Customer Reviews
Poor performance, poor service 
2008-09-30
Since I have had the product, almost all the features have slowly failed to perform. I have lost the "touch" function of the player. Every computer I have tried to connect to has stopped recognizing the player and it is impossible to play video. What is most frustrating is that on three seperate occassions I have contacted the Archos service center with no response.
Nice concept - if only it worked well 
2008-08-19
I have had the unit for about a month now. I purchased the 4GB SD model and a separate 16GB SD add-on card for a total of 20GB. I also purchased the DVR station and the DVR traveler.
My excuse, err reason for purchasing it was primarily to be able to do digital recordings from an infrared camera to post online. Additionally, I wanted to convert my existing 8MM camcorder tapes to digital and do DVR type recordings for entertainment.
The unit seemed to recognize the SD card just fine (I read that they were finicky with some cards). The picture is very clear, the interface and touch screen are fairly intuitive and not difficult to learn and I was able connect to my secure wireless network easily.
The unit does have a bad habit of freezing up whether the SD card is installed or not. It's been a long time since I purchased an electronic device that I had to stick a paper clip into on a regular basis to reset it. Perhaps they should have included a paperclip holder along with the stylus holder that they forgot to build into the unit.
The biggest issue that I have with the unit is that when I am recording from another device (e.g., camcorder, infrared camera, etc.) the unit will at some point decide that the source is DRM protected and restarts the recording in protected mode. These recording are effectively useless as they can't be played on anything but the Archos itself. Note that the source being recorded is original and not copy protected in any way. It takes an average of 3 attempts just to get one good recording, very frustrating when you are 2 hours into a recording when it decides to do this. This is an example where DRM adds no value and causes major headaches for consumers. You are forced to pay for something that cripples the legitmate use of the device. Because of their dumb DRM implementation, the device is nearly useless for my primary purpose for acquiring it.
On to the "DVR" station. Very wishful thinking to call this a DVR station as it has no ability to tune a station and has to rely on your cable or satellite box to set the station at the right time. The unit has an infrared emitter which is supposed to allow it to control these other device. I have no idea if it works, because you must first download programming data from the Archos website. Guess what? the Archos website doesn't work either. After trying numerous times to download programming data, I sent an inquiry to customer support. After a few days, I got a reply saying that they were having server problems and it should be back up in 1 day, 2 max. That was 3 weeks ago. Customer Service hasn't responded to my followup. So scratch this DVR concept (a TIVO it certainly is not) and consider the DVR station to be an expensive docking station / charger.
Hey, you know the other stuff that they advertise: browser functionality, video playback and widgets? Well you have to buy add-ins before you can use any of them. You cannot play back DVDs until after you purchase additional codecs from them. Given the few things that seem to work as advertised in the base unit, I'm just not very anxious to buy a bunch add-ins for functions that should work out of the box and set myself up to be disappointed even further.
Unless you really have a need to do portable digital video recording from analog sources via RCA connectors like I do, I'd say skip this and buy something else.
It's sad because the device had so much potential.
Make sure you get a comapatable SD card!! 
2008-06-14
I have to say that when I first got this product, loaded some movies on it, they wouldn't play and required the plug ins. If you are going to buy this product and don't want to spend countless hours converting movies, you will want to make sure you account for spending and extra $30-$70 in plug ins to make this a great full featured device. Now that I have the Web Browser and two audio and video plug ins, this thing is WONDERFUL. Browsing the internet was snappy and easy. Movies played smooth and audio was good, yet a little on the quiet side.
MOST IMPORTANT. Next I bought an 8gb SD card to use with it. It was a transcend which is supposed to be compatible with this player. by the way, they don't tell you, but there are a LOT of SD cards that just will not work with this player! In fact, mine actually bricked my player. Finally after hours of screwing around trying to reinstall the Operating Sytem and hours searching the internet for solutions, I finally got it to work. If you own one of these players, it is essential to go to Archosfans.com and check the forums. This is by far, not an iPod when it comes to just anyone being able to use it. At least that is my experience.
