(+) Great screen quality and size, built in speaker and stand. (-) The only downside is that it is fragile, and can be hard to get used to the on screen keyboard.
Advantages: Huge Harddrive, Large Screen, Huge File Support Disadvantages: Poor Customer Support, Minimal Accessories
I will start with a conclusion. The ArchosGmini500 is better than the Ipod 5th Generation.
There is no doubt this product is fantastic, however, due to a huge marker in Ipods the archos does not stand a chance in getting its fantastic product across to its buyers. However, considering this, the price isn't at all bad. Once i purchased mine after a warey few weeks of decision making, i was pleasantly surprised when the product arrived. In a nutshell it was totally worth the money.
Lets start with the screen, it is a brillant looking large screen that once turned on shines nice and brightly and colourfully at you. In retrospect the amount of colours the archos can give off is 10x as much as the ipod.
Although the product is larger and heavier than the Ipod it is more of a media centre than an MP3/MP4 player. This is ...
Advantages: Huge memory for photos, music and videos. Disadvantages: Lack of accessories.
I have had my Gmini for about a year now. In that time I have only been able to listen to songs on it for about 9 months. It is a brilliant product, which is great for listening to music and watching films with. But the main problem is the lack of accessories and the availability of them. It took me ages to find a decent place to buy new headphones and a new usb cable. Apart from that though it is very good. It has a huge amount of memory, which you can use to store thousands of songs or photos and lots of movies too. The display is excellent and all of the colours are exquisite. the only other complaint I could have about this is the weight and size. it is a very big player and is really quite heavy, but for the amount of memory it has, it is expected. I would definitely recommend this and would have one over an iPod any day. ...
Advantages: Big sharp clear screen, great sound quality, massive capacity, removeable battery Disadvantages: A little bulky, Ipod menu and controls slightly more intuitive, no stand or cradle
Overivew
What can I say about this machine - it's a cracker! Like a lot of people, I waited for some time to buy a real "heavy duty" multimedia player. I didn't necessarily want to go down the Ipod route as clearly there are issues there around screen size, poor battery durability, susceptibility to scratches etc. So if, like me, you are searching for more than an MP3 player and want a machine that does many things well, then this is very close to perfect on that score.
Accessories
In the box, you get the 40GB player, audio and video cables, USB cable, AC adapter/charger, earphones and a carry pouch. The only niggles with these are, as usual, the supplied earphones are cheap sounding and won't do justice to the unit's quality. It would have been nice to get even a small plastic cradle or stand to pop it on so you need not ...
MS Windows XP, MS Windows 2000, MS Windows ME, Apple MacOS X 10.2.4 or later
Manufacturer's product description
ARCHOS presents its latest Pocket Multimedia Center allowing you to download all your movies, home video or recorded shows from your PC, store up to 160 hours of video or 400,000 photos and watch them on a 4" color screen on the go. The Gmini 500 offers all the digital entertainment you may expect form a Pocket Multimedia Center!
