Archos 604

I've used the Archos 604 for 6 weeks now and have only gotten more impressed over time with it. I'm an engineer by profession and truly despise poorly designed consumer products. I tend to wait to purchase a product until it actually performs it's function well. So I've been watching the Portable Media Player products for years waiting for the opportunity to jump in. The specs and CNET review of the 604 convinced me to finally jump in. I use my 604 mainly for entertainment while traveling for work. Being able to chose a set of movies to watch on the plane makes the travel more enjoyable. I am also into digital photography, so having a portable version of my photo collection is fantastic. While I also listen to music on the 604, I wouldn't call myself an audiophile.

You have to love the screen on the 604. You really can not appreciate how crisp and detailed photos and video look on it by considering its pixel resolution. You would swear that it is a higher resolution screen after seeing it. The size is just large enough to make for decent viewing with it on a desk in front of you.

I just got a DVR Station and successfully copied a 90 minute movie off my DVD player. The resulting MP4 file was 1 Gig. Archos could have provided better instructions for how to use the video recorder capability, but I figured it out after about 15 minutes of playing around. Once you figure it out, the video recording capability is very easy to use. I don’t have a cable box (my cable plugs right into the TV) and the DVR Station can’t accept a coax cable, so I can’t use the DVR Station to record TV broadcasts. That’s not a big deal for me. I downloaded the Archos MP4 converter to convert some home movies from AVI to MP4. The Archos MP4 converter is really a front end interface to run a different program that does the conversion (and that program needs the DivX codec installed.) After hours of playing with this, I got ok results, but it was more effort than it was worth. There are other converter programs available for $30 that are easier to use then the Archos MP4 converter.

The earbuds that come with the 604 are nothing special, so I bought a pair of Sony earbuds. I had to crank the volume up almost all the way when using the Archos buds, but that isn’t necessary with the Sony’s. Music sounds good coming out of the Archos (even with the Archos earbuds,) but I’m not a real audiophile so I can’t quantify “good”.

After a couple hours of navigating the menus and buttons, you get use to how the Archos interface works. It’s pretty well designed, and it is easy to remember how to do things.

I use Windows Media Player to transfer songs to the 604 and that works well. I put the 604 in PC Hard Drive mode for videos and pictures and that also works well.

I don’t know the limits of the battery life yet. I’ve used it for more than 3.5 hours with a mix of photos, video, and music and still had at least 1/3 of a battery charge according to the 604. I’ve noticed that the meter drops down to 2/3 charge pretty fast, and suspect that the battery monitoring circuit is not reporting an accurate value.


Overall, I highly recommend the 604. Especially if you want portable video and photo capability.