Archos 70 and Archos 101 hands-on [Video]

Archos weren’t short of new internet tablets for IFA 2010, though it’s their Archos 70 and Archos 101 which stood out when we stopped by their booth earlier today. �Measuring in at 7- and 10-inches respectively, the two Android slates (running 2.1 right now, but set to launch with 2.2 Froyo) are certainly thin and reasonable feature-packed, each toting a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor,�3D OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics accelerator and WiFi b/g/n.

Video demo after the cut

Both use capacitive touchscreens – 800 x 480 resolution on the Archos 70, 1024 x 600 on the Archos 101 – with multitouch (that proved more than a little glitchy in the photo viewer app) and have HDMI outputs for squirting 720p video out to your HDTV. �As you’d expect from Archos, there’s plenty of codec support too, including AVI, MP4, MKV, MOV, WMV, MPG, PS, TS, VOB, FLV, RM, RMVB, ASF and 3GP.
Archos 101 and 7 Internet Tablets hands-on:


The Archos 101 is an interesting beast; at 12mm thick, it’s very flat and, at 480 grams, surprising light, though the French company’s choice of plastics mean it doesn’t feel cheap. �It also doesn’t flex as you hold it, and there’s a two-position kickstand on the back: first, it props it up for video viewing; second, it lowers the angle for more comfortable on-screen typing. �Archos demonstrated a number of games on the slate, and the CPU could certainly keep up, using the accelerometer to navigate in racing titles.

As for the Archos 70, that’s a more pocketable model, measuring in at 201 x 114 x 10/14 mm (the 250GB hard-drive unit is thicker than the 8GB flash version); that makes it longer but narrower than the Galaxy Tab, with the Samsung slate slotting in-between in terms of thickness. �The touchscreen felt more responsive than that of the Archos 101, though things like webpage rendering and pinch-zooming weren’t as slick as on the Samsung. �The Archos 70 lacks the two-stage kickstand, too, only having a single arm for video viewing. �Unfortunately, there’s no rear camera on either model, only the VGA webcam.
Unfortunately, Archos has decided to abandon the multimedia docks of previous models, and there’s no DVR dock option for either. �That, on early internet tablets, allowed for direct audio and video recording straight to the slate’s internal storage, but from now on you’ll have to sideload content.
Given the pre-production hardware and non-Froyo software, we won’t draw too many conclusions about the Archos 101 or the Archos 70, but we have to say the price tags for each slate are encouraging. �The French company expects the Archos 101 to retail for $299.99 when it lands midway through next month, while the Archos 70 will be $274.99. �That certainly keeps them competitive against the other Android tablets we’ve seen at IFA 2010 this week.

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