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

I have read some misleading reviews about the mp3 player that I think I should clear up.
1-I have never had a problem with crashing or corruption.
2-Battery life is excellent
3-You CAN listen to music while it is charging.
4-You CAN change the volume easily without using the settings menu (Just press up or down while the song is playing!)
5-It is not as big/bulky as I thought it would be.

This thing is amazing! This is my first mp3 player and with so many out on the market, my decision was tough. The biggest problem I encountered was deciding between a flash player or a hard disk player. I ended up choosing the latter only because for a few more bucks you can store you entire cd collection and never worry about it again. Flash players are also great but I knew that I would get lazy plugging back into my computer and re-loading songs every now and then. Right out of the box I charged the internal battery for the recommended 8 hrs and started downloading songs. The usb 2.0 connection is great, within a few minutes I had 3gigs of music transferred. You have 2 options for transferring music; 1) windows explorer or 2)musicmatch, I used windows explorer since I was unfamilar with musicmatch and I wanted to use the player asap. As far as the FM tuner is concerned, I was very skeptical at first about the reception since I read so many complaints about MP3 players with FM tuners having poor reception. This was definitely not the problem with the Archos. Radio stations came in loud and clear and the amount of presets is more then I can find stations for. I also picked up a Cendyne GRUVX, FM Transmitter. It's tiny like a car alarm remote, has an internal antenna and can broadcast on any FM Station. Now I can hear my entire CD collection while driving in my car. Overall, I am pleased with my purchase and very happy with my new toy.

I got this Archos jukebox FM recorder used, and I've had it for two years. I've fixed the audio-out jack with a simple solder and I've replaced the 20GB hard drive with a low-power fijitsu 80GB. The battery life increased by %20 with the HD swap. At its peak, the battery lasted 10 hours, though it is fading now. But, of course I can easily replace it with a new one myself for $20.
First off, make sure you swap out the original software for rockbox. Most of the problems mentioned in these reviews will be solved.
I store tons of music on this thing, and I still have space for photos and videos and software. Computers detect it as a HD so file transfer is drag-and-drop--much better than itunes in my opinion. Also, unlike itunes, I can do whatever I want with the files on my player without messy 3rd party software. I also use this thing to record guitar chord progressions that I don't want to forget. Better quality recording can be done with the line-in input if you have a mic with built-in preamp. You can also hook it up to a sound board or other device to record directly.
It charges via power adapter or USB, so I have purchased a cheap, universal USB charging kit to use when I travel overseas. It works great.
This player does not work well in cold temperatures. I assume that other HD based players are the same, but this one has a very short battery life when the temperature drops. Sometimes, when the player is cold, the Battery will show %30 remaining and the player will shut down.
I plan to use this thing until it stops working, beyond repair.
The FM antenna is the earphone chord, so reception will depend on the type of chord your earphones have.
Oh yea, the sound quality with good earbuds is great.

First off, the battery life is horrible... 3-4 hours on a charge. Second, it tends to lock up from time to time, and the only way to get it back to normal is to pop the battery hatch... but if you do that or run the batteries down all the way, it loses all of the radio station presets you've stored. In addition, it only properly recognizes 128 kbps MP3s... if they are recorded at any other bit rate, it can still play them, but the info (length timeplayed, time remaining, etc.) is all wrong. It also takes some learning, as the user guide does not match the product... for example, to make a new directory or delete a file, you have to do an entirely different set of actions than the instruction manual states.

This has the potential to be a good product, if Archos fixes a lot of these problems. Most of them can (and probably will) be fixed via firmware updates. But the battery life is a major issue with this player.

The very first thing I noticed, was the terrible instruction booklet, it really is the worst I have ever seen, they might as well not give you one and let you figure it out by yourself. Though I have to give them credit for the online instructions, those are great and very easy to understand.
The second thing I noticed after I downloaded my music, is that the sound quality was terrible and I had to adjust it with every song.
Third, the earphones are the worst, maybe the bad sound quality was due to the earphones, because when I changed them for my sony earphones, the sound quality improved a lot, but I didn't like having to go through many menus to adjust the volume. It's stupid not to have a volume control on the player.
In the end, I decided to return it and spring for the Ipod.