard you or not). I could go on and on -- have the reviewers never tried an iPhone to see what a real touch interface should work like?
Unit itself has a nice form factor and a beautifully sized screen, but the overall fit and finish is a bit lacking. For example, the dedicated buttons don't have a very nice feel to them (and their poor arrangement is another usability issue).
After using the unit for a day or so, it started trying to get a software update, but if I used the unit, it kept having problems with the WiFi connection dropping. Finally I left it untouched for an afternoon and it succeeded. (In other words, you can't use the product while software is downloading in the background.)
Tried to register for downloading content from the WiFi portal -- it was pretty confusing to get registered, and I think when I finally entered my credit card to start downloading something, something went wrong and I would have had to start over again, so I never bothered.
On the positive side, the screen is very nice and videos look pretty good once you manage to get content onto the device.
As a music player, though, it took way too many taps to get it to play a song. And when I accidentally copied over some songs with DRM (I have subscriptions to Rhapsody and Yahoo music services), it just silently refused to play. There should have been some sort of error dialog at a minimum. Don't know if it's supposed to be Plays4Sure compatible or not...
Overall, this product has great "specs", but in everyday use, the usability is poor.
If all you want to do is copy some video content onto it and watch it on the plane, I suppose it's fine.
But if you expect this product to "just work" and fit seamlessly in your life as a WiFi-enabled portable music and video player, the implementation is half-baked.
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by davidepope (see profile) -
October 14, 2007
4 out of 7 users found this user opinion helpful.
7 out of 10 - Very good Good, but needs some serious debugging
I've been using the device for 2 days and it managed to freeze 5 times, and seriously slowed down ...
I've been using the device for 2 days and it managed to freeze 5 times, and seriously slowed down a few others. After 24 hours charging on my laptop's USB, the battery is still not considered full by the system; I will test it with a wall charger. The screen is sometimes a bit unresponsive. But all this is nothing compared to the absolute pain in the a** to find a compatible SDHC card to upgrade the 4GB unit.
After searching on internet's forums, I stumbled across a user created list of compatible SD cards with the Archos 605. It seems according to a post, that customer service asserted SDHC is not supported by default, for the High Capacity SD cards to function with the device, it requires a line of code in the firmware FOR EACH BRAND AND MODEL of SDHC. As such, Adata 8Gb class6 will work, but Adata 16Gb Class6 will not, but Integral 16Gb Class4 will... Added to this madness, Archos does not provide a list of compatible SDHC cards, has apparently only tested Sandisk SDHC cards, and yet, still maintains the device is upgradable with SD cards up to 16Gb... This behaviour is intolerable. How can you say to support SD upgrade up to 16Gb and not be compatible with ALL SDHC cards? Why screwing up people that buy your device by making them buy memory cards that won't work?
This device has the potential to be the King of PVP's, a few serious firmware updates should do the trick.
As a music player, sound is perfect, but would have liked some more visual customization during playback.
If your emphasis is on video don't hesitate to buy the 605 but with a 40Gig hard drive or more. It's a tad heavier, but you'll avoid the hassle of upgrading with unsupported SDHC cards.
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by Chaku01 (see profile) -
February 5, 2008
9 out of 10 - Spectacular So Close To Perfect
Makes a great device for videos, supports usb host, has component outputs, everything. period.
Makes a great device for videos, supports usb host, has component outputs, everything. period.
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by emoslayer6224 (see profile) -
February 20, 2008
Manufacturer: Archos Technology Inc. Specs: Digital AV player, 4.8 in x 0.6 in x 3.2 in, TFT 4.3 in - Color, Hi-Speed USB, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, MP3, PCM, WAV, WMA, ADPCM, Protected WMA (DRM), WMV, MPEG-4, Protected WMV (DRM), 6.7 oz
Manufacturer: Archos Technology Inc. Specs: Digital AV player, 4.8 in x 0.8 in x 3.2 in, TFT 4.3 in - Color, Hi-Speed USB, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, MP3, PCM, WAV, WMA, ADPCM, Protected WMA (DRM), WMV, MPEG-4, Protected WMV (DRM), 9.2 oz
Manufacturer: Archos Technology Inc. Specs: Digital AV player, 4.8 in x 0.8 in x 3.2 in, TFT 4.3 in - Color, Hi-Speed USB, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, MP3, PCM, WAV, WMA, ADPCM, Protected WMA (DRM), WMV, MPEG-4, Protected WMV (DRM), 9.2 oz
Manufacturer: Archos Technology Inc. Specs: Digital AV player, 4.8 in x 0.8 in x 3.2 in, TFT 4.3 in - Color, Hi-Speed USB, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, AAC, MP3, PCM, WAV, WMA, AC-3, ADPCM, Protected WMA (DRM), WMV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Protected WMV (DRM), 5.3 oz
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