An Excellent Portable Media Device

The Archos 605 Wifi is a great product that has many features, especially given its (relatively) low price. In the box there is the player itself, a somewhat flimsy case, two styli, a pair of worthless headphones, and the usb charging and transfer cable. The player itself is rather large and heavy, but it feels very solidly built and durable. It's a little bit too large to fit in a pocket comfortably, but in a pinch, it will fit. The case has a built -in flip out stand that actually comes in quite handy when watching long movies. My biggest complaint about the design is the lack of slot to store the included stylus. The stylus is very helpful in navigating around the touchscreen, but with no place to keep it I rarely have it with me. The styli can fit alongside the player in the included case, so as long as you like carrying around cases you can keep them in there. The touchscreen is very large and responsive, making navigating around the player fairly easy, even with fingertips rather than the stylus. The player also sports buttons alongside the screen, which are actually really useful even with the touchscreen. The menus and firmware is not as flashy and intuitive as those of the iPod touch, but they are easy to use and figure out even to a former ipod-owner like me. Moving songs and videos onto the Archos 605 can be done using drag-and-drop as an external hard drive or through syncing with Windows Media Player. Personally, I hate Windows Media Player but using drag-and-drop is easy enough. The battery life is only mediocre, especially compared to flash-based players like the iPod touch. I can get a number of hours of music playback, but only about 4 or 5 hours of video playback, and wifi decreases battery life even more. The wifi antenna isn't very strong, but it's good enough to work as long as the network is fairly strong. Unfortunately, if you want to browse the Internet you have to pay an additional $30 to buy the Opera browser. The browser is decent, but surfing is fairly slot and complicated pages can sometimes freeze the player. With the optional DVR station and remote you can stream movies and videos off the Internet directly onto a TV, as well as recording TV directly on the player. The DVR station also charges the player without having to plug it into a computer. All in all, the player is extraordinary, and I would recommend it despite it's faults.