Don’t forget about Archos

A lot of tablets lately are at or above the 9″ screen mark, but for many people this size is more of a burden than a feature. Many want something bigger than a phone, but still portable. And everyone wants flexibility. The Archos 5 tablet is a 5″ Android device that offers a lot of versatility in a handheld package. It has nearly all the capabilities you’d expect in a tablet, and more. Archos has been responsible for a lot of media players over the years and the French company knows  how to make devices. They also have a history of supporting more of the open media formats.

Here’s a descriptive video of the Archos below. This 5″ format is interesting. You can put it in a shirt or coat pocket easily. It’s big enough to read on, same size reading area as a mass market paperback and bigger for fat fingers to chat and text than a phone. The Archos built-in GPS allows you to subscribe to a full and enhanced mapping system. The TV antennae dock and ports for connecting to HDTV is unique and useful.

Other things to care about

Archos 5 has the ThinkFree office included so documents from your email attachments will be accessible on the road.  The battery life is going to be 7 hours of video playback and over 20 hours of music playback (screen sleeping presumably). Price starts at under $200 for 16GB and includes expansion with MicroSDHC cards.  You can go as high as a 500 GB version (but will have a spinning HD.) There’s also an Archos 7″ and 9″ tablet. At this writing, the 7″ is sold out. The 9″ runs windows and has a much shorter battery life.

Buggers

No camera on board. That’s unfortunate. It’s also running Android 1.6 and no mention of  updates to the faster and Adobe Flash supported Android 2.2. The app store is not the official Android marketplace so you might be limited in your downloads. No mention of multitouch, looks like a resistive touch screen. No mention of a stylus. This is a short list and all tablets have downsides, many more than this.

The Archos 5 product page (Be sure and click the Full View Specs near the top)