Archos AV500 review

The Archos AV500 is a portable media player with a big screen, big hard-drive capacity and big battery life. Yet it’s palm-sized and lightweight, meaning you can play or record movies or music anywhere, any time, with proper results. We think it’s the bomb.

How many movies in the palm of your hand?

And why? Well, it has a ton of features to get even the most difficult to impress salivating like a slack-jawed Doberman.

Two million, three hundred and twenty two thousand, nine hundred and one. That’s (roughly) how many features the Archos AV500 boasts.

But here’s the killer feature of this 4in widescreen machine: you take it out of the box, connect it to your TV, vault a few menu screens, hit the right button and before you know it you’re actually looking forward to that train journey from King’s Cross to Inverness.

The fact Archos adds 4.5hrs video juice or 15hrs music life, plus space for 85 movies or 15,000 songs is mere detail.

We were particularly taken by the excellent picture quality (especially the contrast) and the interface, which is really easy to get to grips with.