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Archos 504 - 160GB Portable Media Player | 
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| Brand: Archos
Category: CE
Buy New: £179.99
New (3) from £179.99
Rating:  12 reviews
Media: Electronics
Fragile: No
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 1.7 x 7
MPN: 500865
Model: 500865
UPC: 690590508651
EAN: 0690590508651
Release Date: November 14, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | 160GB | | • | Reads all standard video formats in full DVD resol | | • | DVD-quality video playback on TV with optional DVR | | • | Records directly from TV in high-quality MPEG-4 wi | | • | Bright 4.3in LCD with 16 million colours |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The ARCHOS 504 is the PMP with the biggest storage capacities ofthe Gen 4 range. Available in 80 and 160GB* versions The ARCHOS504 can store up to 4505 movies and its bright and luminous 16/9screen brings you the best portable video experience. Watc
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Everything you need to store your valuables! March 7, 2007
Mr. Akin Malas (Sheffield, UK)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
I am not going to tell you much, but Archos 504 stored all my videos, music, pictures as well as my business back up files. I had an external hard drive and an ipod. I've collected everything together in this piece of brilliant gadget and sold my ipod and external hard drive in Amazon. It is very relaible and faster than my wife's Archos AV700. A couple of suggestions for more reliable experience though. Use it in Hard Drive mode rather than Window Media format. Simply copy your files into dadicated folders. You may need to purchase the additional plug in to run some video files, but I suggest you purchase DIVX package (cheaper) and convert your files to DivX (MPEG4) and Archos accepts divx perfectly.
Best Archos considering its reliability and the capacity. Enjoy!
Great Product!! March 20, 2007
Colin Dindial (London UK)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I have the av700 but the 40 gig drive was too small for all my movies, so I went for the 504 160 gig and I am not disapointed. The screen is brillant and I can't be happier. I only use it for movie playback so I'm not sure what the music sounds like it.
The 504 does not have a stand like the 700 so purchasing a case with stand would come in handy. Also purchase the "Archos Docking Adapter" and use the power supply rather than charging from your P.C. using the USB.
If you are wondering whats the best way to put your movies onto Archos google "Slysoft"
Enjoy
i own the 80 gig version May 4, 2007
A. Latif (norf east uk)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I already own the gmini 500 and love it so when Archos brought out the 04 range i splashed out and purchased the 80 gig version and the docking station, i had researched very hard and even bought a well known "fruit!" mp3 player and though it had some nice features i sent it back as i was unhappy with some of the other features, so i turned my attentions back to Archos and i have not regretted it, the pic quality is excellant and sound is great and i love the fact it is sooooooooooo easy to load songs.movies and pictures via the pc onto the device ( it can be set like an external HD) and also it has the pictbridge so you can connect your compatble digital cam to transfer photos direct so if like me when i went on my hols you can come back to the hotel each night put the days pics onto it and thus leaving the cams memory free for the next day
I think it's great April 1, 2008
twoboats (UK)
Very pleased with the 504.
Plays just about everything out of the box - except MP4 & podcast, for which you need to buy codecs from Archos. They're device id specific, so pirate downloads won't work.
Bought it from Pixmania for about 100 less than the going rate, just over a year ago. Pixmania aren't that great at customer service - paid for express delivery, but with their messing about to verify identity, it took nearly 2 weeks to arrive.
Impressive portable media device with a few annoyances February 7, 2007
Johnmcl7 (Inverness, Scotland)
124 out of 130 found this review helpful
I've had one of the early Archos portable video devices, the AV340 for a few years now. I've always been impressed by the fact that Archos seemed to set out to make as much good use of the hard drive as possible creating a device which was extremely flexible. As time has gone on though I've been wanting more space, better video support and usb host capability. With Amazon offering this 160GB model for just 300 pounds before Christmas, I decided it was time for a new one.
Out of the box, the new Archos looks much better than its predecessor with a sleek brushed metal look to it. Things only get better as you power it on as you're greeted with a beautifully bright widescreen with a heavily revamped interface which is far more attractive. It keeps the simple functional layout of its predecessor but with smooth animated icons and more pleasing use of colour.
