The Archos 101 is the largest, fullest featured of the 5 Android tablets Archos introduced a few months ago. It’s just starting to ship in some parts of the globe, and the folks at Laptop Magazine have published one of the first detailed reviews I’ve seen.

The Archos 101 features a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel capacitive touchscreen display, a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU with support for HD video playback, and runs Google Android 2.2. Prices are expected to start at $299.99 for a model with 8GB of storage.

Laptop Magazine seemed reasonably pleased with the build quality. The tablet measures less than an inch thick and weighs just 1.1 pounds, making it one of the lightest 10 inch tablets in its class. The multitouch display is also reported to be quite responsive for playing games, navigating web pages, and using on-screen gestures such as pinch-to-zoom. On the other hand, the reviewer was less impressed with the reflective display which had poor viewing angles.

While the Archos 101 doesn’t come with Google’s Android Market preloaded, the company’s AppsLib store provides about 18,000 apps, including popular apps such as Angry Birds and Slacker. That’s still less than one fifth of the apps you’ll find in the full Android market though. You may want to hack your way to full Market access if you pick up this tablet.

One of the strong suits for Archos tablets tends to be multimedia support. Archos includes a custom media player which supports almost any DRM-free audio or video file you can throw at it.

Laptop ran some benchmarks which show that the Archos 101 can hold its own against the competition — but it’s certainly not the fastest Android device on the market. The reviewer also reports that the Archos 101 gets excellent battery life, lasting for about 11 hours while surfing the web over WiFi.

You can find more details at Laptop Magazine.

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5 replies on “Archos 101 Android tablet reviewed”

  1. @ Charbax, Do you know at approximately what date the Archos 101 will be able at resellers like Best Buy?

  2. This being the hottest tablet in town besides the Ipad, you should have made the effort to review it long ago Brad.

    Instead, you chose to report and write on stupid China make products, some of which are so dodgy and never arrive in the market.

    Brad, you should focus on products that actually arrive in the market.

    We appreciate a review by you on the 101. Many find your reviews to be much better than Laptopmag.

    1. I’ve been in touch with the folks at Archos, but I’m still waiting for them to make a demo unit of the Archos 70 and/or 101 available for review.

      As for Laptop Mag, I think they do a pretty good job with their reviews, offering a more thorough analysis than many other tech sites on the web. Of course, we all have our biases and they’re bound to show through in anything we write about any products.

      1. I’ll try to tell Archos they have to send you at least one for review. They are working hard to try to meet demand, each time a new batch arrives to the stores and resellers from the factory, everything gets sold out in few hours. I think they’d rather once cool blogs like yours post the reviews that the units are actually immediately available to buy at big resellers like Amazon and Best Buy.

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