Extremely bad quality 2008-06-11
1. The side buttons do not work
2. Need to reset very often - because the device get stuck/freeze
3. While you are charging then you can not watch anything without holding it by hand ( because the charging device/jack/plug is at the bottom side)
So I consider it as total wastage of money.
...7 months and my Archos 605 WiFi (4GB) 
2008-05-28
I've had my Archos 605 WiFi (4gb) for about 7 months now. I take it
where ever I go. It allows me to bring my music (DRM Free), videos,
and pictures where ever I go.
Simply put, the Archos blows the doors off of the iPod and what ever Apple, Creative and yes even SanDisk can offer for media players.
No additional software needed, you plug it into your PC via USB and use it like an external hard drive, and drag files to and from the unit. Making no need for bloated software such as iTunes to only put your music on the unit.
It plays a various amount of video formats right out of the box (.avi, .mpg, .divx, .flv, etc), with the option to purchase more CoDecs.
Excellent music player, album art, play lists, etc.
So your worried about the 4GB RAM limitt? You can expand the storage space of the unit via the SDRAM slot on top.
With its WiFi capabilities, you can share, copy files from your network, or access the internet (browser is an additional cost). You can stream media from any source sharing.
I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a great media player for a decent price.
Great Product 2008-05-10
Featuring the highest quality video, touch-screen, and WiFi capabilities for streaming content either directly to the player screen or to a TV, the Archos 605 WiFi has the highest screen resolution (800x480) and the highest quality screen in a Portable Media Player (PMP). Use the touch-screen to easily operate the device with your finger or stylus. Personalize your Archos 605 WiFi to fit your unique lifestyle with an abundance of available plug-ins and accessories. Download content wirelessly and directly to your Archos 605 WiFi or stream movies, TV shows and music from your computer. With an optional Web browser plug-in, you can surf the Web and enjoy videos from online videos sites like DailyMotion and YouTube. The SD Card slot expands your memory through an SD, mini SD and micro SD memory card. Video recording - Records NTSC/PAL/SECAM in MPEG-4 AVI format with stereo sound, VGA resolution (640x480) at 30 or 25 frames per second through an optional DVR Station/DVR Travel Adapter Audio recording - Stereo line-in, WAV (IMA, ADPCM or PCM) format through an optional DVR Station/DVR Travel Adapter Optional Video Podcast plug-in - H.264 up to DVD resolution and AAC Optional Cinema Plug-in - MPEG-2 MP at ML up to 10 Mbps (up to DVD resolution) and AC3 stereo sound (5.1) Optional Internet plug-in - Opera Web browser and Adobe Flash Player for Web browsing Interfaces - USB 2.0 High-Speed Device (compatible USB 1.1), Mass Storage Class (MSC) and Media Transport Protocol (MTP) Power source - Internal Lithium-Ion Polymer battery Device automatically downloads latest firmware updates Battery life - 17 hours Music playback time, 5.5 hours Video playback time Dimensions - 4.8 x 3.2 x 0.6 (122x82x15mm) Weight - 150 grams
great buy 
2008-04-05
i researched this item and couldnt wait to buy it. once i got it it was everything i that i hoped it would be. i love my pictures, videos, and music, so now that i can have all of them with me whenever i want im very happy. plus if im near a wireless hot spot i can surf the net!! what more could any one ask for in a media device? the ony reason why i dont give it five stars is because of all the extra plugins and accessories that come at an extra cost, but even that makes the archos more customizable.
overall ths is a great buy>:}
great !!! 2008-02-09
The 605 wifi flash with sd slot works great. Only problem can not get it to work with sd card.
plays media - but....... 2008-02-06
If you want a media player this works. But it it very finicky. It does into diagnostic mode 30% of the time and requires a file system repair. When the repair fails and the format is required, it formats the internal and external memory. So the SD gets wiped.
