Archos 101 XS review

With Windows 8 devices about to descend en masse at this year’s IFA show, the race is on to find the best way of combining a touchscreen and keyboard in one device. To date, Asus’ Transformer series – including the new high-definition Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700T – has led the way for tablet hybrids, and Microsoft’s much-talked-about Surface tablet also looks intriguing. In the midst of all this lands Archos’ new Android tablet, the rather clever Archos 101 XS, with its ingenious ‘Coverboard’.

DUCK AND COVER

The Coverboard provides both a screen cover and a keyboard in one. It comes with the tablet, and the combination is much cheaper than any current Asus Transformer. The Coverboard attaches firmly to the tablet with magnets – a twist of the wrist breaks the bond, but it’s certainly not coming off by accident.

To attach the tablet to the keyboard you flip up the stand on the Coverboard and then dock the tablet into it. Magnets on the stand and in the base of the board hold the tablet in place – you can pick up the tablet and wave it about and the keyboard won’t come off. You can adjust the angle of the tablet to a certain degree, but it’s really rather limited – you can only get around a 35-degree tilt. The screen’s viewing angles are wide, thankfully – which makes typing comfortable if you’re prepared to position the tablet on your knees.

There’s no battery built into the Coverboard, as there is on the Asus Transformer tablets, but there is a Micro USB port so you can charge the tablet or connect it to your PC when docked. The battery in the tablet lasted for six hours and 25 minutes in our continuous video playback test; this isn’t a great score, but it’s part of the price you pay for the tablet’s slimness. Having no additional battery does mean the Coverboard is a light 200g, so you don’t have to worry about taking it with you everywhere.

SLIMLINE TAB

The Archos 101 XS tablet is also quite light at 600g, and it’s also just 8mm thick – almost as thin as the 7.7mm Toshiba AT200. The tablet and Coverboard in combination are just 13mm wide, which is only 1mm more than an iPad with Smart Cover and 10mm less than the thickest point on a typical Asus Transformer. Even including all the various iPad cases available, we can’t think of a more compact way to carry a tablet and keyboard.

Compromises have been made to the keyboard to keep the Coverboard down to a slender 5mm. The keys’ lack of travel is unsurprising, but they’re also a little spongy, which further reduces feedback. After quite a bit of practice we started to get used to them, and the keyboard’s good enough for emails and short documents. One sticking point is the space bar, which we found hard to reach over the slender rubber-topped rim around the edge of keyboard.

It took us a little while to get used to the keyboard

The keyboard has been designed for Android use, with Home, task-switching and Menu buttons along the bottom edge. Typical shortcuts like copy and paste (CTRL-C and -V) work fine and if you start typing on the home screen it automatically opens a search page listing apps and web results.

There’s also a set of media shortcuts along the top row, and a range of other useful keys such as you’d find on a laptop, such as brightness controls, which go some way to compensate for the lack of an automatic brightness setting. This is due to there not being a light sensor built-in, which made the tablet a little frustrating to use on the go, and we ended up leaving it on maximum brightness.

RESOLUTION CONFLICT

The display itself is probably the least impressive thing about this tablet. It’s not bad, just not particularly inspiring. Archos makes no claims about fancy panel technology, such as IPS, and it’s not particularly bright, so colours lack punch. There’s a reasonable amount of contrast, but the relatively low 1,280×800 resolution means Android looks a little soft compared to more recent tablets with Full HD screens.

The tablet also doesn’t have an outward facing camera, either – just a 720p webcam for video chat or quick self-portraits. We’ve never really seen cameras on tablets as essential, so it’s no great loss.

The tablet does have plenty of ports and slots, though, all of which are easily accessible on the left-hand edge. A microSD card slot allows you to add up to 32GB of additional storage for less than £15. The USB port can be used as a USB host (with the correct cable, sold separately) so you can transfer files to and from the tablet without a PC. The mini HDMI port is an odd choice as micro HDMI is more common on tablets, but both types of cable are available cheaply.

DUAL WIELDING

Inside the Archos 101 XS is a Texas Instruments OMAP4470 chipset. This contains a dual-core processor running at a quick 1.5GHz. If you look a little more closely, you can see that there are additional sub-processors for dealing with media playback. The chipset proved very fast in the SunSpider JavaScript test, managing an incredibly rapid 1,552ms. That’s one of the quickest scores we’ve ever seen, and is faster than any Tegra 3-based tablet.

We also ran the popular Quadrant benchmark to compare the chipset with Nvidia Tegra 3-equipped devices, such as the Google Nexus 7 and Transformer Infinity. The 101 XS scored 3,853 overall, compared to 3,368 for the Nexus 7. These raw numbers are difficult to translate into everyday performance, but it’s interesting to note that the Archos 101 XS makes up for having half the cores of the Nexus 7 with its quicker memory and strong 3D performance. At present the Nexus 7 feels smoother to use, thanks to the interface improvements in Android 4.1, but that advantage won’t last for long.

Despite being essentially dual-core the Archos 101 XS was very fast in benchmarks

Archos has released the 101 XS with Android 4.0, but it’s an unaltered version of the operating system, which means an update to Android 4.1 shouldn’t be far off. Archos claims a November release date for 4.1, and it has hit its targets for software updates in the past. Another advantage is that you can uninstall any application you want on the tablet, so if you don’t like anything Archos has pre-installed you can get rid of it – this is sadly not the case on most tablets. Archos also supplies OfficeSuite Pro 6 for free, so you can create, open and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.

Archos’s experience in making portable media players is evident in some of the preinstalled apps. A comprehensive media player app comes preinstalled with a carousel-style selection of content pulled from IMDB. There’s also a remote control app for your smartphone, so you can sit back to watch, either using the Coverboard as a stand for the tablet or connecting the Archos 101 XS to an HD TV.

There are also a couple of third-party docking stations available. The Boombox has a built-in speaker for playing your music, while the Cradle provides USB ports for attaching external drives and audio outputs to connect to a separate speaker or Hi-Fi system.

SUMMARY

The Archos 101 XS does have its niggles, chief among them the unexciting screen and below-average battery life.

On the other hand, the device is slender, very fast in our benchmarks and an update to Android 4.1 is certain to arrive in the next couple of months. Finally, the Coverboard is a genuinely useful addition, which is well designed and feels like an integral part of the device. Considering these strengths, the tablet’s £300 RRP makes it good value, and this price is bound to fall a little once numerous retailers get stock. It’s a good buy if you’re looking for a slender Android tablet with a physical keyboard.

If you aren’t after a physical keyboard for your tablet then we’d strongly recommend spending an extra £100 for the excellent-quality, Full-HD display on the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700T. If you are looking for a keyboard, and again are willing to spend the extra money, then the Asus Transformer Pad TF300T has a better keyboard, better screen and far superior battery life to Archos’s tablet – but it’s bulkier, heavier and less attractive.

Whichever way you’re leaning, at the time of writing we’re only a week away from the IFA 2012 show, so we’d certainly wait to see what other tablets are unveiled before making your choice.