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

I say this is well worth the money. If you use the rockbox system on it, it allows you to do TONS of extra features including having a playlist over the normal 999. Definitely but this product. 5 Stars

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The thing I love most about the Archos Jukebox FM Recorder that is that immediately when you plug it in, it automatically installs, and appears as another letter hard drive in My Computer. This is especially useful when I rip CDs, because I can just take the songs and encode the mp3s directly onto the Archos without having to take the extra step of transferring them.

No complaints. If you buy this, you are making an excellent choice.

I just gotta give my 2 cents worth when it comes to Archos - I have stopped a bunch of my friends from buying any of their products because of the customer support - or rather - the lack of it.

I got the 10gb version of this jukebox some time ago, sadly the thing died within 2 weeks - saying there was a hard-disk error. When i phoned customer support a guy told me that it was faulty batteries and that i had to replace them - funnily enough - when i replaced them i still got the error!

I tried emailing again and again - and i would never get an answer from anyone in the company. However, when i emailed them about where i could purchase some batteries they replied instantly!

I bought the Jukebok FM recorder last August, and since then I have sent the unit out four times to Archos repair. The first time, the unit was freezing up all the time at random, and this continued even after re-formatting the unit, as instructed by Archos support. The next two times I had the same problem, and each time I was given a different unit. The last was working ok until the F2 button broke (after normal use) . Archos support (the man who answerd spoke very poor English and I could barely understand what he was saying) told me they would upgrade my unit to the Jukebox Multimedia, but both he and his supervisor refused to renew the "non-negotiable" warranty for the new unit.
The FM Recorder did not by any means measure up to what was advertised, and proved very un-reliable. I know of two other units owned by friends of mine which have had similar problems. All of us use it for business purposes, and all of us have lost precious time and money due to "minor glitches" in the unit. The theory behind the unit and all it is supposed to be able to do is nice, but from what we can tell, the battery is not powerful enough to handle the load of spinning up the disk whle playing or recording. Archos has instructed us to try keeping the unit plugged in, but then what is the point of having it battery operated?? I would recommend buying a slightly more expensive IPod or something else. You might spend a little more up-front, but it will prevent you from having to spend a lot more money in the future. When I asked Archos what would happen to the new unit if something happened, the man replied that I would only have to pay the "low repair cost (not including parts) of $69.99" and it would get fixed. What rotten service!

Just bought the archos. Amazing. Buy this now! Although it is about one and a half times as thick as the ipod, it is about the same height and witdth, and it has twice the features for half the price!

If you buy this, upgrade to the rockbox firmware. It is much faster and works a lot smoother. Unlike an ipod, almost every feature is customizeable, and there are plenty of accessories at low prices.

Almost all of my songs (about 2,000: 9 gigs worth at average 2hundred something kbps) are recorded off of cd's in variable bit rate, and the archos recognizes all their bit rates perfectly. The sound is awesome and you don't have to scroll through any menus menus to get to the features that you use most.

I don't know why people complain about battery life. IT'S A HARD DRIVE! OF COURSE IT IS NOT GOING TO PLAY AS LONG AS A CD PLAYER ON A SINGLE CHARGE! Once I upgraded to the rockbox firmware, it worked for 13.5 hours playing continuously(which is comparable, if not more than the ipod). Just make sure to charge it completely before you use it for the first time.

My only gripe about this player is that the fm tuner sometimes is a little more static than a regular cd player and sometimes the player takes about a half a second to access the hard drive. (however this can be changed by adjusting spindown time; you can legnthen it, but it drains battery life.) However, the FM tuner works as well as you would expect it to in a portable device.

The hard drive can hold anything. I was in the process of switching to a new computer, and I backed up my entire hard drive onto the archos and it is recognized as a hard drive by any machine, so it is easy to transfer files.

Overall, I find the archos to be the best player out there for the money. If I had to do it all over again, given a choice between two of these or one Ipod(the ipod does not have an fm tuner and also has a smaller hard drive for twice the price), I would definitely go archos, wouldn't you?