Archos 101 Internet Tablet review

Unlike many of its competitors in the tablet arena, Archos has past form. As far back as 2007, the company was installing browsers on its large-format Wi-Fi media players, while its 2008 Archos 5 and Archos 7 products were actively sold as internet tablets. The 2009 updates even came with Android 1.5 preinstalled. This should have given the company an advantage when designing the Archos 101 Internet Tablet; it’s had time to get used to the ways of Google’s mobile OS, and opportunity to learn from past mistakes.

It certainly helps to explain why the Archos 101 is so distinctive, with a sculpted, thin-framed, slimline design that echoes its predecessors rather than the iPad. Weighing just 480g and measuring only 12mm thick, it’s a remarkably lightweight tablet, and while the plastics used in the outer casing can leave it feeling cheap, the underlying steel chassis makes it surprisingly robust.

Despite the compact dimensions, battery life is respectable: it managed three showings of Star Wars Episode II before giving up. This is in line with Archos’ claims: seven hours of video playback, ten hours of web browsing.

Inevitably, it’s the screen that draws attention. It’s a 10.1in, glass-fronted TFT with a 1,024 x 600 resolution, and at its best it’s bright, crisp and punchy. Unfortunately, seeing it at its best can be a challenge. Viewing angles in landscape mode are poor, particularly on the vertical, and it takes only a fractional tilt before contrast drops off and blacks invert. The situation worsens in portrait mode, particularly since the optimum angle isn’t quite face on as you might expect. And the Archos 101 is almost impossible to use in sunlight, with the high-gloss screen instantly transforming into a mirror.

Still, used indoors it’s a comfortable and usable device, and the Archos handles its basic tasks – web browsing and media playback – perfectly well. Browsing, using the default Android browser, is fairly speedy, with the Archos taking around eight seconds to load the BBC homepage. The capacitive touchscreen is sensitive, multitouch capable and responsive, and there’s no struggle to tap hyperlinks or buttons.

True, the Android onscreen keyboard isn’t a patch on Apple’s model, but you can still type with reasonable accuracy, and the fold-out “kickstand” on the back of the 101 holds the unit at a decent working angle (a neat touch others would do well to copy).

The Archos also fares well when it comes to media. With 802.11bgn WLAN support, we had no problems streaming audio and video from a Windows Media Center system across a wireless network. The Video app will play WMV9, H.264 and MPEG4 video files, plus MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG Vorbis and FLAC audio.

The only issue we found was that, while the Archos played H.264 content in MOV and MKV formats flawlessly, it refused to play a file in Apple’s M4V container. Note also that HD video content is limited to 720p resolutions. Playback quality, however, is excellent, particularly with detail-packed HD files, and the same goes for music provided you ditch the tinny speakers and put some headphones on.

Connectivity is another strength. We get Bluetooth support, a micro-USB port for data transfer to and from PC, a USB 2 port with which you can connect a keyboard, mouse or storage device, and a mini-HDMI connector that you can use to output the Archos’ display to an external monitor or TV screen. Plus, if you find the 8GB of Flash RAM on the base model limiting, you can always augment it with a microSD or microSDHC card in the slot provided. A 1.3-megapixel webcam sits on the screen’s left side, and allows video calls with the preinstalled Fring client.

In short, the Archos 101 looks promising. The picture starts to deteriorate only once you get past the basics. For a start, while Archos calls the 101 an Android 2.2 device, the early models actually ship with 2.1, with an update promised in the future. Until this happens, you won’t see the Archos running Flash. It’s also still clear that this is a vanilla smartphone OS that’s been tweaked to run on a tablet. There are frequent references to phones in options screens and menus, and some websites you visit will switch to the mobile version by default.

More seriously, Archos has taken the decision to avoid the Android Market in favour of its own AppsLib library, which only carries a subset of Android apps. While you can see the reasoning behind this – Archos doesn’t want to provide apps that its device won’t run – it also means there’s no Kindle app, no Angry Birds and no version of Gameloft’s 3D games, while Documents to Go is limited to the free, viewer version.

True, Archos preinstalls a selection of apps to handle eBooks, newspapers and social networking, but who wants to use Aldiko instead of Kindle, Touiteur instead of TweetDeck, or Archos’ own, rather ugly music player when other apps do the job in more style?

It’s a shame, because, even with the performance of its 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor hamstrung by a meagre 256MB of RAM, the Archos is a nippy device, and perfectly capable of running Android’s growing library of apps and 3D games. The overall effect is that, while the Archos 101 makes sense as a device for watching films or surfing the web, it leaves you wishing that it could do so much more.

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