ARCHOS 5 4.8-inch 500GB Internet Tablet

I bought this device to replace my iPod Touch.The first thing I love about this device, is that I can actually use a stylus with it, unlike the iPod Touch. The bad part is that it does not support multi-touch on the screen, which makes playing Gameboy and Nintendo emulators impossible, without a separate controller (can use a Wii controller over blue-tooth).Getting acclimated to Android after using the iOS for a couple years was somewhat challenging. I had to hunt down, and locate apps and widgets (using an Android Market hack) that could perform the duties I had come to rely on my iPod Touch to do. It took about 2 weeks to get the system ironed out and molded to my specifications, and get settled in. The Archos Market Apps are guaranteed to work flawlessly. The Google Android Market Apps are a trial and error process. Most of them work fine, or with few errors worth worrying about. A small handful of them don't operate properly on this device, but it's not enough to concern me.Unfortunately, I have not found a working version of Skype for this yet, but that is entirely Skype's fault. With the built-in microphone, it's hardware-ready for voip. The Heytell application works brilliantly on it.I bought the DVR Station dock also, that came with a free HD codec pack, which is not perfect. It can't cleanly play some video containers, but re-encoding fixes the issue, and I get clear, clean image quality considering it's resolution. Sound would not travel through the HDMI cable, but it was easily configured to transmit video through HDMI, and sound through the RCA jacks. I find this satisfactory.The GPS program works great so far. I have used it on a few occasions, and I'm very happy with the results.The main downside right now, is that it is running an antiquated version of Android, and currently has a very small partition of a few hundred megabytes for installing App Store Apps. This means that you are very limited in the number of useful applications and games you can install, despite the "500GB SD Card". (Which is not an SD Card at all, but an actual miniature Hard Drive, you can feel it spin-up while holding it and using it)I have put several movies and tv shows on it, plus my entire music collection, and have yet to even put a serious dent in it's total capacity.Overall, I already don't miss my iPod Touch. I don't miss having to jailbreak my device constantly. Everything my iPod Touch did, this thing does better. (except emulation).

This device has gotten some bad reviews. If you are like me and read them before purchasing, you will learn a lot about the functionality of the device. I purchased this as one of Amazon's daily deals for a great price. While I gave it 4 stars, there are quite a few bugs with this device, but I knew most of these when purchasing this device. This is not a device for someone who wants things to work perfectly right out of the box such as the Apple I-pod Touch (which my wife owns). Other reviewers have found that it crashes constantly. I find that this is most likely due to too many background processes for the Archos to handle. I find that if I shutdown all programs periodically in use, I rarely get any lock-ups or crashes.Positives:Great storage capacity. I also purchased the DVR, and I can store a ridiculous number of movies on this device in addition to other media. Great video quality even without purchasing the 720p upgrade.With a USB host cable or device (such as the Archos DVR), you can use USB keyboards and mice, in addition to portable hard drives. You can have a much more media accessible to your Archos over the limitations of your local HD.This is a media machine. It performs very well as a media player. I love using it to watch video and movies I recorded on it. The screen is the perfect size. Large enough to actually watch the movie, yet small enough to still be portable. The only drawback as a media player is listed below.Negatives:The ridiculous number of add-on purchases required to getting all the built-in functions working. Seriously, I am not going to pay for a crappy GPS service when I already have a GPS device. The requirement to purchase some video codecs bothers me since I can download these codecs for free for my Windows and Linux machines. The FM transmitter doesn't work unless you purchase the car mount. Fortunately most newer cars have audio line in, that provides much better quality anyways.The fact that the full android marketplace is not installed is annoying, but there is a work around for it. Compared to the I-Pod Touch, the Archos 5 IT responds a bit slow, but it is still functional. Like-wise, several of the apps on the android marketplace will not work on the Archos 5 IT, and some that do work will not use the entire screen since they were written for smaller phone screens. Another issue with the Android software is that the memory allocated to Android. It seems that I filled up my OS very quickly with a bunch of downloaded software. You would think with 500 GB of space, Archos would allocate at least 1 GB to the OS and associated software.The biggest complaint I have is that Cisco does not have a VPN app for android that works like they do for the I-pod. I would really love to access my work computer from the Archos so I can avoid taking my laptop on vacations. There is a remote desktop app that works on Archos 5 IT that would in my mind make it much better than the Apple I-pod touch, if only I could use it. Why did my work have to use Cisco?Overall:For a media player it is excellent. For an internet tablet it works reasonably well. Its size is a great median between the Apple's I-pod Touch and I-Pad. I highly recommend it for techies who like to have more versatility and media hogs that love to have lots of music and video files. The Archos forum will be your best friend in terms of finding out what you can and can't do with the Archos 5 IT.

I had to return it because it did not function well. I was reimbursed which relieved me but was not happy about not having the product.