The music player is almost non functional. You cannot sync playlists to it. It will not correctly integrate the music on the SD into the general lists for genre, artist, album, so on. You have to manually create the playlists on the device which is not easy to do. A 3 hours play list for a road trip will take 30 minutes to do even if you know the songs. I have tried to sync the playlists from Yahoo, rhapsody, napster, iTunes, windows media player and iTunes. The unit does not recognize any of them.
The suspend mode uses too much power. From one day to another it uses 1 bar of the battery meter while in suspend mode. It takes over a minute to boot.
It takes 8 hours to charge off the USB cable. It take 4 hours off A/C. The A/C adapter requires spending $99 for the DVR or $30 for this semi-useless dock and the adapter. Do not by the "travel DVR". No A/C. So to have a DVR and the A/C will still cost $99.
The best feature is the $99 DVR unit. You can record off the TV. So you can watch your TV shoes while at the gym. It takes standard RCA in, so where it is legal :-) you can play your favorite dvds and it will record like a VCR. Other than this ONE feature, by the apple itouch or look into the creative devices.
I should have read more reveiws. 2008-02-02
Ok i think this review is mainly centered at my particular device, because i think i got a lemon. i really do have some nice things to say further down. First, yes the charging takes the better part of a day, probably something akin to the 12 hours i've seen reported on here. Next the customer service is quite rude. I tried to d/l the web browser from the site, it kept saying there were problems with my billing address/ and or credit card number, I kept trying to fix the issues but to no avail. I contacted Archos and I was rather rudely told that I must have not put in my proper address ( hello i know where i live ) so upon checking and rechecking and looking at credit card statements ect....still no luck. So i called again and got rude customer service person #2 where I was told if i tried over five times "my credit card company won't let the transaction go through" then she looked and rather scornfully told me that I had tried 12 times to get the transaction to work. Then she told me i couldn't use my card for 72 hours on the site. I buy a ton of stuff online and i have never had so many problems making a simple purchase. She then told me to just use another credit card. Great thanks...It never did mean anything to her that the address was correct the entire time. Anyways i finally received the plug in and i also d/l the newest firmware. The device was okay that night. I watched a few videos, for the most part i really liked the device. the menus are rather weird because you have no idea what all the icons do since theres no text and you can't rollover the icon to see what it does, you have to seriously push the button and hope thats what you thought it did. I couldn't even find a legend for all the different icons in the "manual" (I use the term manual loosly because its really just one page of warnings and legal mumbo jumbo)
The next morning the device kept locking up when i tried to stream a video. I reset it, and it locked up again. It locked up a few more times while browsing the web. I was messing around with it before i went to sleep, then I turned it off and set it on the nightstand. This morning it kept booting up then shutting down as soon as the home screen came on. i hooked it up to the usb on my laptop only to discover that the battery completely drained itself even though the unit was shut off. Now thats a handy feature.
On the plus side The screen is gorgeous, and the web service is relatively quick at least in my house anyways. The MP3 controls are a little weird and I wouldn't recommend trying to use this while driving, but the sound is nice It would be a great player to sit around and listen to. I really like the fact that it displays the track before and after the current one playing, very cool. i would say the sound is comparable to my trusty creative ZVM. Once you get the hang of it the web browsing is pretty good but some of the links are really hard to hit making you zoom in to engage them, but thats not really the devices fault. i think its cool when you watch a flash video online the unit instantly blows it up to full screen. the video quality is great so far, even bad transfers are at least watchable. I'm really not sure that the web browser plug in should be an item you have to pay for (i mean it is marketed as being a wi-fi device and all) but it's not that big of a deal i guess. All in all I think its a cool device and a great alternative to the ipod touch just don't expect much support from the customer service dept. I think I may have just gotten a bad player, i'm sure it happens but depending on how the return goes I'm not sure i'll be jumping up to get another archos product in the future.
