3. Technology At The Leading Edge... Or Bleeding Edge?

Archos and Hitachi have achieved a real technological exploit in putting a hard disk into a player this small. Unfortunately, it has some shortcomings. Did Archos cut down on battery power due to size constraints? Possibly. In any event, whereas the Zen Touch has a battery life of some twenty hours and the iPod ten, the Gmini XS 200 had trouble lasting seven hours and 30 minutes. That's a fairly modest battery life given its storage capacity. Another problem is that the early models of the player had defective firmware. The result was random playback stoppage and shutdown of the device. As the packaging points out, downloading the firmware update from the Archos site corrects this. But rather than making the user do this as soon as the product is out of the box, wouldn't it have been better to correct the problem before going to market?

A Keeper Nonetheless

Despite its limited battery life, the Gmini XS 200 is worth considering if you're in the market for a hard-disk audio player. It puts up to 300 hours of music right in your pocket and plays it back without distortion - and with excellent quality, provided you change the earphones. It's simple to operate and really can be used as a removable hard disk. For $249.95, it would be a shame to pass up such a winning combination.

Above all, the Archos Gmini XS may sound the death knell for small capacity players. Will consumers, for example, now think twice before paying almost exactly the same price for an iPod mini that offers only 4 GB of capacity and doesn't even weigh a full ounce less than the Archos Gmini XS?