It's still a fairly hefty device which is no surprise given it packs a large screen and 2.5 inch hard drive - if you're looking for a slim device to slip in your pocket this is not it. Archos do offer the 404 and 604 with 1.8 inch hard drives making them a lot slimmer but frustratingly they're only available in 30GB capacity which is a bit small for video devices. You get a case in the box but it's a bit of a disappointment - the Archos slips into it and has its buttons and screen completely covered which means you need to take it in and out to actually do anything with it. More annoyingly, when the Archos has its buttons disabled the volume controls still work and the controls easily catch when they're in the case (as the Archos is 'squeezed' in to keep it in place) so I'm frequently turning the volume down when I take the Archos in and out of the case.
The controls for the Archos are mainly down the side, which consist of several rocker switches that can be pressed to the left or right. They work well enough but there's nothing on them to identify them by touch when you're fumbling for the buttons to change track. The naming and symbols of the lower buttons doesn't make much sense at times either, for example ok means start recording and then it means pause whereas a cross means end recording - judging by the way some people handle the Archos I think it's a bit confusing. There's also a 'swapover' button which allows you to jump between columns for building playlists, or switch from the music playing part to filelisting etc. which isn't entirely obvious. Along the top you simply have a large power button and another button which either switches from the internal LCD to the TV or hold down to lock the Archos controls. Along the left hand side you have a few lights to indicate the state of the Archos, the back is dominated by the battery which can be removed to reveal the 2.5 inch hard drive and on the right hand side there's just the line out.
Along the bottom you have the new Archos interface which is sadly completely non-standard - this is where you plug the usb data lead, dock the Archos and plug various other accessories into. This is one of my big annoyances with the new Archos, your only connections are the headphone port and the proprietary connector - I would have liked to have a standard mini USB connector and TV out functionality without a dock. You could argue that they're trying to keep space down but the older Archos was able to have TV out functionality within its headphone port. At least the Archos can both charge and transfer data when you plug in the supplied data lead, the AV3xx series required a separate charger with no usb charging which was irritating. Like many mp3 players, you have to rely on usb charging unless again...you fork out for an additional dock which comes with a mains charger for convenience and also charges the Archos faster. Below the controls you have a small internal speaker, while you can't expect to playing back music at any volume or quality it's pretty handy for showing someone a video clip or bit of music compared to the older Archos which relied on headphones or external speakers to actually hear it.
Onto the device itself...
The video functionality of the Archos has improved massively with far better support, I found I could play very few videos on the AV3xx unless I had encoded them myself. As you browse your videos folder you are shown a small animated thumbnail of the clip but also the details of which codec was used for both audio and video when encoding it. This is useful in cases where a video doesn't work (I've found it a bit iffy with some wmvs) as I can see why the Archos isn't playing it without having to analyse it with a codec application on the computer. I've had no trouble encoding my own DVDs just using a standard xvid codec and playing them back on the Archos, they look superb on its bright 4.3 inch widescreen. As mentioned in the other review here, the Archos doesn't support all formats out of the box which means you have to buy plugins from Archos if you want them - Quicktime being the one that caught my eye. I haven't tried the procedure yet, I generally avoid quicktime anyway and I'm finding most of the videos I have play fine on the Archos. During playback you have the option to skip forward a bit or a lot...may sound like I'm being vague but that's the way it is, if you hold down either button the Archos accelerates through the movie clip which makes it difficult if trying to get to the last portion of your video clip. In general though, I find the video playback excellent making the Archos a real pleasure to use. Unfortunately I've not been on long enough trips recently so I haven't been able to test batterylife properly.
With its size and weight, the Archos isn't an ideal mp3 player but I've been very pleased with it in this role. Something that irritates me about a lot of mp3 players these days is that they try to be too smart - as a recent example I picked up a Creative mp3 player which didn't seem to have any facility to browse its file system. Therefore any album without any id3 tags such as one I'd ripped without internet access and was named only by the folder name was completely ignored. That was unless I opened it up under the 'all tracks' mode which was a little tedious scrolling through 8GB of music...the Archos offers both modes, you can either browse the filesystem or navigate by artist, album, rating etc. The archos supports the usual mp3 format plus it's a 'Microsoft Plays for sure' device for copy protected wma files, when you hook the Archos up to a PC you have the option of using it a standard mass storage device, a windows media device or simply leave it to charge - perfect! The Archos has a simple playlist editor which gives you a two column view with your library on the left and the playlist on the right, you just pop the tracks across. When playing music the interface is fairly standard, it shows the current track, the previous and next track's name and a picture of the album art if available. I'll be honest, I'm not audiophile but the quality of the music playback sounds good enough to me! Batterylife seems ok, I've not done any methodical testing yet plus I frequently dock it but it seems good for at least six or seven hours.
