Disclosure: Some links on this page are monetized by the Skimlinks, Amazon, Rakuten Advertising, and eBay, affiliate programs, and Liliputing may earn a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on those links. All prices are subject to change, and this article only reflects the prices available at time of publication.
If you were paying attention to today’s round of daily deals, you may have noticed that the Archos Arnova 10 Android tablet is now shipping in the US. The 10 inch tablet is the latest budget model from French device maker Archos. It’s has a suggested retail price of about $199, but it’s on sale for the next day or so at Mertado for about $180.
The Archos Arnova 10 has a low power ARM-based processor and a 1024 x 600 pixel resistive touchscreen display. It runs Google Android 2.1.
While the Arnova brand is reserved for low end devices from Archos, like the company’s other tablets the Arnova 10 can handle 720p HD video playback with support for MP4, H.264, and RealVideo.
The tablet includes 802.11b/g WiFi, a G-sensor, front facing VGA camera, and SDHC card slot. It has a built in mic and speaker, and Archos says you should be able to get 6 hours of battery life when playing videos, or up to 40 hours when listening to music with the screen turned off.
over priced piece of trash this is
Arches sucks
Learn how to spell Archos and maybe then people will listen to you.
1.2Ghz capacitive version arriving imminently as well, same price.
Why so soon an upgrade? The question is about manufacturing ramp up, shipping and handling, software optimizations (Gingerbread, likely Honeycomb too depending on how quick Rockchip can get it). So even though I say the 1.2Ghz ARM Cortex-A8 RK2918 capacitive arrives imminently, that may only be the first few samples, while the 600mhz resistive already is shipping at full speed to all retailers. And in true, although goal is same price, there just might be a logical $50 or so gap between the two during the overlap time, to provide incitement to sell out all of the initial batch.
In any ways, it’s Arnova’s goal to bring $180 10.1″ capacitive 1.2Ghz ARM Cortex-A8 Honeycomb tablet with 1080p full high bitrate codecs playback, HDMI and USB host to the market. And all the way down to $100 for a 7″ capacitive with same specs. They are moving towards that as fast as they can, it’s all a question of timing now, hardware, software, manufacturing and worldwide sales channel delivery.
Basically it’s like that, instead of continuing to highlight Gen8 once Gen9 is out (to be fully announced in June with ARM Cortex-A9 1.6Ghz and 3G in June, and release before September), they continue to sell ARM Cortex-A8 capacitives with Honeycomb through the Arnova brand but at $100-$150 cheaper than the Gen9 high class but still sub-$300 product. Who here wants to challenge the fact that Archos is the best in the world?
For mid range tablets they’re pretty good, as long as you know what you give up for the price.
There are reasons why top of the line tablets cost more and it depends on what you intend to use the tablet for whether those extra features and/or extra performance are really needed or not.
Archos balances cost with features and performance for a more economical offering. Whether that’s the best will be up to each individual.
I do wonder if that full size usb can handle a bluetooth dongle.
Most tablets should include Bluetooth these days.
Good question though, as ARM tablets tend to conserve power and ports are either without power or under powered.
Usually those tablets with full size USB ports should provide enough power for Bluetooth, since they don’t require a lot of power to run. But it’ll be a good idea to consider a split USB cable and a USB power pack to supplement the power if you want to use any USB devices that may require more power…
For the smaller tablets that only have micro USB ports, you’ll definitely need an external power source and a USB OTG cable to enable the USB host controller to master mode as those ports usually can’t auto switch and stick to slave mode by default. Some like the Motorola Xoom may even require you to root the device as well.
It seems that the arnova line is the followup to the home tablet variants. As such they use Rockchip parts rather then texas instrument omap. And as far as i can tell, Rockchip have never made a product with bluetooth (tho i guess it could be added by using a third party chip connecting to a SoC bus).
Still, if Archos can build bluez into their Android variant i suspect most usb dongles should work.
Bluetooth can be added to any system as easily as WiFi, it’s the maker of the tablet that determines what is and what isn’t included.
The announced specifications for the Arnova include bluetooth and most of Archos other tablets include Bluetooth as well.
Got a link for that announcement? the arnova 10 page only list wifi under connectivity: https://arnovatech.com/products/arn_10/specs.html
Here’s one of a couple of sites listing bluetooth in the specs, https://thehotgadget.com/archos-arnova-8-and-arnova-10-tablets-review-price-specs-and-features.html/1836/
Though Archos has been known to change its mind on specifications or just weren’t ready. Like early release had the HDMI port disabled for example.
Or add something, like an OS update, later than originally announced. The 8th Gen tablets were suppose to come with Android 2.2 but didn’t get the update until about 2 to 3 months later.
There were also supply issues that caused release date changes for some of the 8th Gen models and with the market the way it is and what happened with Japan that could be the case again…
All these tablets are pretty much custom design and the ARM core only matters towards performance and doesn’t determine what extras are included or not. So just check out the final release specs and official reviews and not previews to be sure…