Archos 80 Xenon review

Android tablets with built-in mobile broadband aren’t all that common, and those that do have it can be expensive to buy. The Archos 80 Xenon could fill that void. At £140 it’s less than half the price of the £300 3G-enabled version of the popular Google Nexus 7, yet it still comes with built-in mobile internet.

The 80 Xenon is covered in white plastic, with some silver detailing around the screen bezel. It’s hardly ugly but nowhere is near as attractive as Google’s all-black Nexus. The bezel itself is chunky on all four sides, but at least this provides space for your fingers and thumbs.

At 11.3mm it’s hardly the slimmest Android tablet, and with only a 3.5mm audio jack and micro USB port there’s limited connectivity. The two ports are placed on the left edge, below the power and volume keys and above the full-size SIM card slot, which is hidden beneath a plastic flap. We aren’t fans of this kind of cover because once it’s broken there’s no way to replace it.

ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS
Archos has made a few concessions to include 3G at such a low price, the main one being a reduced amount of internal storage. With 4GB of flash memory, of which less than two is accessible to the user, you’ll almost certainly need to use a microSD memory card once you start installing apps and games. Thankfully you can set the external card to be the default location for any downloaded apps, so you won’t have to move everything manually, and you can install microSD cards up to 64GB in size.

The 80 Xenon’s 8in, 1,024×768 panel might not match more expensive tablets in terms of image clarity (you can make out the pixel structure long before your nose is pressed to the glass), but it’s bright and reasonably colourful. Many budget tablets have a grainy appearance, but that isn’t the case here. It’s just a shame white images have such a vivid blue hue, as it’s a little distracting.

On paper, the 80 Xenon is also reasonably powerful, but once you start using the tablet it’s hard to believe there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chipset inside. The 80 Xenon felt sluggish when we swiped between Android home screens, with visible stutter when opening the app drawer or certain power-hungry apps. A score of 1971.5 in the web-based SunSpider 1 JavaScript benchmark is below average for an 8in device, and opening image-heavy websites like BBC news seemed to tax the 80 Xenon.

The 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme graphics benchmark wouldn’t work, so you may struggle to run more intensive 3D games. However, the 80 Xenon did score a reasonably respectable 3012 in the basic test, which is on par with other budget tablets, such as the Asus Memopad 7 and basic games such as Angry Birds ran smoothly. Annoyingly, the 80 Xenon didn’t play high-definition YouTube videos smoothly, which meant we had to reduce quality to standard definition to watch videos without stutter.

AGEING ANDROID

The 80 Xenon runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which is beginning to show its age when compared to 4.3 Jelly Bean or the latest 4.4 KitKat release. Archos has wisely chosen not to add a custom user interface, as it might have reduced the performance of the device, but Archos conveniently provides several of its own apps. Some apps, such as the Files file manager and Media Server UPnP server are genuinely useful, as they let you organise and beam multimedia files to a compatible device. Other apps, such as LeKiosk and System Monitor simply replicate existing Google apps and Android services. You can delete these apps to free up space, should you want to do so.

There’s no phone app installed by default, and installing a third-party dialler from the Play Store wouldn’t let us make calls. You can at least send text messages using the Messaging app, but there’s no straightforward way to turn the 80 Xenon into an oversized phone.

CAMERAS FRONT AND BACK
The 80 Xenon has camera sensors on its front and back panels, but we found the front camera, which is best used for video calls, to be most useful. The 2-megapixel rear sensor can only take very basic photos. There’s no tap-to-focus and images look grainy and lack detail, even in the best lighting conditions. It’s certainly no replacement for a compact camera, or even a mid-range smartphone.

Even more disappointing than poor camera performance was atrocious battery life. The 80 Xenon only lasted four hours and 44 minutes in our video rundown test, which is barely enough time to get through two full-length films. We ran the test with Wi-Fi off and brightness set to 50 per cent, so with 3G enabled and brightness set to full you should expect even less battery time.

CONCLUSION

With average performance, an outdated version of Android and very disappointing battery life, it’s difficult to recommend the Archos 80 Xenon. The Asus FonePad may be slightly slower on paper and have a 7in screen, but we think it’s the better buy if you absolutely must have mobile broadband and don’t want to spend £300 on a top-end Google Nexus 7.