The photo functionality of the Archos initially seems good, it has usb host capability (through optional dock), huge 160GB capacity and a decent screen to view them with. As you open the photo application it also looks great, it shows a large grid of thumbnails which enlarge as you browse through them - you can then flick to full screen to view them in detail, zoom in or transition through your collection. So where's the problem you may ask? Well, due to the above I dumped all my photos on which is around five years worth - the Archos has indexed every single one so that useful grid view is useless as it now contains 15,000 pictures which would take forever and a day to scroll through to find the one I want! All my photos are split into subfolders so you'd think you could get this useful thumbnail view in these subfolders...nope, all you can do is browse them by their jpeg icon making photo browsing exceptionally difficult. Furthermore it only seems to support around 1,000 pictures per folder which is further annoyance for me. If I'm wrong on the above, I'd love someone to correct me as this is one of my biggest frustrations of the Archos.
To keep track of all your music, photos and videos the Archos maintains an 'arclibrary' - this contains all the mp3 information so you can browse by artist, album etc., the small movile samples to use as thumbnails and the thumbnails for browsing your photos. When you add new media you get an update screen telling you the arclibrary is updating which all sounds as you'd expect. Unfortunately my Archos seems to take a while doing it at times, it's sat there scanning for new files for five minutes when I've only put a single video clip or picture on. I'm not sure if this is a fault of my unit (which seems fine otherwise) or if there's any way to disable this feature, it's something I need to look into. Powering down the Archos during this long wait doesn't seem to initially cause any problems but I'm getting a crash when I resume music playing using the resume function (which is meant to take you back to the video or file you were playing when the Archos was powered down) so this is possibly my fault. The device doesn't crash entirely, to be more accurate the music player does - if I leave and re-enter, all is well. Aside from this glitch the Archos appears to be completely stable, with the earlier model occasionally it would crash entirely forcing the entire system to be shut down and restarted.
Unlike the older Archos devices, this one doesn't come with everything in the box - as I've mentioned throughout this review, various functionality is available through three additional docks. These consist of a PVR dock for using at home, this gives you full quality recording capability, dc charging and usb host functionality. The travel dock simply allows the Archos to be dc charged and usb host functionality and then travel video dock gives you reduced quality video recording for on the move. Initially I was a bit irritated that Archos had made this move, it came across as money grabbing to me. However even if you add all three docks to the price of the Archos it still works out cheaper than previous high end Archos devices so Archos have simply given you the choice of what you want to buy for your device. However by biggest annoyance with the Archos remains the fact that I feel they could have still put a bit more functionality. I don't think it's too much to ask to have onboard tv out and usb host without needing additional hardware.
I've rambled on a fair bit (mainly typing this due to the other one star review which I don't think is an accurate one of the Archos 504) so it's probably a good time to stop. As you've probably gathered, I'm generally very pleased with my Archos - it looks good, feels solid, has an excellent screen and a wide range of functionality especially with that huge 160GB capacity allowing me to store hoardes of data on top of my music, photos and videos. However, I feel it's only fair to give it four stars as this is not a perfect device but if you're looking for a portable video player and recorder (with optional dock!) then I'd certainly recommend taking a serious look at the Archos 504 series. If it's just too big for you I'd recommend the 604 - it keeps the same widescreen LCD but is quite a bit slimmer. Also, the 604 wifi offers an intriguing mix of PDA and portable media with onboard wifi which is the one I originally wanted but decided against it due to the small 30GB capacity. The baby of the x04 family is the 404 which is similar to the 604 but not as wide, offering a 4:3 screen instead of widescreen.
If you've read this far, I hope you've found this review to be of some use to you.
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