Review of the Archos 7 inch android Tablet

Engadget has publish the long awaited Archos 7 Home Tablet review. You may remember last week that there was some confusion after Crave reported that the Archos 7 was 100% Android. If true, that meant that many of the video formats commonly couldn’t be played on  Archos tablets. Joanna was nice enough to test some video and disprove that however, so be rest assured that the A7 will play H.264, MPEG-4, AVI, MP4, MOV, FLV, Realvideo and MKV video files with ease.

So what else do you get from this $199 Android tablet?Price is quite lower.are you wanna get one piece at once.

 the Archos 7 features the same build quality as the popular Archos 5 Internet Tablet. It has a brushed metal cover that’s comfortable and a sturdy plastic frame. The 7-inch size fits nicely in your hands and its light weight (13.7 oz.) makes it easy to read, hold and use for long periods of time. Stern even compares the feel and use of it to the Kindle more than the iPad. The matte display is nice for viewing and the speakers are more than capable of producing a nice, full sound. Internet browsing is fast and the battery life lasts almost 7 hours while playing video.

On the not so bright side of things, the Archos 7 Home Tablet has a lot of problems. First is the clunky resistive touch screen. Stern had a lot of problems with it, but none that weren’t inherent with the screen technology itself. The lack of an accelerometer or access to Android marketplace were also glaring when it came to performance and ease of use. Although the A7 does come preloaded with some useful apps (like the Aldiko eReader, ColorNote and eBuddy) there were plenty of necessary apps that were missing. There’s no Gmail or YouTube (which aren’t available on the AppsLib store either) and there were no common ones like Facebook, Pandora or Slacker that were preloaded. It may not sound like that big of deal, but having to surf around to multiple Android sites to find apps you want is a PITA.

Stern’s final summary is that you basically get what you pay for. She’d like to see it about $50 cheaper based on what it does, but if you’re looking for a larger screened Android device with good media playback then there’s really no competition currently out there for the Archos 7 Home Tablet.