Archos Gmini XS 202s 20 GB

Author's product rating:   

Sound Quality	Excellent
Ease of Use	Very Easy
Look & Design	Good
Range of Features	Average
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Great sound, small, tough, stores loads of music
Disadvantages:	Monochrome screen, no album art or photos, few accessories

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

What is it?

This is a pocket sized portable music player that can hold up to 10,000 songs.

The Manufacturer

Archos is a French electronics company, founded in 1988, which now specializes in making portable music and video players.

How do you use it?

You load music (or other audio such as language-learning material, audio books and podcasts) onto a computer and then transfer it to the player with the cable supplied. Listen with headphones or you can plug it into some newer car stereo systems. It can also be plugged into a hi-fi system (suitable cable needed, not supplied) and played through speakers, so you can carry your entire music collection in your pocket to other people’s houses and annoy all your friends. Additionally you can use it as a portable hard drive to store files and documents, for example to transfer them from one computer to another.

Construction and Design

The player weighs 118 grams. It has a very solid feel and I have found it be robust, durable and well made. The metal casing is black with a silver strip around it and 3 silver control buttons. The 2 inch monochrome screen is slightly recessed. I have been using mine every day for over a year and it has never let me down or developed any kind of problem; it has been totally reliable. Unlike the iPod, it is not prone to scratches or easily damaged. I have never used a case for it (it just sits in a shirt or jeans pocket) and it still looks like new.

As to the size of it, if you compare it with a standard pack of 20 cigarettes it is the same width but slightly shorter and thinner. It fits easily into a small shirt pocket with room to spare.

The design is simple and unfussy. Some people think it is lacking in style but I don’t agree.

Sound Quality

I have listened to iPods and other types of MP3 players and the sound from all of them is frankly very similar to me. The sound quality of the XS202S is up there with the best of them – solid, tight bass, sweet treble and clear midrange. The stereo separation is excellent too. It amazes me that such superb sound can come from such a tiny object. What does affect the sound quality to a great extent, however, is the choice of headphones you use…

Headphones

The Archos comes supplied with a set of earbud-type headphones in a silver and black finish with a long cable and standard 3.5mm jack plug to connect to the player. The phones supplied with all portable music players tend to be of the cheap and nasty variety and the Archos is no exception to this. They produce a fairly poor sound from the player; thin and over-bright with weak bass and a general “muddiness” and lack of clarity to the sound. Added to that, I found them uncomfortable to wear and infuriatingly, they kept falling out of my ears every few minutes, resulting in my trying to listen without moving my head at all, a near-impossible feat which also served to make me look as though I was suffering from a neck problem.

The answer is to ditch the Archos headphones (or perhaps keep them as an emergency spare set) and replace them with a decent set. I use Sennheiser CX300 headphones (see my separate review on Ciao) and they transform the whole listening experience, showing what this player is really capable of. They improve the sound tremendously, they are comfortable and they don’t keep falling out of my ears. So no more people asking if I have a stiff neck.

In the Box

Archos haven’t pushed the boat out here. You get the player itself, the Archos headphones described above, a mains charger, a USB 2.0 cable and a Quick Start Guide. The full instruction manual is included as a pdf file on the player but it’s just as easy to download the same pdf file from the Archos web site (www.archos.com). There is no case provided.

Synching with the PC

Although the Archos can be used with iTunes and other applications, it is optimized for use with Windows Media player version 10 or 11. There is no special software provided or needed. Media player is included as standard with Windows and is simple to use; most people will already be familiar with it. Transferring music to the player is pretty painless and it supports USB 2.0 so it is fast too. Archos recommend plugging the player into the mains while transferring files so there is no risk of running out of power part way through. It supports WMA and WAV formats as well as MP3, a definite advantage over the iPod. It is also a certified “PlaysForSure” device so it is guaranteed to work with online music stores that use that system.

Controls and Display

There are just 3 buttons on the player, the middle one being a small joystick that you use to scroll through the list of songs and select what to play as well as controlling rewind, fast forward and volume control. It’s quick to learn and easy to use. The display is monochrome with a blue background and backlighting. It shows the artist’s name, album title, track title, next track title, time elapsed and time remaining. There is also a battery indicator and a clock. The display is clear and has all the information you need but it looks a little old-fashioned and unexciting compared with an iPod display. I suppose “functional” is the best way to describe it.

There is an equaliser to change the sound settings to rock, techno, jazz, live, classic or your own custom settings. It’s worth experimenting with different settings as they make quite a big difference to the sound. Strangely, I find it best to use the “techno” setting for most music as it gives a full, rich sound with strong bass. To my ears the “rock” setting is too treble-heavy and over-bright for rock music.

Living with the XS202S

My priorities for an MP3 player are that it has good sound quality, small size, a large capacity and that it is reliable and durable. This player ticks all those boxes. The 20 gigabyte capacity means that for most people you can carry your entire music collection in your pocket – several thousand songs, even when recorded at high quality. The battery life is excellent; Archos claim it will play for 17 hours on a single charge and I have found that to be quite realistic. You can create playlists of your favourite music and there is a “shuffle” setting to play tracks at random as well as a “scan” setting that will play the first 15 seconds of each track. Another feature I like is that after you have switched the player off, the next time you switch it on you get the option to carry on listening from where you left off just by selecting “Resume” on the screen.

What You Don’t Get

This is a no-frills music player. There is no radio built in, no flashy colour screen, no video or photo viewer and no iPod-style touch controls. There isn’t the plethora of accessories and add-ons available that there are with the iPod. If you insist on a colour screen, there is a newer model available, the XS204, which is similar in all other respects but can store and display colour photos and album art. If you really want to use iTunes this player probably isn’t for you – get an iPod instead.

Do you get style? Well, that’s down to individual opinion: it doesn’t have the immediate “must have” looks of an iPod Nano but it is small and cute with its black and silver finish and it feels solidly made even though it fits in the palm of your hand. I think it does have style but does it really matter? After all it will spend most of the time out of sight in your pocket.

Tips

From my experience with this player I would offer the following bits of advice:

1. It really is worth downloading the instruction manual pdf from the Archos site (www.archos.com) and reading it before you lay your hands on the machine. It contains some important in formation and useful tips that will save you a lot of frustration that you might experience if you just dive in and start using the player.
2. Use the latest firmware. This is the player’s operating system (like Windows on a PC) and it needs to be up to date to ensure there are no bugs in it and it functions properly. The latest version at the time of writing this (June 2007) is v.2.2.02 and it can be downloaded from the Archos web site (www.archos.com). Make this one of your first jobs when you get the player.
3. To get the best from the built-in lithium ion battery make sure you charge it fully as per the instruction manual before you use the player for the first time. It really will help the battery to live longer.
4. This is a 20GB player but don’t be alarmed when you see only about 18.7GB available before you have even loaded your first song. The Archos uses a hard disk for storage, just like a PC. The disk has to be formatted to receive data and has the operating system (or firmware) pre-loaded – that is what is taking up the first 1.3 GB or so of space. This applies to all MP3 players that use hard disk storage.

Price

I believe the full retail price is £169.99 but this player has been on the market for quite a while and has recently been replaced by the XS204 colour model. I paid £119 over a year ago and it should be possible to find it for less than that now. I think this makes it excellent value for money and I doubt that there is another 20GB player available so cheaply.