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Archos 704 WiFi
Testing
The review unit I received came pre-loaded with a bunch of pictures, a variety of music, a few different video clips, and what looked to be a DVD ripped version of Batman Returns. Getting your own media on the device can take place in a number of different ways. Using the USB cable to attach the 704 WiFi to your PC is probably the quickest and most straight forward, but connecting to your wireless home network is another convenient and relatively simple process, if not quite as fast as USB. Another cool alternative to actually copying files onto the 704 WiFi's hard drive is to just wirelessly stream media to it. Again, this is a pretty simple process once you're connected to your wireless network, since you just browse to the computer your files reside on, select the desired shared folder and file, press "play' and that's it. In my testing the streaming option didn't degrade performance, sound, or image quality by any noticeable amount. Navigating the 704 WiFi's GUI (graphical user interface) is a mixed bag. All of the major functions are just represented as icons until you "tap' them once and then their names are displayed as well. This makes things a little difficult to navigate at first, but once you start to remember what they all do, it shouldn't slow you down much at all. The 704 WiFi's touch screen is the biggest culprit in terms of slowing down navigation, simply because it seems to not be sensitive enough to pick up a relatively high percentage of user input. After spending some time trying to find the best way to control the 704 WiFi it became evident that using a stylus with a very small tip is almost a requirement. Using the tip of your finger to manipulate the UI simply won't work 9 out of 10 times, or at least with my fingers I should say. Using the tip of a fingernail works better, and the included stylus works better yet, although even then I couldn't get every "touch' to register 100% of the time. It's not that the touch screen is a "broken' feature, but it is a little more annoying to use than it really should be simply because it misses a few too many "taps.' My favorite feature of the 704 WiFi was easily the video playback, which is really what the device was built for. At least in terms of size, the 704 WiFi's 7", 800x480 resolution screen is far more impressive than that of most of the competition. Still images and video can both look superb on the 704 WiFi, the video frame rate isn't an issue in the least, and brighter images especially can look absolutely dazzling, but there are some limitations as well! The most noticeable problem is the way images get washed out with off-angle viewing. Granted, this is a "personal' media player, so in most situations this shouldn't be a problem if the user is holding the device and can achieve the optimal viewing angle. The unfortunate thing is that the effect is worst when viewed at an angle from below the screen, so if the top of the 704 WiFi is tilted even slightly away from you, a lot of contrast is lost. This means that if you want to rest the 704 WiFi on your lap, or use the kickstand to set it on a flat surface, you'll more than likely be looking at it from one of the least flattering angles possible. The effect can range from being annoying, to just downright unwatchable if the movie/video is relatively dark most of the time. The Batman Begins video for example had a lot of dark scenes, so unless I was watching at an angle that was extremely close to "straight on,' it was hard to make out any of the action. The 704 WiFi has the potential to support a large number of different video formats. I say "potential' because out of the box you'll be missing support for MPEG-2 and H.264 formats. This can be remedied by purchasing and downloading plug-ins from the Archos online store, each of which will set you back $20 a piece, or $30 if you purchase the two bundled together. Archos must've had both plug-ins installed in the review unit I received because I only had an error trying to play one video because the resolution was "too high.' The video in question was a gameplay video I had recorded with FRAPS, and had a resolution of 1280x1024, which obviously must have been too large for the 704 WiFi to handle. In terms of battery life, the 704 WiFi supplied just under 6 hours of continuous video playback on a full battery charge, which is slightly better than its 5.5 hour rating. Music and audio in movies/videos was as good, or slightly better than most other media players that I've used in the past. The built-in speakers are just there so you don't have to use headphones to listen to something on the 704 WiFi, so don't expect to get any decent audio out of them. The 704 WiFi has the potential to decode AC3, and AAC audio files, but again, only after you purchase the two plug-ins from the Archos online store. The AC3 decoder comes with the MPEG-2 plug-in, and the AAC support comes with the H.264 plug-in. The 704 WiFi is fairly unique in the portable media player market because it supports wireless web browsing via the built-in Opera based web browser. Unfortunately this feature is fairly crippled in many regards. For example, the browser doesn't support Java, or any kind of Flash, which means the vast majority of cool things to do/look at on the Internet aren't even a possibility on the 704 WiFi. Not only is a whole lot of the web simply "off limits' because of this, but the browser loads every page painfully slow. A page with an average amount of content took around 15-20 seconds to load in my testing. The wireless networking is quite fast (thankfully) in comparison to the web browsing, and makes transferring files to and from your computer/s a breeze even without a USB connection.
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