Customer Reviews

Archos Gmini402 20 GB Camcorder and Multimedia Player

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I got this unit to use mainly as a camcorder. I've been looking for one that has a good size hard drive and this one meets that criteria with 20gb. The unit is very small and lightweight. The color is nice and attractive. But it seems that that design is driven by being snazzy rather than functional. While the LCD is located in the center of the unit, the lens on the other side is placed off to the left. It's hard to keep from blocking the lens while recording. I hope this problem will go away once I get used to holding it with my right hand only. The lens is covered by a cheap built-in piece of plastic which I think will suffer a lot of scratches over time. The buttons could have been bigger. There's no place to hook up a strap. I'd like to use one when I'm recording because with its size it's very likely to fall out of your hands.

The video quality is acceptable. Under the VGA setting, the pictures are sharper, but appear to be kind of grainy. It seems especially important to concentrate on holding the camera steady while shooting. Otherwise, the video looks a bit jumpy. Some of the buttons are not particularly intuitive. For example, there is no obvious "pause" button.

The drawstring pouch included in the package is thin with no padding, and doesn't provide protection for the camcorder. I got one from somewhere else and use the pouch for the cables.

The manual is not thorough. Some of the options and even some of the hardware aren't mentioned or explained. There's one adapter that plugs in the top of the unit with line-in on the one side and AV out on the other. It doesn't have any problem plugging into the TV to play the content, but doesn't record TV; I can only guess it's for recording audio. There's hardly any mention of this either. Also I still don't know what kind of rechargeable battery is used in this unit. It wasn't said anywhere in the manual. It just says the battery is designed to last for the life of the camcorder (whatever that means).

As a multi-media player it doesn't have a built-in speaker, which is a major omission.

If your computer has Windows XP, you can plug it in using the provided USB cable. Copying the the clips to the computer is basically drag-and-drop. I don't know with other computers, but with mine, if the file is lager than 500mb it doesn't let you transfer it to the computer; it says the file is too big. When I change the setting in the camcorder for it to be recognized as a removable hard drive, the transfer works fine. Maybe I need to update the firmware. On the Archos website, there's a couple of new updates, but I can't access them because I have to update to version 1.2 before I can use them. Version 1.2 was nowhere to be found. I haven't tried calling tech support yet. They do have the 800 number listed on the website.

Overall, I'd say the Archos 402 camcorder has a lot of room for improvement, but is nevertheless worthwhile in that you can record and store a large amount of video in very small package.

I have had the Gmini 402 cam for about a week now, and I have been very impressed so far. I started off looking for a device that I could simply dump digial photos on, but the gadget monger inside of me wanted more than just a mass storage device for photos. This was the best option I could find that included the USB Host(direct connect with digital camera) and a good mp3 player on it.

It has a little smaller hard drive than devices like the Cowon X5 and the Toshiba Gigabeat, but to me this wasn't really a problem, 20 GB was fine. The design of the the Gmini is ok, personally I like the looks of the Gigabeat, and (while not an I-Pod fan) the I-Pod better. It looks a little too much like a gameboy or some kind of game only device. But function won out in that battle, and I had to go with the Gmini.

For those interested in the USB host function, after comparing devices for a couple weeks I found out a few things about the other devices that I didn't like; the Gigabeat for example can only use 2 GB of its 30 GB for photos dumped from your digital camera, and I am pretty sure you can not view those dumped photos either. The Cowon X5 does allow you to view images, but limits the size of individual pictures to 2.5MB each. The Gmini does not have any of these limitations, and has a great viewer for the images as well.

Aside from the USB Host function, all the other features on it have been great. The camera is obviously not real good, but I wasn't really expecting it to be. The camcorder on the other hand isn't bad, obviously its no sony handycam, but not bad. The video player is cool, but i don't foresee using it too much. And as I mentioned before the MP3 player, is pretty much all I could ask for, album art, ID3 compatible, good sound as far as I can tell. Battery life so far has been decent, though simply comparing stats with other devices, it is probably not quite as good.

Overall this has been a great device, and I look forward to using it a lot!

