Archos 7 Home Tablet Review
The Archos 7 Home Tablet is the successor to the very successful release of last year’s highly versatile Archos 5 Tablet. Archos has to be given the credit for being the first market to place on the shelves a hundred percent Android tablet at a cost that is within the reach of most people. This time around, this French company is pushing the device as a “Home Tablet”, a third screen for entertainment, which means you will not have to fire up your laptop to check your emails or simply head online. It has been carefully named, as the ‘Home’ part is just Archo’s attempt to distinguish the affordable Android offering from a rather more famous slate. As such it pitches itself directly against Apple’s iPad, although there are the obvious differences in the hardware, size and most significantly, the price. If you are on the look for an iPad killer, the Archos 7 misses the mark, but it is sure not without its redeeming qualities.
Design:
Build and Quality:
Similar to most tablets in the current market, the Archos 7 Home Tablet does not have much to look at when it comes to design. It is a plastic slab measuring (W x H x D) 8” x 4.25” x 0.5”; the dimensions feel good in the hands and might even fit in a generously sized pocket. There is a slightly curved end which gives you something to hang on to and nestling it in two hands feels comfortable enough, although at 388g, it might feel a little too heavy to hold in one hand whilst viewing for extended periods. The rear has a contemporary brushed metal finish, matching the screen surround, whilst the ends and sides of the device are black plastic. The plastic parts do not carry the impression of being especially good quality, with the rough join visible, but at this price, you cannot be too critical as it does not detract from the user experience after all. The kickstand in the rear is welcome, as it allows the tablet to sit neatly over your desk table. However, this kickstand is plastic and looks suspiciously like it would be the first thing to break. It sets the screen at a comfortable angle for viewing when sitting.
Ports and Controls:
Taking a cue from Apple, the design of Archos’ Home tablet has few buttons and ports. Of course, you have a power switch on the top, accompanied by a microSDHC memory expansion slot. Moving on to the side, on the right side there are sockets for headphones, a Micro-USB port, and the included power adapter. There is a circular opening on the front of the tablet where you would expect some sort of cam, but unfortunately, that is just a placeholder at this point. Strangely, the Archos 7 will not accept power through the MicroUSB which is a bit inconvenient, otherwise you could charge it with the same charger you use for your phone, in the car and so on. Stereo speakers are mounted in the front at either end and you will have to make sure you do not cover these with your thumbs which holding the device. Apart from the speaker grilles on the fascia and an integrated plastic kickstand on the rear, that is about all there is to the tablet’s design.
If you are in search for a home button or a volume switch, you will have to be happy with the onscreen controls of the tablet. This is not to say that we are content about this, especially given the inherent response latency that comes with resistive touch screens, in comparison with the capacitive displays used on many of today’s smartphones. Despite the generous size of the display, it often takes a few tries before you can get to the onscreen home, back, and volume buttons to respond.
Onscreen Keyboard:
The onscreen keyboard of Archos 7 is another kind of disappointment. Yes you guessed it right, the sluggish touchscreen response is the major drawback, as is the lack of multi touch support along with the predictive text; however, it is the tiny spacebar of the keyboard that will really have you singing the blues. The design of the tablet is tiny enough that you would naturally want to hold it with both your hands and type with thumbs, like a giant smartphone. Unfortunately, its narrow onscreen space bar, logically located in the middle of the keyboard, is just out of thumb’s reach, which means, you have to cradle the tablet in one hand and type with the other. Things like scrolling are not so good, as sometimes, you will open a menu or press a link whilst trying to move a page around.
The key screen ingredient that is nowhere to be found? That would be an accelerometer. The Home Tablet 7 does not have an accelerometer, and even worse not a software utility or hardware switch for switching the orientation of the screen. This one has had us scratching our heads for the last few days, and really we do not see the excuse for excluding this type of feature in a tablet, unless Archos is morally opposed to vertical web page reading, which is highly unlikely since its Archos 5 is capable of it. As the tablet does not have reorienting feature on its own, when held in portrait mode, there is just one way to type on the screen, and it leaves behind much to be desired.
