ARCHOS 105
Archos 105
Manufacturer: Archos
Capacity: 2 GB
Weight: 2 oz
Audio formats: MP3, WMA, WAV, WMA (secure)
Storage Type: Flash
Battery life: 18 
There are meliorate MP3 players than the Archos 105 acquirable at this price, but some with so super a screen.
The Archos 105 ($89) is a slim, affordable, 2GB MP3 contestant from a consort famous for its high-performance takeout recording players. Archos definitely stepped discover of its PVP richness regularize to create the 105, and unfortunately, it shows. Despite its baritone toll attach and recent design, the Archos 105 offers some features, a constraining capacity, and dull recording performance.
Design
With its anodized metal grappling and Nano-thin body, the Archos 105 looks aforementioned a streamlined metal candy bar. The Archos 105 measures a tall, still thin, 1.8 inches, by 3.3 inches, by 0.3 inch. Yet, in spite of its ethereal size, the Archos 105’s mostly metal cerebration lends it a strength not typically institute on budget MP3 players.
The guidance aggrandize on the Archos 105 haw countenance extraordinary at prototypal glance, but it’s essentially a accepted four-way content aggrandize with a edifice superior button. What makes the fish-shaped guidance aggrandize countenance so extraordinary is the superficially adjoining noesis and stop buttons that project soured to the mitt of the important guidance controls. While the organisation of the face commission controls is novel, we favour to hit the stop and noesis controls soured to the side, where they’re inferior probable to be unexpectedly activated.
From a organisation perspective, it would seem that the field action of the Archos 105 is the body of an antireflective 1.8-inch OLED colouration concealment on an MP3 contestant that sells for $89. After watch the Archos 105’s astonishingly inferior 160×128 concealment resolution, however, it becomes manifest that concealment filler isn’t everything. Admittedly, we’re belike gift Archos a harder instance than most because of its road achievement making superior takeout recording products much as the Archos 605 WiFi.
Features
The Archos 105 includes a penalization player, recording player, and picture viewer. Noticeably abstracted from the Archos 105’s features are an FM radio, vocalise recorder, or distinction recorder. To be fair, Apple’s wildly flourishing iPod creation distinction also omits the aforementioned features. But Apple is the omission to the conception in the MP3 contestant marketplace, and it’s thin to wager an iPod competitor with so some features to offer.
With its 1.8-inch concealment and Archos sort name, you would wait the Archos 105’s video-playback feature to be exceptional. You’d be wrong. The Archos 105 recording contestant supports an uninspiring 160×128 partitioning (half that of the iPod Nano), confident of activity exclusive WMV recording files encoded with a 15-frame-per-second rate. Despite our disappointment, digit of the Archos 105’s action graces is its knowledge to intelligently uphold recording playback where you mitt off, a feature seldom institute in budget recording players.
The Archos 105’s penalization contestant is astonishingly its prizewinning feature. Transferring penalization to the Archos 105 using Windows Media Player is a snap, but users who favour to inspire and modify files direct crapper alter the 105 into a Mac/PC harmonious USB hardware mode. The Archos 105 supports MP3, WMA, protected-WMA, and WAV frequence formats, which crapper be classified by ID3 attach attributes (album, genre, year, etc.) or as a program of personally designed files and folders. During penalization playback, the Archos 105 displays medium prowess thumbnails alongside road info and the denomination of the upcoming song. By imperative the schedule fix during penalization playback, the Archos 105 allows you to ordered your EQ planned (including a bespoken five-band EQ), add bookmarks to daylong frequence files, regain careful enter aggregation (bit rate, enter type, etc.), and modify create bespoken playlists.
Performance
For the money, the Archos 105 does a nice employ at both frequence and recording playback–but it’s null to yell about. With full-featured devices aforementioned the 2GB Creative Buddhism V Plus around the aforementioned price, the Archos 105 rattling necessary to blind us with its recording quality.
While perception to Radiohead’s Kid A, we were impressed by the coverall good calibre of the Archos 105, especially with a lowercase bespoken EQ tangled in. Low-end frequencies were heard understandably with plentitude of depth, and the middle- and higher-frequency sounds of vocals and auscultation were liberated of the wishy-washy densification artifacts we’ve heard in low-grade frequence players.
Archos rates the shelling chronicle of the 105 at 18 hours of audio-only playback. We’ll update this analyse with shelling results from our CNET Labs as presently as investigating is complete.
Final thoughts
If we’re existence frank, the Archos 105 is essentially the slummy man’s iPod Nano–it’s half the price, half the capacity, and half the recording quality. There’s no dishonor in existence thrifty, but you intend what you clear for.