I purchased this unit for a family vacation. I originally wanted a smaller digital camera that could easily fit in a pocket and would'nt be a problem to carry. I spoke with a sales clerk and he had a few sugestions which were ok, then he showed me this. As a techie I was instantly hooked and forgot what I originally came in for. The concept of having a camcorder that fits in a pocket intrigued me. I bought it, and could not wait to get it home. After a few hrs of playing around I've come to the following conclusions.

The good: Overall id say that it is an amazing little device.
* The video camera is excellent, especially at the lower resolution. When the resolution is raised to vga the video becomes a little grainy but is still pretty good.
* The video / audio playback is flawless.
* The MP3 playback is excellent, controls are intuitive, awesome sound with the right headphones.
* The small size of the unit vs it's fuctionality makes it a unique product.

The bad: My biggest problem with this unit is the lousy still camera.

* The still camera is horrible. DO NOT buy this unit for still pictures, it will disappoint.
* This unit is a little light on battery
* The storage pouch is useless, it may prevent scratches but if you drop it, it's over. Buy a better case.
* I agree with other reviews, the manual is less than informative, but, the controls are fairly easy to figure out.
* Headphones are not the best.
* line in recording is audio only, which is not a really a flaw.
* Lense placement takes some getting used to, my hand naturally wants to cover it.

I hope this helps.

Archos makes a lot of products with great functionality, but they are also very unreliable and when they break, you have to deal with some of the worst customer service around. If it only takes a month to get a working replacement for your broken product consider yourself lucky. It took a month for them to send me another broken product which I had to send back. 5 weeks later I'm still having to call them up and listen to some lady who works part time complain about all the problems they have with their warehouse.

Avoid Archos!

This is a great item that Archos designed poorly. The still camera isnt all that great, takes blurry pictures. The video isnt great either; nice FPS but the sound is garbage. Plays great video. Has useless games on it that are also impossible to control because of the location of the buttons. Awful multi-use buttons for scrolling through menus, you lose track where you are in the menu process because none of the buttons are labeled and theres no indication on the screen of what you're supposed to click next. From the factory, the back part didnt fit well against the middle & couldnt get it to fit better; could welcome in dirt or moisture and wreck it.

Great battery life; it lasted for 6 days and about 9 hours of use before I returned it to the store and the level indicator was at 50%+. There is NOWHERE to put a wrist strap or lanyard and thats the main reason I returned it.

If this was redesigned with a no-slip design, case, or wrist strap and better menus, this product would rock.

I wanted to buy a portable device that would let me record high-quality digital audio. There are quite a few products available that allow that, but I wanted a device that would interface with a Linux PC without difficulty. Not many choices there! Almost all the manufacturers try to tie you down to their own proprietary software. Archos appears to be an exception.

Unfortunately, Archos doesn't appear to make pure audio play/record devices any more: to record audio you're forced to have video as an option too.

I decided to risk buying the device hoping it would do what I wanted. I could not find any reviews that specifically mentioned Linux compatibility. Well, so far so good: You can configure the device to function like a USB disk (it's not the default). In this mode you can indeed plug the device into a Linux PC and it functions exactly like a USB disk drive. You can move files around or copy to and from the device just like you can for any other disk drive. Just as important, the supported file formats are standard: Videos are recorded as AVI's, using a public format. It's one many Linux systems will understand "out of the box"; you'll probably have to install some (free) software to play the video files using Windows. Audio is recorded as WAV files, at a selectable sample rate of either 44 or 48 kHz. I have had no problems playing the audio files under any architecture, Mac, Windows, or Linux.

The internal microphone works reasonably well but unfortunately picks up the high-frequency ticking sounds made by the internal disk drive. For casual purposes you probably won't really care, but for high-quality audio you'll need an external microphone. To connect an external microphone you have to plug in this strange Y-shaped adaptor, which plugs in over the headphone port and blocks it. (!) The adaptor juts out of the unit in a rather clumsy way. Needing the adaptor is annoying, but I guess I can live with it.

The external audio input is line level, not mike level. The optional external microphone accessory from Archos proved to be somewhat disappointing. I bought a high-sensitivity amplified microphone from Sound Professionals to use with it, and once I learned how to set appropriate gain settings for the sound levels I'd be recording, that has worked very well indeed. I've been using the combination to record nature sounds at a nearby swamp. The recordings faithfully reproduce all the sounds I had heard, from the quiet nearly infrasonic rumble of a distant train, to the deep croak of bullfrogs, through to various bird, frog, and insect calls, right up to the borderline-ultrasonic squeaks of flying bats! This combination, along with high-quality earphones, can clearly record and faithfully reproduce the full pitch range of my hearing. I'm also happy to report that after 14 months of using the unit in a swamp I've had no problems with it.

