Home > Consumer Reviews > Archos 20 GB USB 2.0 MP3 Jukebox/Recorder/ FM Radio

Initially, I had my share of gripes with this product as when I listened to my mp3's every 27 - 45 seconds, the hard drive would make a metal "sliding" or locking sound which would also make the right & left equalizer bars to lock up for a few seconds (even thought the song did not lock up). I sent the jukebox back to archos for repair/maintenance twice (first time, they replaced the recharable batteries which didn't help at all and the second time they replaced the hard drive). Both times, their help desk reccommended I reformat the hard drive after I received the product back from them. Neither times did it fix the problems. I was ready to sell the thing and purchase an iPod when I came out to AMAZON and read on the reviews the same problems I was expiriencing were corrected if a different software (ROCKBOX) was installed. I went out to their website, downloaded the software, reformatted the hard drive, installed the ROCKBOX software and then reinstalled my songs. Since then, the product has not only been not locking up or making sounds but the software has additional features (fonts, display formats, clock timers on/off, etc.) that are wonderful!!!

I would suggest to any person who's been even a little bit discourage with the lack to performance with their ARCHOS to checkout the ROCKBOX website and see if what I have mentioned in my review corrects their problems.

I will say that I would give ARCHOS'S help desk a B- grade as they were very friendly, quick response turn around time in getting email/verbal correspondence as well as quick return of my product. The only issue I had was that when I contacted them the second time with my problems, at the time, I had not had the item for more than 6 months and I asked for them to replace the item. They explained to me that their policy is repair 3 times, after this, then they replace. I'm hoping I won't have to do this now.

I definitly recommend this jukebox only to people who atleast some experience with electronics. The instructions that I received explaining how to install onto my computer were crap (I have windows ME). I ended up ignoring them almost entirely. I just plugged it in and dragged and dropped my songs into the new drive, no problem.

What some people have been saying about the nomad zen is that it is the only jukebox that you can create playlists on without connecting to your pc. Well, they're wrong. You can create playlists just on the mp3 player without any help from external software.

The radio was better than I expected, I actually get better reception with this than I do with my small boom box radio. It takes a little practice to get totally used to the way you navigate on this thing, but after about thirty minutes I had it down.

It was smaller than I thought it would be! It's kinda heavy (since it's a hard drive) but it still fits in the back pocket of my jeans. I like the look of the FM recorder better than the other archos jukeboxes. Overall I am very happy with it. Less expensive than the ipod and just as good! I recommend it!

A year ago, I wanted an mp3 player, since I didnt download music, I wanted one that recorded off the radio...this was about the only choice, and after reading many bad reviews I decided to buy it anyways on Ebay for $180. MISTAKE...this isnt a horrible mp3 player, it just isnt worth the price. It is hard to find music, and a lot of the features dont work. My shuffle, playback, and playlist all dont work. The navigation is ok...The radio gets pretty good reception but recording is a hassle because you have to get perfect reception of youll hear fuzziness throughout the song, and the 30 second record playback isnt all that is says...it just starts 30 seconds earlier so you have 25 seconds of talking or commericals and then your 5 seconds of the song you missed. But a month after a bought it, my stop button doesnt work, so when I go to the radio I have to stay at the radio or turn it off. The buttons are cheap. The screen gets dirty, especially on the inside so you cant clean it. Overall this is an OK mp3 player, not great but not horrible. I am going to buy an ipod, and if your reading this you probably should to.

PROS: recording off the radio is great if you get good reception, it holds TONS of music, it has a backlight

CONS: the buttons are cheap, its heavy and clunky, its EXPENSIVE, it breaks easily

All I wanted was a mp3 player that I could listen to while riding my motorcycle. This unit gave all the promise of being just what I needed: large memory, easy to download through window explorer (drag and drop), easy to make playlists (I use Winamp). The addition of a "Rockbox" download makes managing the playlists better (I'm able to put up to 20,000 songs in a playlist while the Archos program only allows 999 songs per playlists; I wanted all 4600 of my songs in one playlist). The problem, as almost everyone stated, is that it locks up a whole bunch with any steady vibration, most times not playing more that a minute or so. After trying many tricks and bad words, I stumbled upon a setting called "Disc Spindown". It was defaulted to 5 secs. I raised it up to 40 seconds and the locking up ceased. The bad side to this is that the increased time will eat up the battery. Sooo, even though I not very pleased with this product, I think I can make it work for me. When I'm home and the player is not moving, I set the spindown to 10 seconds. When I'm on the road, I set it for 40 seconds (actually, I still trying to find a sweet spot) and plug the player into a DC power adapter. Note: the increased spindown time will result in some buzzing coming across the speakers or headphones. There's a whole bunch of other things I learned about it that the book didn't point out, but I let you learn those for yourself. Consider it a "learning experience".

When its working this device makes a great backup harddrive, an ok Mp3 player, and an alright radio. Unfortunately there are many issues with the firmware that detract from its usability.
As a backup hardrive: This device is great. All you have to do is pop it into your USB drive and under Windows 2000/XP you automatically get an new drive letter that you can drag and drop files to/from.
As an MP3 player the sound is ok. I really have no complaints. I think most of my issue with the sound are with the ... headphones rather than the sound card on the device. My main issue is that the device sometime locks up and all that you can do is let the batteries run out. Also the device exhibits strange behavior (Skips tracks, skips to begginning, skips bytes) if while playing an mp3 it is subjected to a small mechanical shock. Another problem is that you cannot use really big playlists easily. The frmware will try to cache all the tracks on the playlists when it is cliked on and god help yopu if your playlist has more than 500 songs because the thing will start to thrash like an old 286-PC running windows 2000.
As a radio player i have had problems with reception for my favorite NPR station. It seems like the position of the headphones interfere with reception in some way and that can be annoying.
As a recorder it seems to work fine although I have not used that feature much yet.