Archos JukeBox Studio (6 GB) MP3 Player
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- Number of Songs: 1500
- Usage: Music Recording
- Interface: USB
- Main Storage Type: Hard Drive
- Storage Capacity: 6 GB
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An OK harddrive based MP3 player
Pros
6gb of MP3s in the palm of your hand.
Cons
Questionable sound quality, strange control scheme, quality issues.
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
If you can live with the shortcomings of this unit then this might be the unit for you. Otherwise wait for the second generation of harddriveMP3 players.
The Archos Jukebox 6000 at first looks like a great little box. It's the size of a Palm device, it's light, it has a 6gb harddrive for lots of music, and it acts like a harddrive. But once I got to using the machine the small problems started to come up.
First is the way that the machine's firmware is upgraded. I've experienced this and this is why I returned the machine, some others say this hadn't happen to them. I wouldn't recommend trying this. But, when you upgrade the firmware on this machine it installs a file called "ARCHOS.MOD" at the root directory of the harddrive. When, out of curiosity, I removed this file it rendered the USB port on the machine dead. I could not connect to the unit anymore. Strange.
Second, the sound quality of the machine, even with the newest firmware revision, is tinny at best. There is no bass response on this machine (I used some large headphones that get great bass response on other units). The unit has no umph to the sound.
Third, the control scheme really bothered me. Navigating around was OK. But the volume control really was badly designed. Instead of having two buttons dedicated to volume up and volume down they stick the volume control inside of a menu. So in order to adjust the volume I had to push the Menu button, scroll to find the volume menu item, select the volume menu, and then I could adjust the volume. That's a lot of button pushing for a common function that is used a lot.
I'm not sure about the contruction of the unit also. The battery compartments are very difficult to get to (I had to bend those blue bumpers farther than I was comfortable bending them to get to the batteries). If you push lightly on the back of the unit you can actually hear the harddrive grinding on metal -- not a good thing, since I know most of us won't actually push the back in, but what if it were in a bag with things pushing up against the unit? The firmware is not as refined as the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox. There is no cross-referencing of songs base on album, type, artist, or anything. The only way to sort songs is via folders (something that might be difficult if you're trying to find a song on a 6gb volume). Also playlists cannot be made on-the-fly on the unit itself, instead I had to use WinAmp to generate a .m3u playlist then drop that file on the unit. This is cumbersome at best.
There are good points to the unit though. The unit is light and can easily go into a coat pocket. You can put a hell of a lot of MP3s on the 6gb harddrive. And the biggest thing going for the unit is that it acts like an external harddrive when plugged in. This is great because you can store files other than MP3s on it if you want. Plus you don't need to use any special software to transfer songs to and from the machine. Compared to the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox the battery life on this unit is tremendous at around 8 hours.
First is the way that the machine's firmware is upgraded. I've experienced this and this is why I returned the machine, some others say this hadn't happen to them. I wouldn't recommend trying this. But, when you upgrade the firmware on this machine it installs a file called "ARCHOS.MOD" at the root directory of the harddrive. When, out of curiosity, I removed this file it rendered the USB port on the machine dead. I could not connect to the unit anymore. Strange.
Second, the sound quality of the machine, even with the newest firmware revision, is tinny at best. There is no bass response on this machine (I used some large headphones that get great bass response on other units). The unit has no umph to the sound.
Third, the control scheme really bothered me. Navigating around was OK. But the volume control really was badly designed. Instead of having two buttons dedicated to volume up and volume down they stick the volume control inside of a menu. So in order to adjust the volume I had to push the Menu button, scroll to find the volume menu item, select the volume menu, and then I could adjust the volume. That's a lot of button pushing for a common function that is used a lot.
I'm not sure about the contruction of the unit also. The battery compartments are very difficult to get to (I had to bend those blue bumpers farther than I was comfortable bending them to get to the batteries). If you push lightly on the back of the unit you can actually hear the harddrive grinding on metal -- not a good thing, since I know most of us won't actually push the back in, but what if it were in a bag with things pushing up against the unit? The firmware is not as refined as the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox. There is no cross-referencing of songs base on album, type, artist, or anything. The only way to sort songs is via folders (something that might be difficult if you're trying to find a song on a 6gb volume). Also playlists cannot be made on-the-fly on the unit itself, instead I had to use WinAmp to generate a .m3u playlist then drop that file on the unit. This is cumbersome at best.
There are good points to the unit though. The unit is light and can easily go into a coat pocket. You can put a hell of a lot of MP3s on the 6gb harddrive. And the biggest thing going for the unit is that it acts like an external harddrive when plugged in. This is great because you can store files other than MP3s on it if you want. Plus you don't need to use any special software to transfer songs to and from the machine. Compared to the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox the battery life on this unit is tremendous at around 8 hours.