The All-Important Display:
The seven inch display on the Archos 7 Home Tablet has a few positive qualities that work in its favour. This backlit LCD screen has 800 x 480 pixels resolution, a 16:10 aspect ratio that provides the movies and photos crisp detail and balanced colour. That resolution might sound familiar, because it is the same as you will find in the likes of the HTC Desire and HTC Evo. Obviously this means the pixel density is comparatively low at around 130ppi, although this is a similar density to the iPad and most net books. The resolution, given the price, is adequate, as you do not need such fine detail as you do on a smaller mobile phone screen. The size of the display, however, means it is pretty easy to press what you want, so it does not suffer in the same way that smaller resistive devices can with mis-keying. The likelihood here is that your press may not be firm enough, rather than hitting the wrong stuff.
The plastic overlay on the LCD provides a matte, antireflective finish that stands up to outdoor use better than the iPad or iPod Touch, provided you have the screen brightness cranked to a certain level. This kind of finishing also provides the tablet better resistance to smudges and fingerprints, when compared with the glossy glass screen of the iPad and Touch. As you touch it, you can see the top film moving around, a sign that it is not of the highest quality.
Features:
Operating System:
As the Archos 7 Home Tablet employs the Google’s Android OS version 1.5, it includes most of the core apps, such as a Web browser, e-mail, media playback for music and videos, and photo viewer. Due to the hardware limitations, other features of the smartphone operating system have been removed from the tablet, including apps for maps, camera, messaging, and contacts. If you have used more recent versions of the OS on your phone, you may find it does feel a little dated such is the pace of change in the OS.
Home Screen:
Archos presents you with a three page home screen which can be dragged from left to right. A small number of widgets are available to drop and you can add links to apps or bookmarks for easy access. Applications can be accessed from the menu which you drag out from the right-hand side of the screen.
AppsLib:
If you are dreaming that this will be an Android wonderkid it unfortunately will not be. The major distinction to make between the Archos tablet and a conventional Android smartphone is that the included app store is not the Google’s Marketplace, instead, it is a collection of downloadable apps handpicked by Archos. It means you are left to deal with the AppsLib service. Some sites will offer apps when you visit a webpage, or you can download them directly in some cases, but searching and browsing AppsLib you will not find much that will get you excited. Archos representatives cited several reasons for using its own app store, the most notable fact is that many of the apps are not yet optimised for use on tablets and rely on hardware features that are not available, such as camera, GPS, and accelerometer control. All of this just means that the, users have to either do with the app selection provided on the device through Archos, or do some tinkering to load apps manually. This comes as disappointing news to anyone looking at the Archos 7 Home Tablet as an unrestricted gateway into the enormous world of Android apps.
A few useful Apps:
This is not to say that there are no good apps at all, as it also has some useful apps for the tablet too. Twitter fans will be able to download the popular Twidroid app. You also have games and Internet radio apps, for reading e-books, and apps for social networking. Aldiko is an ebook application that put your books on a shelf, rather like Apple’s iBooks does; Deezer is a music streaming service and eBuddy offers a universal IM client, although we prefer Nimbuzz, which you can download from their website. Daily Paper provides a collection of links so you can use the browser to get directly to online newspapers, those without a paywall at least. Some of our favorites were missing, including Seesmic, Slacker, Pandora, and Facebook. You might not be able to download the hot app of the week, or month, but there is just enough substance in the Archos app store to lend the device the kind of mutability you might expect from an Android product.
Capacities:
The Archos 7 Home Tablet has features that are independent of the Android operating system which includes an integrated microphone, a pair of predictably tinny built-in speakers, and a microSDHC card slot that supports up to 32GB of additional memory. Out of the box, the tablet comes with capacities of 8GB and 16GB, some of which is used by the operating system.
Formats supported by Archos 7 Home Tablet:
The 600MHz ARM 9 processor at the heart of the tablet has the ability to decode audio formats such as MP3, unprotected WMA, WAV, APE, OGG, FLAC, and AAC, as well as H.264, Real Video, and MPEG-4 video codecs with AVI, MP4, MKV, MOV, and FLV file extensions. It allows you to play back video files with resolutions as high as 720p and at 30 frames per second, although playback can get a little jerky with large files and lipsync was sometimes a problem, as the frame rate slowed. We found some of the normal codec oddities, like MPEG4′s that did not play, FLV as audio only, etc. You will have to figure out the codecs that will work for you and ensure that you have files in the correct format to get the best out of the Archos 7.
