Archos 101 Internet Tablet review

The Archos 101 is a beautifully slimline tablet, with a brushed-metal screen bezel and rounded edges on the plastic case. It’s made using an injection moulding technique that blends steel and moulded plastic to reduce weight while retaining rigidity, and the result is a tablet that’s 12mm thin and weighs 480g, with a 10.1in widescreen display that stretches to the edges of the device.

It’s also recently been updated to Android 2.2, which isn’t the very latest version but brings substantial performance increases over previous releases. Out of the box, its software is limited, however: many apps available on the Android Market aren’t designed for the 101’s large screen, so Archos has installed what it calls AppsLib – a “controlled” set of apps that Archos has tested. It’s not as well organised as the Android Market, and offers a fraction of the variety.

As with the smaller Archos 32 you can install the freely available ArcToolsusing the 101’s browser, which gives you access to the Android Market so you can install missing Google apps such as YouTube and Calendar. Before updating the 101 to Android 2.2, some of these (such as Google Talk) didn’t render properly on the screen, but with 2.2 installed we saw no incompatibilities, and installed many of our favourite apps with no problems.

The 10.1in screen would be ideal for Google Maps, but sadly it’s not supported even by ArcTools, and there’s no GPS receiver to help pinpoint your location in any case. It’s also a shame that Archos haven’t customised the virtual keyboard; it expands to the width of the screen, making typing whilst holding the 101 a question of how far you can stretch your thumbs.

The preinstalled apps are a mixed bag. Archos’ file manager is useful, as it lets you browse DLNA network shares and external storage, and there’s a handy Uninstall app. We found the Photo Frame app – designed to run slideshows of your photos – was almost impossible to configure or exit, as its control icons were hidden by default and didn’t react to touch controls when they did appear. Also, the video player wouldn’t play many of our files; it’s not powerful enough to decode 1080p video smoothly, and it played some of our test files at odd aspect ratios; surprising considering Archos’ long history with multimedia devices. To play some file formats, you’ll need to buy the optional Cinema Plugin from Archos’ store for £13.

You’ll get through plenty of content, though. In our smartphone battery test – which plays a single MP3 file with the screen turned off – the 101 lasted for three and a half days, so it’ll happily stay on standby for a whole weekend and still have plenty of juice left over. It’s the screen that drains the power the most, of course, but even when we played a video on repeat the 101 lasted for seven and a half hours.

The screen’s glossy finish can reflect bright overhead lights, but it adds punch to colours. In landscape mode, the vertical viewing angle is awkward, in that you have to tilt the 101 away from you to get the best results – if it’s angled towards you it loses contrast almost immediately and almost goes into negative. This also poses problems when viewing in portrait mode – you’ll need to angle it slightly to one side to get the best image quality.

The capacitive touchscreen is responsive, although sometimes a light touch is best – if you press too hard on an icon on the home screen when trying to drag it, for example, it’ll open the app. It’s also extremely sensitive to orientation, and it’ll flip into portrait mode, or even upside down, if you tilt it about 20 degrees beyond the horizontal.

All the ports and controls are on the left-hand edge. From the top, there’s a small volume rocker, the power button, and then the headphone socket. This is so close to the power button that it’s easy to confuse for the power socket, especially as the plug fits both sockets comfortably. A USB “A” port lets you read files from any external USB drive, while a micro USB port lets you mount the 101 as mass storage on your PC. There’s also a microSDHC card slot and a mini-HDMI port, although the 101 doesn’t come with a suitable cable.

There’s a 0.3-megapixel camera to the left of the screen. This is angled inwards so that it captures your face if you’re holding the 101 in front of you. Image quality is awful, with blocky photos and videos showing excessive amounts of noise. There’s no video-calling app installed to make full use of it either, and although some video call software is available on the Market (see FAQ) we couldn’t get it to work on the 101.

At £240 the Archos 101 seems like great value, with a 16GB version available for £270. With ArcTools installed, it becomes a semi-functional Android 2.2 tablet. However, Archos doesn’t officially support ArcTools or the market, so you install it at your own risk. Despite the clever manufacturing process, we felt the case had too much flex in it, and it doesn’t feel as solidly built as the Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab. The interface also suffered from pauses. As there’s a rash of new tablets on the horizon, these niggles are enough to stop us recommending the 101 unconditionally.