Archos 504 digital media player review
| Design |
| It’s a beast to look at the Archos 504. There’s nothing subtle about it and it has been built to fit in a bag rather than your pocket. But you can excuse the bulky size when you see what it can do. The digital media player measures 5.1 x 3.1 c 0.9 inches and weighs 11.1 ounces but that means it can house a rather attractive 4.3 inch, 480x272 pixel/16-million-colour wide screen display. The silver brushed metal casing is really scratch resistant unlike the iPod and comes with really easy to use controls all lined up to the right of the screen. Each button presses either left or right to change options and there are large icons displayed on the screen to tell you what you’re doing. At the bottom you find the port for the docking station and at the top you’ve got the volume buttons. There’s also a built-in mono speaker included. |
| Setup/Installation |
| Like many digital media players you need to play around a bit to get the hang of things but it's fairly easy. Load up the software and you're ready to start transfering music via the USB 2.0 cable. |
| Features |
| This is where the Archos 504 comes into its own. Part of the Archos 04 series it’s very similar to the Archos 604, only it has a much larger storage capacity. People found that the 30GB versions just weren’t big enough so with the Archos 504 you can get 40GB, 80GB and this, the 160GB hard drive. The main menu on this media player include Music, Video, Photos, Browser, TV Scheduler and has VideoCorder, and AudioCorder options. There’s no FM radio but lets face it with all that music you’re hardly going to miss it. What’s really lovely about this is the revamped graphical user interface. You can play around with the background and the text as well as colour and customise your device to suit you. There’s a detachable battery which when charged gives you up to 5.5 hours of video playback and much longer as an MP3 player. In terms of formats, the 504 is compatible with MPEG-4 ASP up to 720x480 at 30fps, AVI files, and protected WMV. It doesn’t’ have DivX but we managed to watch some of ours on it. And obviously you can record directly from your plasma or LCD TV. In terms of pictures you can view BMP, PNG and JPEG and there’s a lovely slide show facility too. Oh did we mention you can zoom in and out of these slide shows. |
| Performance |
| If you like watching movies on the go this is just one of the best products out on the market. Picture quality is really bright and looks really good on the large screen. Widescreen AVI movies look incredible and programmes recorded from your look ace. Sound quality is good even at top volume and like the updated iPods it comes with gapless playback for your music. In terms of going through the different functions, the speed is responsive and as you flick through the menu there’s little delay and everything loads quickly. We like the thumbnail mode that allows you to see 54 thumbnail images and the magnify them as you pass over them, and the slide show is good too. Battery life, a bit of a gripe with many products seems not such a big issue with the Archos 504 with 5.5 hours of video and around 17 hours of music. |
| What's In The Box? |
| Archos 504, USB cable, Carrying pouch, Stereo headphones. |
| Overall Opinion |
| This is just a lovely piece of kit. As long as you don’t fancy taking it out on a jog the Archos 504 will keep you very happy. There’s plenty of space to store a library of music and videos and what you see and hear from it is clear and crisp. And the winning feature is being able to record directly from your TV. |
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Pros + Good screen size + Great picture quality + Can record from TV + Removable battery with good life |
Cons - A bit chunky - No FM radio |
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Appearance 8/10
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Media Capacity 9/10
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Ease Of Use 8/10
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Build Quality 9/10
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Value For Money 8/10
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Overall Rating 
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By Babita Wakelin
10/10/2006 at 2:47:38pm
10/10/2006 at 2:47:38pm
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