Archos AV340 Personal MP3 / Video Walkman

In these modern times its hard to release a product that still makes heads turn. An, at least in europe, fairly unknown company has released the AV340 handheld video recorder. Archos has been around for a while now and is very well known in the U.S. for its harddisk based MP3 players. Their reputation has unleashed a storm when this product has hit the shelves in the U.S.

Not only makes this thing turn your head, but it will equally twist a full 360 degrees, flip over and make a somersault including a 10 point landing that would put any athlete to shame.

The heads at LabDV have done just that, and we have tested this thing for your reading pleasure.

Some background first, MP3 and portable audio players have been around for a while. These are typically based on Flash memory, CD drive or hard disk. Now take a look at your digital photo storage device. These portable photo vaults come in different shapes and sizes, and storage different kinds of storage media. Even portable DVD players and video walkmans have been around for a while.

Now, what happens if you add all this up, add a MPEG 4, DivX/Xvid encoder and decoder, throw in 40 Gigabyte hard disk, add a hi-resolution color display , lithium-ion battery, shake and stir ? You get the Archos AV340!

This technological marvel packs all this functionality in a sleek metallic housing that measures 112m x 82mm 31mm and barely weights 350 grammes.

The fairly compact retail box is packed with stuff.

Besides the Archos AV340 device itself, you will find the DVR video encoder module, a remote control plus batteries, a slick headphone, an audio-in and audio-out cable, a video in cable, an A/V out cable, a USB 2.0 cable, an extensive manual, SCART connectors (only supplied in the european version) and a CD rom with software.

Last but not least a charger is supplied that can work all over the world. The only thing not supplied is a S-video cable. The DVR recorder module has both inputs so this would have been nice as well.

The archos is ready to run out of the box and clocks down an impressive 8 hours runtime on a single charge when playing audio with the display off, and roughly 2 hours when watching video on its internal display.

The Archos user interface is remarkable. Just a few buttons give you complete control over the device. Normally you would expect a lot of button pressing and menu browsing with this few buttons. Not this time. The interface is slick and clean. The graphics are crisp and render very well on the high resolution display. This display itself is a so called Quarter VGA. It is actually a VGA panel and not just a TV monitor. Resoluton sits at 320 by 240 pixels in 262 thousand colors.

Since this display is a real VGA monitor you can tilt this very far before noticing any decrease in intensity.The angle under which the image is visible is similar to that of a laptop monitor.

The clever usage of a joystick navigator keeps the number of buttons down to the bare minimum, yet gives you excellent control.

The little marvel allows you to listen to your favorite MP3 collection, including your personal play lists, Watch DivX and Xvid video, record audio directly into MP3, and watch still images in JPEG or BMP format.

You can do this of course on the internal display, but simply hook up the A/V cable and you can experience all of this on your own TV. A unique Feature lets you specify the output video format so you can use this device all over the world. It can generate both PAL and NTSC video signals. In the event you want to practice the art of couch potato-ing ,simply plug in the DVR module and control the device with the supplied remote controller from your favorite lounging spot.

The MP3 player function allows you listen to your favorite tunes collection. The whopping 40 Gigabyte hard disk (AV340, the AV320 has 20 Gigabyte) allows for well over 600 hours of your favorite music. You can transfer files to the device using the speedy USB 2.0 interface that is backwards compatible with USB 1.1 as well, be it at a slower speed.

The sound quality on the supplied headphones is excellent with well defined highs and thundering lows.

The sound control panel allows you to tune the sound to your liking. Although a graphic equalizer is missing.the High, Low and Dass boost controls already crate a rich sound field. The output volume is high enough to make your ears ring, without noticable distortion. You can also hook it up to your stereo system using the supplied Audio out cable , or if you have a home theatre you can also hook it up using the digital SPDI/F ( Sony-Philips Digital Interface ) port. Talk about features ...

You can build your own play lists, or arrange your audio tracks directly on the device. The little joystick allows you to increase / decrease the volume or skip to the next or previous track. While playing the ID3 tag and APIC pictures are shown as well. The device can read both types of ID3 tags , and will favor ID2 in case both are present. A color VU meter shows you the levels. A scope or spectrum display like Winamp has is not preset. Maybe an idea for a future firmware .. but then again, the device switches off its display, in MP3 mode, after a couple of seconds. This is done to preserve battery life and give oyu as much as 8 hours of runtime.

A configuration screen allows you plenty of options to configure exactly the play mode and play order you want. You can also create play lists using the Supplied Music Match software and export them to your device for later retrieval.