Archos is one of the more prolific budget tablet makers, and they recently unveiled their new line of “Titanium” tablets, and now a couple of models have started showing up for sale, both of which just happen to have the same screen size and resolution as the iPad 4 and iPad Mini, and they sell for about half the price.
First up is the Archos 97 Titanium HD. It is the most interesting of Archos’ new tablets because it sports a 9.7″ IPS screen with a super-high resolution of 2048 x 1536, as well as 10-point capacitive touch. It runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and fully supports the Google Play store and apps.
The Archos 97 Titanium HD also features front and rear cameras (2MP and 5MP respectively), a microSD card slot, two speakers, a microphone, USB host support, Wi-Fi, 8GB internal storage, 1GB RAM, and it’s powered by a 1.6GHz dual-core processor with a quad-core GPU.
All things considered it’s a pretty nice-looking tablet for $249. I’m thinking about purchasing one to review. My biggest question is battery life. Powering that many pixels requires a lot of juice, and Archos doesn’t list estimated battery life anywhere. In fact they don’t even specify the size of the battery. Hopefully it gets at least 6-7 hours.
Next up is the Archos 80 Titanium. It’s sized like the iPad Mini with a 8-inch 1024 x 768 screen. Otherwise it basically has the same specs as its larger brother listed above, but with lesser cameras, and the addition of a micro HDMI port. It sells for $169.
The interesting thing about Archos 80 Titanium, though, is there’s conflicting info about it supporting the Google Play store. At J&R, the description says it is non-certified and that it comes with access to the Appslib store. But then the picture for the device clearly shows the Google Play store, and the listing at Amazon and Archos both say it supports the Google Play store, so that makes a lot of sense.
The other two new Archos Titanium tablets aren’t showing up anywhere just yet. There’s a 7″ model for $119 called the Archos 70 Titanium, and a 10″ model dubbed the Archos 101 Titanium for $199.
via: Liliputing
In November 2011 I bought an Archos 7-inch 70 Internet Tablet (running Froyo). It’s main use was for extended traveling, when I had iffy online access… with its 250GB storage capacity, I could load my books and videos with no worries about being selective, lol. So the touchscreen is a bit laggy… so what. The device is still useful, and it runs the Amazon and Google app stores. Sure, I’ve upgraded to sexier devices since then, but the Archos continues to reliably serve my needs… and my other devices recognize it as external storage, so it’s all good.
I will look forward to your Archos 97 Titanium review, Nathan. It would be interesting to see how it compares with the iPad 4 (or 3). The potential for extremely poor battery life and/or non-premium display quality makes me nervous. However, if Archos does manage to get things right, they could make real inroads in the tablet market. So many Android users I speak to prefer the Jelly Bean OS to iOS, but they hate the 10.1″ form-factor of the larger Android tablets. This tablet could be the answer to people who love the iPad’s 9.7″ retina display, but want an Android 4.1 OS and microSD slot.
I went ahead and ordered one so I will indeed be posting a review in a few weeks. I can’t wait to see how the screen compares to my iPad 3. If it runs as smooth as a typical Android tablet with those specs and has decent battery life it could be a really nice tablet for the price.
That is good to hear, I am very much interested in your review of this. It is unusual to see such aspect ratio on an Android tablet. If everything else is good, that could a much cheaper and capable alternative to overprices iPADs.