A long awaited package arrived a few days ago. Yes, it’s the “Archos 7 Home Tablet 8GB”. I did not expect much from the device as it received its fair share of bad reviews in the press. I was, however, pleasantly surprised!
The main negative, which most other reviewers kept hammering on about, was the lack of G-Motion sensor. That’s right, you cannot turn the device on its side to flip the layout.
But let’s put that negative on the back burner for a moment and look at the positives of the Archos 7 home tablet.
- It plays almost any video (most formats) in beautiful high definition quality without a single hack.
- You can insert mini SD cards (up to 32GB) and take your whole music/movie collection where ever you go
- Using Dolphin browser and Swype keyboard removes all the lag that the other reviews complained about.
- It has a kickstand! I know, it sounds silly, but its hard to explain how handy this is!
- It claims to have a whopping 44hour battery life while playing music and 7/8 hours of video playback. Now I only had the Archos 7 home tablet for one day, but so far no charging (other than the initial) was necessary.
- Last, but certainly not least – It will only cost you around £129!
With all these positives… do you really care about the G-Motion sensor? I certainly haven’t yet missed that feature.
Now, my only concern was the device’s capability of reading e-books. I am not going to read books horizontally as it just doesn’t feel right. Not to worry though, it comes with Aldiko reader which flips the screen vertically on start up!
OK, let’s be honest. It is no IPAD and the price should be the main indicator for that. The age old “you get what you pay for” is very appropriate here. However, I have seen some really crappy Android devices and this is definitely not one of them. The Archos 7 home tablet is the first android tablet that just feels like a “real” product and I can’t help but smile when I watch Indiana Jones in bed knowing I only paid £129 pounds for this!
Applications I have working on my Archos 7 Home Tablet:
ScummVM (Play games like Day of the Tentical, Full Throttle, Monkey Island)
Dolphin Browswer
Slide ME (Alternative app store)
Seesmic (twitter client)
WordUp! (fun word game)
Facebook
Robo Defence (tower defence game)
Advanced Task Killer
TubeDroid (download high quality youtube videos)
Wiki:
http://wiki.archosfans.com/index.php?title=Archos_7_Home_Tablet
Forums:
http://forum.archosfans.com/viewforum.php?f=59
Full list of specs:
http://www.archos.com/products/ht/archos_7/specs.html?country=us&lang=en
