4. Archos 605 WIFI, Continued

When you access media wirelessly through the music, photo or video player, you’re streaming them from wherever they’re stored; if you want to copy them to your device to take with you, there’s a separate file browser interface with two panes, and you can just drag and drop files across. They transfer quickly enough, depending on your wireless network. Register your player with Archos and you also get access to an online content store including YouTube, Burn Lounge and Cinema Now titles.

Shell out for the optional Opera browser and you can surf the Web from the 605, and add widgets when Archos finishes the specification (think weather forecasts, calendars and other RSS feeds); Internet radio is another future extra. Because it’s Opera most Web pages load correctly. We were able to view Flash videos on YouTube and Windows Media Player videos (which open in the full video player). The quality of online videos varies with the encoding; if it looks good on a PC browser, it looks good on the 605. Most CSS loads correctly, as do JavaScript menus and online banking sites (although not every page worked completely - on one site we could make payments but not check a balance). Cookies work, so you don’t have to sign into sites like flickr and LiveJournal every time.

Scrolling through long pages or zoomed-in photos by dragging your thumb up and down the screen works well. You can press buttons, tap Web links and type on the keyboard with your fingers rather than using the stylus (which is just as well as there’s no slot to keep it in). Zooming and navigating isn’t quite as intuitive; you have to open the menu, choose the function and then pick what you want to do.

The 605 has a handy kickstand that slides out so you can prop it up on a table to watch videos. It also has a speaker so you don’t have to put on headphones all the time (although this doesn’t give you the best quality or volume). The headphones supplied are the usual average in-ear buds and don’t show off the sound quality either; testing with the Shure E500s and Creative Aurvanas delivered a warm sound that’s the equal of most music players and the equalizer gives you a lot of control. You get the same equalizer options for videos too, and with the screen resolution, choice of codecs and high-quality video playback, this is one of the best video players you can get. You can also easily change the aspect ratio if you need to.

You can set bookmarks on both video and audio files, so you can save your place in an audiobook or cut out the end of the previous show on a TV recording. The 605 plays MP3, protected and unprotected WMA and WAV audio files but not Audible, FLAC, AIFF, OGG or WMA Lossless; you need the AAC plugin to play iTunes Plus files. For video, it’s MP4 including XviD and WMV, plus JPG, PNG, BMP - and even PDFs, so you can use it for ebooks.

Archos claims 17 hours of audio playback and five hours 30 minutes of video; we measured it at more like 13 hours of music and four to five hours of video, with only three hours for a mix of video, music, photos and Web browsing. Battery life varies with the type of content you watch or listen to, and while you can’t replace the battery, there’s yet another optional extra - a second battery that clips to the base of the player.