Performance:
Browsing:
We have already mentioned about the black spots on this tablet’s keyboard, the slow response of the touch screen, and few of the user interface quirks, so let us dive in to some of the other real world issues the affect its performance. The two major features of the Archos 7 Home Tablet are Web browsing and e-mail, both of which are provided though Android. Like most features of the tablet, these applications only work in landscape view, which is sometimes inconvenient, but mostly forgivable in light of the large screen. If you want basic media functions and to browse the Internet, or read emails, then you will have no problems. Well, we say no problems, but in setting up email, we found that the usual seamless configuration of Gmail did not seem to work and manual settings did not either, but there is always webmail.
For many people though, the opportunity to browse the net without a computer will be a real attraction. The Android browser is pretty good, and given the screen space available, the browser experience is also pretty good. It supports multiple pages and if you regularly visit the same sites, it is easy enough to flesh out your list of bookmarks to speed things up. Stepping around some of the app problems, we found that using the mobile page of some websites, like Facebook, gave a great result. Since there is no Flash support, you will not be able to playback all videos. Usually Android devices have a YouTube player, but sadly this is missing, so you will not be able to watch this flavour of video either.
Another quibble of the Archos 7 Home Tablet’s Web browser that even the experienced Android freaks will have to adjust to is the absence of pinch or double tap zoom control. By touching over a Web page, you can bring up icons for zooming in or out of the page, but tapping or pinching the page will not result in anything. This might seem to be minor quirk, but in spite of the tablet’s relatively large screen, you will still find yourselves needing to zoom in and out frequently. The lack of a gesture controlled zoom function is another reason why the Web experience on the Archos 7 Home Tablet is quite sluggish.
Email:
Setting up e-mail on the Archos 7 Home Tablet is just a breeze. Once you down load the unread messages, the e-mail app is just about the snappiest app on the entire device. Unfortunately, two problems plague this particular execution of the Android email app. The first issue, as we had mentioned earlier, is the onscreen keyboard’s cramped spacebar, lack of predictive text, slow response and multitouch support. The second major drawback of using the Archos 7 Home Tablet as an email machine is the lack of a contacts directory. Unless you are simply replying to incoming mail, to compose a new mail from scratch, you have to type the recipient’s email manually for every message. Apart from the big display of the Home Tablet 7, we found the similarly priced iPod Touch and its integrated contacts database to be a more efficient way to compose and manage e-mails while away from a smartphone or PC.
WiFi:
The WiFi support of this Android phone is limited to 802.11 b/g, which, when paired with the modest processor, does not make for the fastest browsing experience. When we loaded the full version of The New York Times Web site on the Archos 7 Home Tablet, Apple iPad, and Apple iPod Touch and noted the load time. Connected to the 802.11g Wi-Fi router, the Archos 7 tablet took 23 seconds to load the full page, whereas the iPod Touch took 30 seconds and the iPad flew in at 10 seconds. With the San Francisco Chronicle’s news site, on the Archos 7 it took 41 seconds, 44 seconds on an iPod Touch, and 19 seconds on the iPad. Though the Apple iPad costs more than what you may have to pay for the Archos 7 Home Tablet, we think it is fair to say it affords more than twice the download speed.
Audio and Image Plaayback:
The music and video playback of Archos 7 Tablet performance is not too shabby. Sound from the Home Tablet is a little tinny, but load enough for playing back music in your hotel room whilst away on business. The bundled headphones are of the hard plastic variety and easily improved on by connecting your own. The music player seemed to work well enough, displaying album art and offering a number of preset sound profiles. The photo viewer will let you make an instant slide show from your folders of photos. We found photo loading to be a little slow when asking it to access high-res images. The slide show flicks through smaller images, which do not fill the screen, at a more acceptable rate, but really it should be able to give you a ful lscreen slide-show without a problem.
Video:
Although the screen is not the best, there is no denying that playing back your video files on the tablet is good. Its media format compatibility is better than many of the portable media players we have seen and the big screen works nicely to offer this all. Note that, though, that you only get 8GB or 16GB of built-in storage before you need to supply your own microSDHC cards. It is also worth noting that volume control is handled by two awkward onscreen buttons; one for increasing volume and the other for turning it down. Video playback is also encumbered with the same awkward volume controls, and the viewing angles are poor when the device is tilted forward or backward.
Reader:
Talking about the Archos 7 as an ebook reader; whilst the five was a little small for that, the seven seems more naturally suited. Aldiko is the application to make this happen. It supports EPUB format, but not of the DRM variety, so anything you buy will be useless to you. To import books you have to put the files in the right folder on your SD card, but then it adds them on to the bookshelf. The application itself is fairly good, with the option to switch between day and night mode; black text, white background or white text, black background. You can swipe from page to page, and within chapters pages roll over at an acceptable rate for reading, which is faster than the refresh of an E-Ink device. As a way to read something on the train or plane, then we are sure it will be fine, but in the long term we would prefer a traditional ebook reader with support for DRM content.
