3. Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want It

The main function of the AV 400 is to reproduce digital content. To do this, it comes with all the necessary codecs.

The AV400 is also a complete MP3 player. It will play MP3s of up to 320 kbps, WMA and WAV recordings. The audio is pretty good with reproduction capabilities that do not distort the sound. You can't perform miracles with an internal loudspeaker of course, but can listen to the output on your hi-fi system through the input socket. The headphones are not that great, as is so often the case, and we advise you to replace them.

The AV 400 can even be used as a Dictaphone with integrated mike and a recording function, but it only records WAV or compressed ADPCM. It does not encode directly into MP3, which is a pity. As an option, Archos offers a remote FM tuner that you can use for listening to and recording radio output.

A Deluxe Photo Album

The photo formats only come in JPEG and BMP, but that should be enough. The AV400 accepts all sizes of photo and every type of compression except progressive. The display is automatically reduced to fit the frame if it is larger than the 2.5 x 1" (320 x 240 mm) screen. Photos can be copied from a computer or the integrated card reader.

The screen is nothing short of incredible. With its 262,000 colors, it reproduces photos with a sharpness and color fidelity that are impressive for its size. The reason is quite simple, as the screen is none other than that of the Palm T3.

One small beef we have with the display is that the non-reflection capability doesn't work that well, which is a pity. Nevertheless, the AV 400 can still function as a brilliant pocket photo album with massive storage capabilities. The only downside is the size of the photos. When it copies, the device does not resize the photos, although it's good if you simply want to reuse them elsewhere. This means, however, that they're just too big (5 megapixels APN, for example), the screen reproduction quality won't be brilliant and you will have to wait a while for them to display. The photos you might want to use in an album will have to be resized, preferably blown up to twice as large as the screen size so you can zoom in on them (640x480). At least the AV 400 also gives you a 3x zoom for the photo, which is handy for a rapid check of image quality. When traveling with a camera and the AV 400, it's great to be able to check if a photo has come out well so you can re-shoot it if need be. Of course, you could also view the photos on the TV. The quality is fine but there is a little flickering at times.