Archos 7o Internet Tablet 250gb review.

2:15 AM Lrence 2 comments

French tech maker and award winning innovator Archos has launched the first 250gb 7 inch slate in the 1st quarter of 2011, it's a mid range tablet offered by Archos which is priced at roughly 350 US dollars on the day of its release and costs at around 11,900 pesos in the Philippine market, it's ground breaking indeed for no other 7inch slate in its competition offers that much storage. The Archos 70 is also available in 8 gigabyte flash version.



The Archos 70 250 HDD variant is quite pricey for me, but then my uncanny ability to sniff out sales led me to a clearance sale at electronics boutique, the Archos 70 250 HDD has a cut out discount of 50% and is available until supply last. That said, the Archos 70 is an old device that needs to be cleared out of the inventory, in fact the OS itself is a tell tale sign of how old this device is, the A70 currently runs on android 2.2 froyo and an upgrade is unlikely to happen considering it's a 2 year old tablet, however 2.2 froyo is not to be overlooked, it is where the android OS really starts to kick off and still is quite competitive to date.



Archos has designed the A70 to be as slim and as light as possible, the 8gig version is just 10mm thick and weighs only at 300g, though the 250 gb variant is a tod thicker than its 8gb sibling and is somewhat heavy for a 7 incher, but then again, you have to reconsider the 250 gb hard drive inside its guts, so no complaints there!...... The overall built of the Archos 70 is excellent it doesn't come near the built quality of most, if not, all the entry level tablets out there and the design is uniquely Archos.

Under the hood, the A70 features a speedy 1ghz cortex A8 processor with DSP (ARM V7 architecture) but despite of it, the A70 is still laggy at times, especially when it comes to screen orientation, although to be fair it's a bit snappy when opening apps, and web browsing is decent enough, backed-up with a fairly responsive capacitive touch panel. This lethal combination made the A70 a serious web browsing tool nonetheless, though Archos didn't specify a clear description on its system RAM, but some reviews say it's a bit thin at 256 mb, so don't be surprised to see long lags while returning to the homescreen, bear in mind though, that you can always use the built-in task killer app to free up some extra memory. Well, infact I'd recomend that you make that a habit on the A70.



The A70 has a screen resolution of 800x480, a bit low for today's standards, however the A70's screen still manage to do a good job, color saturation is vivid enough to give it a crystal clear resolution but definitely not something to brag about. The 250 gb version is tailor made for multimedia on the go, a bigger storage could only mean bigger library for your movies, music and photos, and with a wide array of multimedia formats and codecs support, compatibility will never be an issue...... Watching 720p HD movies on the A70 is excellent and the built-in kick stand added more spice to the experience, though the lack of good viewing angles ruin the whole HD experience, tilt it downward and the WHOOO! will turn to BOOO!, but it's no big deal so I'm not complaining.


The A70 doesn't do well with skype, video calls works but loud statics interfere with the whole conversation, in fact you can't barely hear each other, skype chat do work fine though. What the A70 can't do good on skype it will do well on social networking apps such as; Facebook and Twitter, surprisingly, facebook is quite fast on the A70 and the built-in twitter app produced fast results and most importantly the 6-7 hrs of battery life will keep you in touch with friends for longer period.



Gaming on the A70 is more on the casual side, it has 3D OpenGL ES 2.0 graphic acceleration for improved gaming performance, but it's just isn't there, so don't expect Dead Trigger and Shadowgun on this one, it's just too under power to handle the latest 3D games, so if you are a hardcore gamer this is probably not for you, nevertheless, the inclusion of Bluetooth and a built in webcam is a welcome bonus on the A70, the front VGA camera which acts as a webcam captures both stills and video recordings, but the grainy resolution leaves much to be desired.


BOTTOM LINE: The A70 is one of the best froyo tab in its time and still is a capable tablet to date, however the lack of full adobe flash support tend to ruin the whole internet experience, it's been two years and still no full flash support from Archos! SHAME!


PROS: 250gb storage, Bluetooth, fast browsing speed, good built quality, 6-7 hrs battery life, HDMI out capability.

CONS: AppsLib market is thinly stocked, occasional lags, lacks full flash support.

Posted in: Tablet Review