ARCHOS GMINI XS 100
Archos Gmini XS 100
Manufacturer: Archos
Capacity: 3 GB
Weight: 3 oz
Audio formats: MP3, WMA, WAV
Works with: Napster, eMusic, RealRhapsody, LiveDownloads, BuyMusic, AudioLunchbox, RealPlayer, Musicmatch
Storage Type: Micro Drive
Battery life: 14
Design
The Archos Gmini XS 100 bears a striking resemblance to the iPod Mini, from its diminutive filler (3.6 by 1.7 by 0.5 inches, making it the aforementioned peak and broadness but noticeably narrower than the Mini, and at 2.8 ounces, a taste lighter) to its pure colors, which allow the none-too-subtle Volcanic Black, Techno Blue, Ice Grey, and Funky Pink. Once we’d spent a lowercase instance with the eye-catching, flyweight, and easy-to-hold XS 100, the iPod Mini wasn’t hunting so mini anymore, though the Mini does become in large capacities, both in 4GB and 6GB.
Just beneath the Archos trademark on the face of the contestant is the 1.5-inch, 128×128-pixel colored LCD. The pass is on the diminutive lateral but makes the most of its acquirable actual estate, envelopment in artist, album, strain title, and file/sampling info, as substantially as instance elapsed/remaining/total, a advancement bar, endeavor and advise modes, intensity and shelling indicators, the underway time, and modify the denomination of the strain that’s up next. Our exclusive upset is that the pass is sometimes andante to refresh, especially when skipping from digit strain to the next.
Beneath the pass lies the five-way navigational curb and the stop/back and menu/power buttons (all within cushy accomplish of our thumbs), as substantially as indicator lights for hard-drive activity, every embedded in a beautiful but easily smudged grayness panel. We had no pain with the Gmini’s illogical controls; we were zooming around the player’s different menus within a some minutes.
Along the crowning of the Archos Gmini XS 100 sits the USB 2.0 port, a headphone miniplug jack, and an AC port. Unfortunately, you’ll hit to acquire the AC noesis separately, though you crapper calculate the shelling via the USB port. Also absent is a stop slider, a diminutive but pivotal omission; instead, you crapper withhold the keyboard during playback by imperative and retentive downbound the schedule key. (Note: Holding it downbound disables the power-off feature.)
Features
The Archos Gmini XS 100 doesn’t hit the bells and whistles of another auto or modify flash-memory penalization players; there’s no FM tuner, no line-in or vocalise recording, no calendar or contacts, and not modify a mettlesome or two. But what the XS 100 does do, it does well. Setting up the contestant couldn’t be easier. All you hit to do is confiscate it to your grouping via the USB 2.0 port–the XS 100 appears as a lettered intend in Windows Explorer or a extractable intend in Mac OS X–and inspire and modify files and directories into the Music folder. Windows Media Player users crapper sync their playlists or libraries with the player, and a plug-in lets you designate MP3s using Apple iTunes, though not the penalization purchased from the iTunes Music Store. Once you’re finished transferring, the contestant automatically combs finished your music’s ID3 tags and sorts your songs by artist, album, and penalization for cushy browsing. A state for iTunes users: You crapper designate penalization to the XS 100 using iTunes, but your songs end up in the crowning directory kinda than the Music folder; you’ll hit to advise your files to the Music folder manually for the XS 100 to analyse finished your songs’ ID3 tags.
The Archos XS 100 plays MP3, WAV, and WMA (including DRM-protected and subscription-based) files, and there are plentitude of advise and reordering modes acquirable along with individual equalizer presets–including Rock, Techno, Jazz, Classic, Live, and a user-defined mode–but no simulated touch good or bass-booster modes, à la SRS Surround or MegaBass. You crapper create binary playlists on the fly, and there’s a two-paned programme fashion that makes it cushy to ready road of your itemize as you add and withdraw songs. You crapper also marker your songs, and patch there’s no autoresume feature, a Resume choice in the important schedule lets you manually garner up where you mitt soured on your terminal song.
The contestant boasts plentitude of options for power-management and pass settings, but as we mentioned before, there’s null in the artefact of extras. If you poverty to center to the FM farewell zoo, achievement a vocalise memo, invoke older medium tracks into MP3s, center to Audible books, or blackball instance with a mettlesome of Breakout, you’re discover of luck.
Performance
We were quite bright with the Archos Gmini XS 100’s good quality; we heard plentitude of high-end details, clunk bass, and lowercase or no hiss. That said, we desire the player’s intensity went up a shade higher; it does rise to near-rocking levels, but it water brief of the genuine thundery kind. The included earbuds aren’t bad, but we’d propose swapping them discover for a meliorate pair.
Archos promises 14 hours of playback from the rechargeable lithium-ion battery. CNET Labs was healthy to mobilisation 15.2 hours on a charge–not up to iPod Mini standards (21.1 hours) but ease decent. File transfers over USB 2.0 came in at a exemplary 2.1MB per second.