French electronics company Archos has been offering affordable tablets, media players, and other devices for a few years — and now the company’s getting ready to jump on the latest trends by offering low-cost alternatives to the Pebble smartwatch, Fitbit fitness tracker, and other wearable and connected home devices.

archos smartwatch and archos activity tracker

Archos plans to unveil what it calls “connected self” and “connected home” products at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

That includes:

  • Archos Smartwatch with a starting price of $50 and compatibility with iOS and ANdroid
  • Archos Activity Tracker is a wearable wristband that monitors footsteps and calories burned and syncs with your phone.
  • Archos Connected Scale measures weight, body fat, and recognizes up to 4 different users.
  • Archos Blood Pressure Monitor can remember up to 40 measurements and can also alert you to irregular heart beats
  • Archos Weather Station with indoor and outdoor information including temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, and more
  • Archos Smart Tracker keeps track of your pets… seriously.

Connected Home devices include objects such as cameras, movement tags, weather tags, and smart plugs that can monitor and react to the goings-on in your home.

archos connected home

You can control them with a Archos Smart Home Tablet or with other devices running the Archos Smart Home app. You can use the system to turn on the lights, start recording video when motion is detected, or perform other actions.

Archos is hardly the first company to get into the wearable, fitness, or connected home businesses… but with the promise of smartwatches selling for $50 and up at a time when rivals including Pebble and Samsung have models that sell for 3 to 6 times as much, Archos may be able to differentiate itself.

Hopefully it won’t have to cut too many corners in order to do so.

Update: In case you were wondering, it looks like Archos didn’t designed its new Connected Home and Connected Self products in-house. MiniMachines reports that most seem to be rebranded versions of products already available under the Transtek name.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,544 other subscribers

8 replies on “Archos to launch smartwatch, fitness tracker, connected home devices, and more”

  1. can any of the smartwatches do sleep tracking or vibration alarms?

  2. I agree with everyone else about being wary of Archos devices but I hope this pushes some other device makers into the same space. I would like some of these devices at a reasonable price…but not from Archos.

  3. Beware.Archos customer service is the worst one I have experienced. They release so many crap junk products a year and never support them.They have ideas and innovative products and announce 9 months before the actual launch of the product. Archos please release one good quality product and support them at least for 2 years.

    1. I’d be happy if they would just stick with a successful product, maybe refreshing it every two or three years, and continuing to provide support after the sale.

      As an example, the 5IMT/48 was a fantastic portable media player – the only one of its kind with a 500gb hard drive. Why on earth do they not come out with an updated version? That same basic frame could support a dual-core A9 processor, capacitive touch screen, Jelly Bean, and have the options of a 1TB HD or a 240GB SSD. Market it as a DVR and a portable media device instead of a tablet, include the DVR station as a standard feature, and work out an agreement to include an UltraViolet gift card and some MP3 downloads.

  4. You can’t depend on them SUPPORTING their products.
    I have an Archos 80 G9 that they didn’t even support thru one Android update. So, folks who buy this stuff, better expect the unexpected. At the least Archos could have an Ubuntu version for their “quickly orphaned” products (as they rush to get new out the door, they forget about the old, and the customers who just bought that stuff that ends up being NOT SUPPORTED)!!!
    Buy Archos at your own risk.

  5. Because they couldn’t inflict enough pain with their main products.

    1. …which are what, exactly? Archos seems to have an” identity crisis” at least four times a year.

      “Our tablets have kickstands!” (still the best feature on their earlier tablets)

      “Our tablets have hard drives!” (my 5 IMT is still tickin’)

      “We have Android-powered alarm clocks!”

      “We have super thin tablets with special keyboard covers!”

      “We have Android TV boxes!” (Whatever happened to those?)

      “We have tablets with gaming controllers!”

      “We have unlocked Android smartphones!”

      And now, for Q1 2014: “We have smartwatches and other personal accessories!”

      At the rate they’re going, I predict another failing line of tablets in Q2, followed by Android-powered replacement car stereos in Q3, followed by underpowered Android HDMI sticks in Q4.

Comments are closed.