Archos fans can order three new products directly from an Australian source, with Australian site minidisc.com.au announcing that they have the 97B Platinum, 101 Titanium and TV Connect.
For those not familiar with the Archos brand, they’re a French company who specialised in media players initally but have branched into a wide variety of products and have embraced Android along the way. I’ve found the Archos tablets previously to be quite good quality and pretty competitively price. Minidisc.com.au have a 12 month warranty on all three of the devices as well as a 21 Day DOA return period.
Archos 97B Platinum
The Archos 97B is available for $399 with free shipping, despite appearing to be an iPad clone it appears to be quite a decent tablet, the CPU is an Rockchip RK3188 Quad-Core CPU but apart from that, it looks fairly decent. It includes the Google Play store so you’ll have access to all your usual Games, Apps, Books, Music and Movies.
- 9.7″ IPS Display at 2048 x 1536 resolution
- 1GHz Quad-Core Rockchip RK3188 CPU and 8-core PowerVR SGX 544 GPU
- 2GB RAM
- 8GB + micro SD port (up to 64GB compatible)
- 2MP Rear camera with Front webcam
- WiFi
- HDMI output, Micro USB 2.0, 3.5mm Headphone jack
- Lithium Polymer battery
- Android 4.1, “Jelly Bean”
- 242x187x9.8mm @ 670grams
Archos 101 Titanium
The Archos 101 Titanium is also available, but at $299 with free shipping the tablet is modeled more on the traditional wide screen resolution found in other Android Tablets. The Titanium 101 comes with a slightly more powerful CPU than the 97B however the actual type of CPU is not listed. Again the Google Play store is installed so accessing your content shouldn’t be an issue.
- 10.1″ IPS Display at 1280 x 800 resolution
- Dual-core 1.6GHz A9 CPU with Quad-core Mali 400 MP4 GPU
- 1GB RAM
- 8GB + micro SD (compatible with cards up to 64GB)
- 2MP Rear camera with Front webcam
- WiFi
- HDMI output, Micro USB 2.0, 3.5mm Headphone jack
- Lithium Polymer battery
- Android 4.1, “Jelly Bean”
- 263x174x10.5mm @ 650grams
Archos TV Connect
The Archos TV Connect is quite an interesting product. Priced at $199 including the controller, it appears to be similar to the Android-on-a-stick style of products; however the receiver sits on top of the TV instead of plugging into the HDMI input directly. It’s a very interesting controller, it seems to be IR based however it’s not mentioned in any of the accompanying material. The TV Connect also supports uPnP and Samba wireless media sharing technology so you can stream multi-media content over your network.
- 1.5 GHz Smart Multi Core processor
- 1GB RAM
- 8 GB onboard storage with microSDHC Card Slot (up to 32 GB)
- Wi Fi
- Ethernet, Micro USB port, USB Host Port, Mini-HDMI Output
- Microphone and HD Front camera for video conferencing
- ANDROID 4.1 “Jelly Bean”
- ARCHOS TV connect, TV Touch remote, Power supply, HDMI cable, User guide
- 235x105x34 mm
The tablets look interesting, but the Archos TV Connect is what really intrigues me and I’ll be trying to get a review unit of the device.
Are they still around ? But I too am interested in the TV Connect product. I have also been looking at a product called Minix on eBay. Looks just like CrappleTV but running Android which makes it better 🙂
I don’t mind Archos products either. They used to make pretty good media players before tablets came along. Then they struggled a bit with their earlier incarnation of Android devices which has it fair share of critics but since then their products has improved.