4. Using The Archos AV 500

• AV500 30GB Portable...
• • Tech for Less Store
  • $376.57

The score so far: The AV 500 is tiny, its image quality is magnificent and sound reproduction is good. Surely it must be complicated to use? Nope. Here again Archos has done everything right.

Plug it into your computer (PC or Mac), drag and drop your documents, and you're done! And it is fast - it took us only 20 seconds to transfer 350 MB of data from an iBook to the AV 500. We did have to go into the player's System Preferences and choose the "Hard disk" option instead of "Windows device" and then reconnect the player to the computer, however. By default, the Archos tries to synchronize its content automatically with the Windows Media Player 10 library. The trouble is that if you don't have Windows XP or if Media Player isn't your main music management app, it won't work. For photos, the AV 500 also has a USB Host port that lets it download images directly from an external hard disk, camcorder or recent digital camera in MSC (Mass Storage Class) format. Recognition of DivX files was excellent as long as the format chosen wasn't too far from the standard ratios.

But this player's biggest attraction is its video recording functionality. Cabling it up - with or without the TV Cradle - takes only a minute. Once connected, recording directly or programming up to four different recordings really becomes child's play. If the function is available in your country, you can even use Yahoo! Scheduler to program your recordings. The manual supplied by Archos is clear enough to help you work out any problems. And the quality of the recordings in DivX is excellent. When played back again over the TV set, the loss of quality between the source and the copy was infinitesimal.

Its ease of use is not the only practical aspect of the AV 500. The accessories Archos bundles with it are also very useful. They include indispensable, standard ones (an AC adapter with a choice of U.S. or E.U. plugs, a pair of decent-quality earphones and the user's manual) and some that are very useful but too often forgotten by other makers, such as USB 2.0 and USB host cables, video in/out cables for U.S. and E.U. TVs, a remote control with batteries and a docking cradle to connect the player to a TV, video recorder or decoder. As an option, Archos even offers a portable mini-camera that connects to the AV 500 to make your own videos, directly in MPEG4.