Archos JukeBox Studio (6 GB) MP3 Player

This could possibly be the perfect music player. When I reviewed the original Archos Jukebox, I had a lot of complaints about the unit. When I saw this new jukebox+recorder on the market I was skeptical. I picked up the new Archos Recorder because after seeing their first try I was confident that they could get it right this time around. Was my confidence misplaced?

The laundry list of things that were wrong with the first attempt by Archos to make a portable harddrive based MP3 player are all ironed out in this revision of the venerable MP3 player. The two biggest concerns that I had with the original (and the reason why I eventually returned that unit) was the sound quality and the strange placement of the volume control. The sound quality of the original was tinny at best -- no bass and all treble. The volume level was good, but the unit just did not sound good. With this new revision the sound is excellent -- there are actually three ways to adjust the bass and with all three turned on the bass will make one go deaf. Kudos to Archos for fixing this. The second large complaint was based on the reason that in the original unit there were no volume control buttons, one had to navigate through a menu to adjust the volume. This oversight has been fixed with this revision of the unit also, there are two buttons that are used to control the volume without having to go through a menu -- thank goodness.

If you don't know about the Archos HD-MP3, or what I call the Archos Recorder, let me tell you about it. The Archos Recorder is basically a unit that is not much more larger than a 2.5" notebook harddrive -- and that is exactly what this thing is. The Archos Recorder is a 6GB notebook harddrive that is wrapped with the necessary electronics to make it a portable MP3 player and USB harddrive. Plug the unit into your computer via the USB port and you'll see an extra harddrive in your Windows Explorer, drag and drop your music files over to the Recorder. It's that easy to put files on the unit. The Recorder is about the size of three Palm Vs stacked on top of each other and easily fits in the palm of your hand. The difference between the Recorder and the original unit is in the name. This unit can also record MP3s on-the-fly. Something I've yet to use, but maybe I'll find a use for it later.

The benefits of having a MP3 player that is built around a 6GB harddrive over a standard solid-state unit are obvious. The first and foremost being that you can carry almost all of your music with you at once. With this unit you can put the songs in shuffle and not hear the same song twice in days.

Since the unit is based around a harddrive, jogging with it is probably not recommended because of the moving parts -- and risking having the harddrive heads smash into the platters from the jogging motion. But for a business traveler like myself or for a student who studies in a library a lot, this unit is fantastic. It does beat having to carry around a CD player and a stack of CDs.

Some of the lingering problems with the unit are joined by some new problems. Although the unit is great, there are some problems that have been carried over from the original. The playlist shuffle is still broken, the shuffling has been known to scramble harddrives and also when I use it, it continues to play one song over and over again when there is a long list of other songs to play. The firmware is not as sophisticated as the Creative Labs Jukebox. The only way to sort music is via folders in Windows Explorer, there is no way in the firmware to cross-reference or search for a different type of music based on the MP3 tags. The new problem is not with the electronics but with the aesthetics. Archos decided to make the Recorder look more sophisticated by coating all the buttons with a silver reflective paint. The problem is that the paint is cheap and doesn't want to stick. After a few pushes of a button the paint will start chipping off making the unit look old and beat up. The included headphones are decent, but for a few bucks go get better ones and toss the included ones.

The Archos does have a lot of good points though. The biggest of them being the battery life. On a set of NiMH batteries (two sets are included!) I can get up to 14 hours of actual play time with this unit. This is amazing when you compare it to the other HDMP3 player on the market, the Creative Labs Jukebox which gets less than two hours on the same amount of NiMH batteries! Again, the sound on the unit is fantastic, rivalling any top-of-the-line CD player. The Recorder, like the original unit, acts just like a harddrive so there is no worry about moving music to and from the unit -- or any other files for that matter. No worries about SDMI here. One other strong point to mention about the Recorder is the display. The original had a terrible display that didn't really display much information. The new display displays twice as much information and is very readable at the same time.

Reliability still seems to be an issue with Archos. But though I've read many reports of failed units, mine has yet to experience and failures (fingers crossed). Archos does seem to be consistently updating the firmware on these machines and they are quite good at fixing problems. To update a firmware, just download the correct firmware file from the Archos website (www.archos.com) and unzip that file onto the root directory of the Archos Recorder and the next time you start the machine it will be recognized.

Overall the Recorder is a great machine and is worth every penny that I spent on it. There are still some flaws with the machine, but they can be overlooked because the machine is just so wonderful. I do hope that Archos listens to this round of feedback from customers and incorporates that feedback into their next unit. The Archos Recorder is definitely a winner though.

Update: 8/10/2002 - I just upgraded the 6GB harddrive myself. I replaced it with a 30GB harddrive and now the machine is truly spacious! I can't seem to fill it up, even with high bitrate encodings.