The Archos 43 is a new Android tablet with… you guessed it, a 4.3 inch display. It sits smack dab in the middle of the 5 Android tablets Archos introduced last week in terms of both size and features. Like the Archos 28 and 32, this 4.3 inch model has a resistive touchscreen. But like the Archos 70 and 101 it has a zippy 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU.

Like all of the new Archos tablets, the Archos 43 makes a pretty decent portable media player. It can handle a wide range of audio and video formats, including MP4, H.264 and WMV files with resolutions up to 720p. Archos is also working with companies including Roxio and Amazon to add support for DRM so that you can purchase and/or rent videos to watch on the portable device in the future.

The Archos 43 fits comfortably in the hand and while it has a resistive display instead of capacitive, it’s quite responsive to touch either from a fingertip or a stylus. Entering text is definitely easier with a stylus, but since this model has a larger display than the Archos 28 and 32, you may have a bit more success tapping away with your thumbs.

The handheld tablet has an 854 x 480 pixel TFT LCD display and a 3D graphics accelerator. It also includes HDMI output, USB connectivity, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, a G-sensor, built in speaker and mic and a built-in kickstand. It comes with 8 or 16GB of internal storage and theres a Micro SD card slot for extra storage. This model has a 2MP camera which can shoot 720P video.

The Archos 43 measures 5.3″ x 2.6″ x 0.4″ and weighs 4.6 ounces. While the 4.3 inch display is about the same size as the screens on some of the largest Android smartphones available, the Archos 43 still feels just a little larger than a phone, thanks to the wide plastic case around the edges of the device. Still, it fits comfortably in your hand and the large display would make this tablet a pretty good portable video player or eBook reader.

Like other Archos tablets, the Archos 43 will ship with the AppsLib market for downloading third party Android apps. There are about 5,000 apps available in AppsLib, compared with the 80,000 apps available in the Android Market — but while some hackers have found ways to run the Android Market on unsupported hardware, Google doesn’t officially support running the Android Market on devices that don’t make phone calls (among hardware requirements).

The Archos 43 is expected to run about $$199 when it’s released in October. It will run Android 2.2 Froyo, but the version I saw was running Android 2.1. You can check out some more hands-on photos and press shots after the break.

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18 replies on “Closer look at the Archos 43 Android tablet”

  1. What it is, is aimed squarely at all the LifeDrive and other diehard PDA owners who prefer to keep their phones ‘dumb’ and change them more often than they do their PDA. It’s only slightly longer than a LifeDrive, smaller in all other physical dimensions while stuffing in a larger, higher resolution screen, more storage and more features, at 1/2 the price the LifeDrive sold for in 2005.

    The technology world has *finally* created the gizmo I’d be happy to give up my LifeDrive for! The iPDA (AKA iPod Touch) nor any WinCE/Windows Mobile/Pocket PC device was a contender, due to their stubbornly sticking to little 320×240 screens for all but the most expensive models. The Dell Axim X51v was tempting, but not enough of a boost in specifications. iPDA until the current one was always 320×24 “plus” (double-plus-ungood!) came with Steve “control freak” Jobs “The Outer Limits” type control of what’s allowed to be run on it.

    Android comes with none of those drawbacks, combined with the Archos 43 it all looks good. Now I just need to scrape together a spare $250…

  2. will gaangstar and other multi touch android games play on archos 70???????? plzz tell????????

  3. does it have a 3.5mm headphone jack?

    EDIT:

    Nvm it does.Never really found the info.

  4. How is it as a music player? Does it allow you to arbitrarily kill the screen? Does it differentiate between music and pocast/audiobook content that should never be shuffled? Does the playlist support suck?

    How different is the media player from stock ‘droid?

    1. Supports Flac, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, WMA with DRM, Mp3, WAV, AC3, AAC audio codecs. Other Android devices don’t support all those audio codecs.

      Also, it sorts by artist/album and all such things automatically, and even downloads album cover and album infos from the web even if you haven’t got them included in the ID3 tags yet, just based on searching with the file names.

    1. You can easily install the full Google Marketplace on it, just do a search for market4archos.apk it takes 1 minute to install.

      To be sure, wait for the device to be out for a bit and follow https://forum.archosfans.com to see reports from people able to install the full Google Marketplace on it.

      It doesn’t matter if “Google doesn’t yet support Android for Tablets”, the Google Marketplace, Gmail, Google Maps, Youtube and 99% of the apps on the Google Marketplace, all work 100% perfectly fine.

      1. The current Archos 5 Internet Tablet has problems with apps from the Google Marketplace. Many apps don’t work perfectly. It’s probably going to be the same in the generation 8 Archos tablets. Those percent figures are just made up numbers.

        1. that is archos 5 not archos 43 we will just have to see when it comes out .

  5. Google’s phone-only standpoint regarding the Android Market still mystifies me. It just shoves people who would erstwhile be interested in having an Android tablet into Apple’s arms.

  6. Is this a matte or glossy display? It’s hard to tell from the photos and if the Archos site says, I couldn’t find it. Also, if you have/have used an iPod Touch, how is the text clarity? Better? Worse? The same? If I use it as a eBook reader I’d like to get something at least as good as my current iPod Touch.

    1. I’d say the 854 x 480 pixel 4.3 inch display is sharper than the 3.5 inch, 480 x 320px display on older iPod touch models. It doesn’t come close to the new 960 x 640px display on the new 4th gen iPod touch though.

      I’m pretty sure the displays are matte rather than glossy, but I honestly didn’t think to pay close attention to this detail since we were in a hotel suite with room lighting instead of sunlight.

      1. One of the YouTube videos from the European show mentions and displays the gloss of the screen to the point where a comment is made about it being a “mirror”…my buck goes on the glossy bet 🙂 which is a shame to outdoor use and fingerprints but all in all I am anxious for you to take both the 7.0 and 10.1 for a good long drive

        1. Ah to comment to my own comment, I was talking about the 7.0 and 10.1 not 43…..my bad 🙁

          1. Did anyone figured if the battery is replaceable? It could make a difference to buy or not.

          2. Non-replaceable battery. It has a glossy screen. I have obsessed over these, and I have researched everything there is to know about ’em without holding one in my hands yet. I want the 43. THe 7.0 and 10.1 have their own strong points as they have capacitive touch screens and the 7.0 will come out at the end of October with a 250gb hard drive, the 10.1 will come out mid-october with 8 and 16 GB flash memory and will sport a full sized USB host. The 43 will be available in 16GB the end of October. Price is set at pretty much $250. the 8gb will be $199. Visit http://www.hotmp3gear.com, all they do is sell Archos.

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