The Archos 70 and Archos 101 may not be the cheapest 7 and 10 inch Android tablets on the market — you can find a number of less expensive models from China, including the WiiPad Slim Plus which I’m giving away. But good luck finding another sub-$300 tablet from a Western company with a 1GHz processor, capacitive touchscreen display, superb codec support, and an ultrathin case.

Engadget’s Joanna Stern has posted a detailed review covering both the Archos 70 and 101, and she seems to be pretty impressed (if not necessarily blown away by) the performance for each device. But she was underwhelmed by the cheap plastic case design and the display’s poor viewing angles.

Both tablets should be available for purchase in the US soon. Right now you can pick up an Archos 70 with a 250GB hard drive for $349, but a cheaper model with an 8GB SSD should be available soon, as well as the Archos 101 10 inch model.

You can find more details in Engadget’s review, or check out my hands-on impressions with the Archos 70 and Archos 101 from earlier this year.

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8 replies on “Archos 70 and 101 Android tablets reviewed”

  1. Archos needs to address a pressing issue on the Gen8 tablets and that is the /data partition. The /data partition is only 300 Meg and even with Apps2SD in Froyo it gets used quite quickly as the Dalvik-Cache and application cache reside there. The /data and /system partition as well as internal storage are all part of the same Toshiba 8 GIG NAND chip. All Archos has to do is follow Samsung’s footsteps and give 2 Gig to /system and /data, which would give /data about 1.5 Gig total and 6 Gig internal (read as Media and apps2SD) storage instead of the 7 Gig it has now. Yes it would require a new firmware with new partitioning schemes as well as a wipe of the system but it would be well worth it to improve the life and usefulness of this otherwise great product.

  2. I think those poor viewing angles are the biggest drawbacks. Tablets are more likely to be held at an handle, so they should have good viewing angles. Still these are good machines for their price.

  3. Joanna does a pretty good review of the Archos tablets but she’s way off regarding the case. My A70 is sleek and black and the case is steel over-molded with plastic. It’s a patent-pending design exclusive to Archos that makes it so thin and light. I love the way this tablet looks and feels, so I’m not sure what she was talking about in her review. Is it the best casing. maybe not but no problem for me and the viewing angles are just fine too…

  4. I’m waiting for a tablet with Honeycomb. As Apple has shown quite well, it’s the apps support that is the key. Without apps, what would the iPad be? Not much is the answer..

  5. Archos case design is obviously to make those the thinnest, lightest and cheapest Android ARM Cortex-A8 1Ghz capacitive tablets of the market. Joanna does mention these things a bit but then also bashes those a bit too much on subjective screen/case design opinions. If you ask most any user what they think of a 300gr 7″ or 480gr 10.1″ capacitive tablet design like this, compared to 380gr galaxy tab or 680gr ipad, most consumers are actually going to say they prefer the thinner/lighter/cheaper design. Then fact they add built-in hdmi/kickstand/usbhost/microsd/250GB option, full video codecs support and SDE firmwares (could potentially run other embedded Linux soon) only is icing on cake.

    1. Yeah but Archos didn’t partition the internal 8 Gig appropriately. See my reply below. This should be addressed as soon as possible to avoid a premature EOL for this device. It’s no big deal and can easily be implemented. Oh and there is no “Dynamic Storage” as you stated in a forum post on Archos Fans. It is merely Apps2SD within Froyo and with the lack of a truly sizeable /data partition (currently 300 Meg) it really is just “nifty” and nothing else.

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