While doing some last minute Christmas shopping with my wife, I decided to look for a portable wifi device I could carry in case of internet emergency. I don’t like using mobile phones for browsing the internet. I wanted a full blown browser experience, and mobile browsers just don’t cut it in that department. Most of the physical locations I would use such a device would have wifi, and if they didn’t I could use my work cell phone which has a data plan(reserved for very extreme internet emergencies)
At Best Buy, my wife picked up an Asus Eee PC for just under $300. I was looking for something a bit smaller, even though the Eee is very small. I was looking for a handheld device with great browser support, a GPS, some storage space for movies and songs, and a good interface. The Eee lacked the GPS and as I said, it was a bit larger than the device I had in mind.
At first, I was amazed at the lack of availability in this type of product at our local stores. There were plenty of personal media players and phones, but there were no devices which served all my needs. I could have bought two or three devices but of course that wasn’t very efficient. I thought about an iPod Touch, but I didn’t want to shell out the money for the 32 GB version, since that is all any of the stores we went to had left. Also the iPod didn’t have the GPS capabilities I wanted.
After spending too much time in holiday traffic, we stopped at Circuit City. That is where I happened upon what appeared to be the only internet tablet within 100 miles, the Archos 5. From the box, it looked amazing. The version in the store had 250 GB of storage. It also advertised many other options such as an FM receiver, digital TV receiver, and GPS.
With all the features, the Archos sounded like a monster of a deal. So, I bought it and made my way home for the evening.
I’m a gadget junky so I opened it on the way home. I wanted to try out the GPS mainly. I was in for a disappointment. After spending nearly $500 on the device, I found that in order to use the GPS capabilities, it is necessary to purchase an accessory. This accessory amounted to another $100. Granted, the device has many pro’s that almost make up for the lack of GPS out of the box, it didn’t end there. The digital TV required another $100 accessory. Those two things alone dropped the value of the device too much to bear. Not to mention, every single piece of software I would want to run on the device was an extra fee.
When you buy this device, you are basically buying the right to buy more stuff. I detest this. It seems to be the direction electronic gadgets are going these days. Most are designed to force you to spend more money later on. It’s not good enough that I had already spent $500. No, I would have to spend another $500 to get something I could actually use.
That is THE con of this product. Many of the features advertised are only available after buying something else. This con is the primary reason I took the product back to the store. I came close to keeping the device because some of the features it did have were amazing. The screen was brilliant. Movies looked great on it. The built in speakers were very good for the size. The touch screen worked well enough. It was lacking compared to the iPod Touch and iPhone, of course. It also seemed to lag a bit too much while navigating menus.
Overall, the Archos 5 is not worth the price.
I’ve decided that for my personal internet tablet, I’m going to go with the Nokia n810. From all the reviews I’ve read, these are very good devices with all the capabilities I require.
Here is my review of the N810, which I consider a more useful product.
http://pda.gotmineforless.com/
