Archos Gmini 402 portable media player

Posted by T3 Online on Mon 29 Oct 2007

French boffins refuse to surrender in AV wars.

Cowon's latest PMP may have just raised the bar for this market but Archos aren't taking it lying down. Thier latest packs in a plethora of extras. Not just a music and movie player, it can also play games and view digital photos, and even - uniquely - has a built-in camera for taking snapshots or shooting video.

The camera has a 1.2-megapixel resolution, and is comparable to your average camera phone, so the pictures it takes aren't exactly razor sharp. When shooting video the resolution drops to a grainy 448 x 336. Even so, the camera is still a fun addition.

The meat and drink of any PMP is the video, and here the Archos performs admirably. It can't record from TV or DVD directly, but you can transfer video onto it using the "Sync To" feature in Windows Media Player 10. We tried it with episodes of Rome and the quality was silky smooth with none of the lip-sync problems that affected some earlier Archos machines.

The audio quality is also impressive. Nina Simone's Sinnerman sounded rich and full with the Archos doing justice to her amazing voice. The battery life is respectable too, providing ten hours of music playback and four of video.

The only real downer is the unwieldy operating system, which is sometimes difficult to get your head round. For example, you use the direction pad to enter menus, but once inside you usually need to use the buttons under the screen to change settings. It'd be much easier if you could use the d-pad for everything.

That's a relatively minor quibble, though, and the sheer range of features of Archos's player shines through. It's a miracle of miniaturisation.