Archos 7 Home Tablet

“At $200, much can be forgiven of the Archos 7 Home Tablet, since it offers such a large touch screen, HD video, Web access, free apps, and a lot more. But make no mistake, with an unpolished interface and a less-than-responsive touch screen, there's a lot to forgive. The Archos 7 is a fair deal—but don't say I didn't warn you about that finicky screen.”

“Stripped to its absolute basics, the Archos 7 Home Tablet is for the user who expects the bare minimum from his gadgetry. This isn’t a smartphone without the phone — it’s a smartphone without the phone or the smart. Nothing in the tablet takes advantage of the features that even basic Android devices on the market provide. Without multitouch, GPS, an accelerometer, or even a Home button, the use case for the Archos 7 can be frustrating.But hey, it’s 200 bucks. If nothing else, that’s extremely cheap for a device with a screen this large. Admittedly the Archos 7 doesn’t do much, but at least it doesn’t pretend to be magical.”

“The Archos 7 Home Tablet: 'tis really a story of you get what you pay for. We knew that the lack of an accelerometer, capacitive screen and access to the Android Market would be major downers, and, well, they were. Obviously, those things would jack up the price, and though the Archos 7 does some things decently, like play onboard videos and display e-books, for $199 we still wish it did more for the price, or was even cheaper.If you're desperate to get your hands on a large screen Android tablet and have $200 saved, the Archos 7 Home Tablet is really your only option at the moment, though we're hopeful that some of its soon-to-arrive competitors will impress us more.”

“What we have in the Archos 7 is a device that feels like it has been engineered to a price. And that's the scary thing about the Archos 7: the price is biggest plus point. The fact that it runs Android isn't such a benefit as you don't get to experience what the rest of the Android world takes for granted: those freedoms are denied, unless you are happy to hunt out new apps, something the average customer won't want to do.We can accept the build not being that exciting and at this price, we'll even forgive the screen, which really doesn't sell the device as well as it should. We find ourselves scratching our head over small design points that make the Archos 7 less user-friendly, like needing a separate charger and not having a volume control - simple things that detract from the everyday experience.So you have to see the Archos 7 Home Tablet for what it is. Given the right source, it is a capable video player and the freedom to expand the memory via microSDHC is welcomed and this makes it really easy to add content. The browser is good enough to quickly look something up online.But an all-round entertainment device it is not and we didn't find the Archos 7 to be quite as compelling as we hoped.”