Battery:
Video playback is also one of the best ways to engulf battery life, which Archos generously rates at 42 hours of music playback or 7 hours of video. You can achieve such good ratings with the screen of the tablet set on low backlight and may not account for Wi-Fi activity. With Wi-Fi active and the backlight set midway, you might get roughly 3 to 4 hours of constant general use like browsing the Web, checking e-mail, playing video on a full charge.
Package Contents:
In the box, Archos includes a pair of pretty crappy ear-buds, a standard mini USB to USB cable, and an AC adapter. Archos plans to sell the composite-out cable separately.
Warranty:
Archos offers its 7 Home Tablet one year warranty for parts and labour.
Verdict:
The Archos 7 is a device that feels like it has been engineered to a price, and that seems to be the scary thing about the Archos 7; the price is biggest plus point. The fact that it runs Android is not such a benefit as you do not get to experience what the rest of the Android world takes for granted, those freedoms are denied, unless you are glad to hunt out new apps, something the average customer would not want to do. We can accept the build not being that exciting and at this price, we will even forgive the screen, which really does not sell the device as well as it should. We find ourselves scratching our head over small design points that make the Archos 7 less user-friendly, like needing a separate charger and not having a volume control; simple things that detract from the everyday experience. So you have to see the Archos 7 Home Tablet for what it is. Given the right source, it is a capable video player and the freedom to expand the memory via microSDHC is welcomed and this makes it really easy to add content. The browser is good enough to quickly look something up online.
Depending on what you are looking for, your hard earned cash may be better spent an iPod Touch, Sony Dash, or a Kindle or Nook. But look, if you are desperate to get your hands on a larger screen Android tablet and have a few pounds saved, the Archos 7 Home Tablet is really your only option at the moment, though we are hopeful that some of its soon-to-arrive competitors will impress us more.
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Archos 7 Home Tablet Specification Details
| Manufacturer | Archos |
| Model Name | Archos 7 Home Tablet |
| Dimensions (H x W x D) | 203 mm x 107 mm x 12 mm |
| Weight | 388 |
| Colours available | Black |
| Display size | 7 in |
| Display type | Colour TFT active matrix |
| Display resolution | 800 x 480 |
| Display Features | High resolution touch screen with virtual keyboard Up to 16.2 million colours |
| Memory | Flash Memory: 8 GB and 16GB Extendable via micro SDHC Slot |
| Card slot | SDHC Slot |
| Camera | NA |
| Video | H.264 up to 720p resolution – 30 fps / 2.5 Mbps, MPEG-42 – 30 fps / 2.5 Mbps, Realvideo™ up to 720p resolution – 30 fps / 2.5 Mbps |
| Operating System | Linux, ANDROID™ 1.5 application framework |
| OS Required | Apple MacOS, Microsoft Windows Vista / XP / 7, Linux |
| Compatibility | Microsoft® Windows® XP, Vista, 7 or higher, Mac OS or Linux in mass storage mode |
| Messaging | Yes |
| Browser | Android |
| Internet | Yes |
| Communication protocols | WiFi (802.11 b/g) |
| Miscellaneous | 2 built-in speakers Leg stand Microphone |
| Computer interface | USB 2.0 interface |
| Wireless Connectivity | IEEE 802.11b , IEEE 802.11g |
| GPS Navigation | None |
| Music player | Yes |
| Audio formats supported | MP3, WMA (non protected), WAV3, APE, OGG, FLAC, AAC3 |
| Video formats supported | .avi, .mp4, .mkv, .mov, and .flv |
| Photo viewer | JPEG, BMP, GIF |
| Interfaces | • USB 2.0 Slave: Mass Storage Class (MSC) • USB 2.0 Host: Mass Storage Class (MSC) – Connect a mass storage device or keyboard & mouse (adapter micro B/A sold separately). • Micro SDHC card |
| Power | Internal: Lithium Polymer battery External: Power adapter/charge |
| Battery life | Music playback time: up to 42 hours Video playback time: up to 7 hours |
| Package contents | ARCHOS 7 home tablet, earphones, Standard USB cable (micro B/A), power adapter, user guide, legal and safety notice. |
| Warranty | 1 year |
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