The Archos 605 WiFi is a touch screen portable media player, it is fairly old now (released 2007) and even when it was released it was no where near the standard of the first generation of iPod Touch. I still believe that it is good for its price (mine was £60 3 years ago) and in this review I will be explaining my reasons why.

The Archos itself:

The back of the archos is made of a very grainy sandpaper textured plastic, in fact I think it might be possible to use it as a nail file! Scratches are very visible as they appear lighter than the rest of the device. The Archos is quite thick in comparison to other devices of this style (ie iPod Touch). On the front features a large 4.3" resistive plastic touch screen and an array of 6 rocker buttons. Also there is a visible speaker (more on this later). On the left hand side there is a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and 3 LED's that provide statuses of the battery and WiFi.

Software:

The Archos 605 comes with a modified version of Linux created by Archos. It however isn't open source so custom "Apps" or "Mods" are not available (more on this later). There are alot of icons on the main menu screen for web browser (more on this later), video player, music player and other things such as PDF viewer. It is fairly customisable with wallpapers and colour schemes but you cannot move the icons about like iOS.

Apps:

There is no App Store for this device so you are limited to what is preloaded. A feature of this device is WiFi, HOWEVER Archos have been very cheeky and ask you to pay £20 for a slimmed down version of Opera Web Browser!!! You can download shockwave flash games but they run very slow and if they require keyboard then you are going no where. As mentioned before you can read PDF files but changing pages takes quite a while to load.

Video Quality:

Video quality is quite good, around the same as Standard Definition (Analogue) however getting videos to work on the Archos is a pain. The best way is to let Windows Media Player convert the file to the device during syncing.

Sound Quality:

The sound quality is fairly good on the device. The speakers provide clear and loud sound. No included headphones so cannot say much about that, but I can say the headphone jack works quite well using my own headphones.

The screen:

The screen is resistive and plastic, not like the capacitive glass screens found on newer devices. Included are 2 styluses but I dont use them as the screen is fine to type on and is good enough to navigate through the simple menus. It is 4.3" big which is .8 inches bigger than an iPod touch.

Battery Life:

Battery life on the Archos 605 is pretty average. It isnt as good as an iPod touch and I can only get 2.5 hours of video playback. Charging seems to take an age (charge overnight still not done in the morning!).