[Gen9, Gen10 General] rockmonkey1973:
i can only share my experience after one day. bear in mind i have hardly used it... mainly because i dont really have a need to as yet. i bought it to use as a media player (replace my wdtv live) and torrent downloader but havent had the time to set it up. obviously the bonus is it has a screen and a fair few apps that may possibly come in useful. it might even get used to read in bed but i have a kindle...enough said.

so at the moment my useage has been mainly downloading a few android hardware id apps because i was scratching my head wondering where the rest of my ram had got to. i honestly thought all 1.5ghz turbo models shipped with 1gb ram. my device proves that theory to be a myth. i have also called tech support who said they would get back to me today... i am still waiting.

CONS

thje touchscreen stopped responding to touches last night. sometimes it would work sometimes it wouldnt. gets very frustrating when you have to keep tapping at something in order for the tablet to do what you want.

not the fastest beast ever. i started browsing and opened about ten tabs and it ground to a halt. this may have caused the touchscreen to become unresponsive as above?

even though i have the omap 4460 running at 1.5ghz and yet i still only have 512mb ram. be very careful about which model you buy and i mean this. the 512mb ram version is obviously a lesser model and i think contributed to the above issue wihen surfing the net. if you can therefore have a look in the menu to see what you are actually buying.

terrible viewing angles.

cheap build quality - if you put slight pressure on the screen it will distort badly.

i have read that one must be very careful with the usb port because it can break very easily. makes me nervous any time i need to actually plug a cable in there.

as per the norm no ac3 support in videos.

tech support is pretty shoddy (this is simply my experience after the call i made yesterday and the fact that the promised call back never arrived).

it has a locked bootloader and development is pretty thin on the ground. it lacks a real community of modders mainly hampered by the locked bootloader. basically it aint that popular in the grand shceme of things and that means we wont get much in the way of custom roms. now before anyone starts...dont get me wrong the devs here are i am sure doing a fine job and i aint putting any of the work down (i havent even tested it yet although i will). what i am saying is that compared to any of the popular devices the modding scene is pretty threadbare.

PROS

Good media player with the ultra bonus that it can browse network shares as well as connect to upnp servers

i see it has an inbuilt media server... this is nice as it saves me having to download an app to do the job

it has an inbuilt remote control app so one can use the phone to navigate menus (havent tested this yet and i probably wont ever use it because i have a hdmi right next to where i sit but hey ho it is there)

apart from the build issue cons above the quality when it is sat in the hand is overall not bad at all. however it does feel a tad flimsy and i would hate to drop it or even have it fall off my sofa.

it is cheap i mean i got mine for about 110 quid brand new but without a box.

archos have pretty much left ics alone. there are a few apps that are pre installed and most of them are useful. there is also no skin on top which makes for a nicer experience in use.

the battery is a surprising. i charged it yesterday and it is still on 69 per cent left. granted i have used it for less than hour mainly jjust looking at my settings trying to figure out what had happened to the ram but hey... i am still quite impressed. lets put it this way it is a major step up from the 70it that i owned for a week or so. the battery in that was truely diabolical.

i think and this is a personal thing that the form factor is the best there is. it makes more sense to me to have a 4:3 format in such a small device but if it cant output at 1080p widescreen then i will be bitterly disappointed (i will therefore reserve judgement on this theory).

it has a kick stand which feels quite weak and one will have to be careful not to topple it over but for watching videos it will come in handy. it can also be used to simply prop it up and leave it as a dedicated digital picture frame.

i will say the audio from the inbuilt speakers aint that bad. it aint good though so dont be expecting hifi but then again i dont think any of the competition is any better.

so that is my experience of the tablet over the last 24 hours. i am going to spend some time with it tomorrow rooting the thing setting it up customising it and trying out some of the roms the devs have worked so hard to produce. hopefully they will go a long way towards making the machine an all round nicer experience. i will also be testing the hdmi output to me tv and seeing how it fares with torrents and media. if it can handle my media, download torrents and work as a digital picture frame then it will be money well spent. if it cant then i will be selling it on.

i will finish with this. it isnt exactly the coolest kid on the block so if style is more your thing go with the nexus. the nexus will also be quite a bit faster and the screen will be far better. however the screen on the nexus is also smaller, there is no way to expand the memory and there is no hdmi port.

pigs and troughs i say. for the price i paid at 100 quid the archos is pretty good value. however i wouldnt pay a penny more. if you can get it cheap then i say buy it (with some hesitation... dont come blaming me when you aint happy) but if you have to pay rrp then i would seriously look elsewhere.

EDIT: Doh i have made silly boo boo. its funny but it is only after i have bought the tablet did i think about the screen size format. obviously me telly is widescreen and the tablet isnt. so while it mirrors everything perfectly it is the same 4:3 format meaning major black bars down the dies. silly really i dont know why i didnt think of this before. it is the final nail in the coffin. so after owning it for about 2 days i have already put my 80 g9 turbo up for sale. OP think long and hard about what you want from a tablet before buying one and then ask yourself will it do all i need it to do. that way you may save yourself the same hassle i now find i have.