My Archos 3 Vision Review

[saneonymous]

I decided to upgrade from my Archos 2 Vision, and unboxed my newly purchased Archos 3 Vision this weekend. My first impressions: the screen is flawless and has no stuck pixels, and the backlight is very bright, you only need brightness setting "one" to view pics and video in most conditions. I loaded it up with audio (fixed and VBR mp3 and FLAC), several different flavours of video (mp4, rm, rmvb, flv, mpeg, mkv, wmv, and avi), and pictures (bmp, gif, and jpeg/jpg), and tested it until it needed its first charge.

It has some problems playing back certain video file formats, showing "file format error" messages for many rm, mp4, and mkv clips, and dropping frames when playing back some wmv files. This player is perfect for playback of many avi files, as well as flv clips downloaded from sites like YouTube. Occasionally, the video "resume" function freezes playback in flv files, and you have to hit the "back" button and try again.

The touch screen takes some getting used to, and should be calibrated using the system settings as soon as you unbox it. I find the "fill screen" button in the video player to be the most difficult to reliably engage, possibly because it's also the same hotspot for the power button in the main menu, and the "wheel" in long file lists. This corner of the screen is also calibrated a little differently from the other 3.

Having the ability to customise the home screen is nice, but it would be nicer if the pic you selected became the background of all the menu levels. As soon as you navigate away from the home screen, other screens feature a boring black background. I understand that the concern may be over legibility of file lists, but I would rather have a uniform look than perfectly legible filenames.

Battery life is decent enough to commute to and from work watching your favourite TV shows and still have power left to browse pics and listen to a few hours of music.

The picture browser works well, with slideshow, zoom, and rotate functions. It doesn't seem to be picky about some jpeg's like the Archos 2 Vision, and it even supports animated GIF.

The voice recorder feature seems inferior to the A2V. I was surprised at how much more tinny and grainy it sounded. Unlike the A2V, there is no option for low or high quality recording.

The text reader has added utility compared to the A2V, with bookmark and font sizing features added.

The calendar is just that, with no ability to mark events. The stopwatch is many times more useful and fully-featured by comparison.

The FM transmitter works well as long as the earphones are connected and in close proximity to the receiver antenna, and you've matched the frequencies of the two devices to the same "blank" frequency. I'm amazed at how many people got this wrong and complained about it in reviews for this product!

For all its quirks, this is another great little player for the price. The larger display is spectacular, and the sound is great with the right headphones. I really hope that Archos releases a firmware update to address the few shortcomings of this device.