While a full review is probably about three weeks away, I wanted to take some time this morning to give my first impressions of the new Archos 5 Internet Tablet. This touch screen device is slightly larger than an iPod touch, however you can do a lot with that extra screen real estate.
In the few days I’ve had with the device so far things are going well. Setup was quick and easy, and I’ve been using it for a myriad of tasks. While you won’t be doing any heavy computing, the Archos 5 allows you to connect for simple net tasks such as surfing and email as well as Twitter and Facebook. It’s also a fully featured portable media player so taking your music and videos on the go is a give in.
So far I’m enjoying the usability of the 5. It’s a good size: large for a PMP but not so big I wasn’t able to slip it into my back pocket. The few videos I’ve played so far look good and music sounds great. The included and installable apps give you a lot of functionality. The device runs Android so as the platform develops there will be even more available.
Expect a full review before the end of October but so far I can say that Archos may just have a great alternative for people who don’t like the iPod Touch or who live outside of the US and can’t get a ZuneHD.
Do you know if there is any way to hack the supported video formats? Looking on the Archos website the tablet does not appear to support mkv. I have a bunch of my son's cartoons in mkv format. The archos looks like it could work great for bringing his movie collection when we travel, but I would hate to have to move the mkvs over to mp4 for the archos to support.
Do you know if there is any way to hack the supported video formats? Looking on the Archos website the tablet does not appear to support mkv. I have a bunch of my son's cartoons in mkv format. The archos looks like it could work great for bringing his movie collection when we travel, but I would hate to have to move the mkvs over to mp4 for the archos to support.
EDIT – looking at the site it looks like this does support h.264 mkv. Some reviewer on Amazon said that they needed to register the product and then buy a plugin to be able to play back H.264???