Archos 405 Portable Media Player

(Review) - Archos is the company to look out for. Their products have been generally impressive historically, and the 405 promises to be another star in Archos' sky of product line. The Archos 405 is a small, portable unit that's designed to fit in your pocket. With the silver color scheme that sets a classy, sleek tone of the product with a row of buttons on the right edge, it's a natural fit for most users. The controls are slightly awkward with skip forward/backward functions located on the same key, but Archos has given the top and bottom functions their own keys. Why? Then there are the OK, Menu and volume keys that are also on the right edge of the player. Of course, you can't forget the headphones jack and a dock connector at the bottom. With Archos devices, there are a lot of hardware and software add-ons that are available for purchase separately, which is quite annoying and painful when you realize that you need to spend another $20 to get a specific add-on to play a particular format.

The 3.5-inch display is crisp and vibrant, though it has a matte finish, instead of the usual glossy one that a lot of other players have. Unfortunately, the display is still smudge prone, but the 480x272 resolution did a fine job distracting us from our fingerprints on the display. The 405 also has excellent viewing angles, and it's not until you deliberately look for fingerprints will you find them. They are nonexistent when the player is switched on. While we adore the device's small size, the lack of a back stand is noticeable. It's tedious to hold it in your hand or use a book (a big one) to help set the device straight up. But there's a solution. You can buy an extra battery from Archos for $49 that will solve this issue. Again, the dreaded price tag. You can also connect the Archos to your PC either with Archos' proprietary USB connector or the standard mini-USB connector. Thanks, Archos, for working on that.

Creative Zen MP3 Player

From a features standpoint, needless to say, Archos 405 is up to the mark. It's a music player, video player, PDF viewer, and photo viewer all-in-one. For audio, it can play MP3, WAV (DRM and non-DRM) and WMA formats. AAC is available as well, but you will have to pay extra for it. ID3 tagging works well, and the device sorts your music based on those tags. There's album art for visual selection, and the ability to bookmark certain selections in the middle, which is super useful, especially for students who prefer to record lectures. Similarly, with the video player, it supports MPEG4, AVI and WMA formats with 30fps and bookmarking capabilities. Navigating through video files was a breeze, but again, if you want to play other formats, such as H.264 and MPEG2, you will have to pay for it. This whole pay-for-options scheme is really starting to annoy us, even though we realize Archos has been doing this for years now.

Other than audio and video support, images and PDF files were vibrant and crisp on the small display as well.

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