If you want a high-quality audio recorder that works with Linux, or just don't want to have to deal with yet more proprietary software and proprietary formats, this could be a good choice for you.

Bought this product in Dec 06 when it was around $200. Not bad for 20GB and the loads of functions. Works well the first three months. Digital camera and Camcorder is not bad. Quality is not the best, but it's useful in a pinch. The MP3 shuffle is not a true random shuffle, it shuffles through the same path of MP3. With the 20GB, it stores alot of Video & MP3 and although the screen is not the biggest, can't watch for too long, but is good if you need something to do or need entertainment while waiting in line or on the train. However, in April 07, harddrive started having issue. Read error, can't read from hard drive and the whole thing started freezing up. Called Archos RMA (return) department, told them the problem and they email me the RMA right away, but you have to pay for the shipping. Took over 5 weeks to get the product back. Looks like they upgraded the firmware. Called to just confirm, they did upgrade the firmware and replaced the hard drive. Used the product for less than a month, same issues. Can't read from hard drive, hard drive error, product freezes up. Called them again and they issued an RMA through email and since it's second time with the same issue, they will send me a free ship label so I don't have to pay. That was 5/31/07, it is 6/11/07. Called them at least 5 or 6 times to see where the ship label is, each time, waited at least 1/2 hour and more and they can just keep saying it's coming. Take 72 hours, the person sending the label is not in the office. No help whatsoever, alot of run around, no one seems to know what they are doing. I have been on the phone today since 7:48pm, it is 9:20pm and am still on hold, have not talked to anyone at all. This is the customer service or Archos after you have bought the product. Very dissapointed and very dissatisfied. And with the hard drive breaking twice within 6 months, not sure if it's really worth the hassle.

This product has a lot going for it especially on the surface--you can use it as a camera (low megapixels), digital video camera (not too bad), MP3 player (just fine), mediaplayer (can be difficult to import media) and overall digital storage device. Yup a lot there overall and a good price as well so what's the real issue? Well mine fried, the video screen and therefore all menus and all use just gone for no apparent reason; although fortunately within the warranty period but still no fun. Another major flaw although this will seem minor is that there is no way to attach a strap to this player and therefore it is quite awkward to hold and use in it's camera capacities; as your one handed hold will often hit just on the tiny lens that is far off center on the back of the device. So way to go Archos on giving it the old college try and please go back to the drawing board, and include WIFI when you do!!

So far i have enjoyed the product.
1. The video camera works very well for an all in one product although the sound is kind of muffled.
2. Media player works great for music and videos, as long as you have an updated version of windows media player to convert all the files.
3. Can't tell you much about customer service but downloading and converting software from the archos site is a little annoying especially trying to get some of the older updates for the media player
4. the gameplayer is really pretty fun and simple it's no psp but it does offer more than the psp.
5. works very well as portable hard drive but still have not figured out how to read other portable harddrives.
6. all in all a very nice all in one machine. if your just looking for either a specific single tasker try to find something else. but if you like multitaskers this is a good deal and a heck of a buy.

I bought this player about 2 months ago. I like it. It's easy to transfer files to and from the unit especially since the unit can be connected to your computer as a Windows device and use Windows Media Player to transfer files or it can be connected as a hard drive and the files can be transferred as you would transfer files from any hard disk drive. I use it mostly for music, but I have also used it to take photos and to record video. The picture quality is just fine for me and I believe for most applications. It works well as a camera and a camcorder and it is simple and straightforward to use. I don't like the carrying case supplied by Archos, it is thin and unpadded. The battery life is excellent. I am not impressed with the ear buds, but then again I don't like ear buds generally. Over all it is a nice unit. I haven't played any of the games, but it is a game player as well. It works nicely for me. You need a carrying case for the unit because it can easily slip out of your hands. The menu buttons are large enough to actually use even with clumsy fingers like mine. I use music match jukebox and I wish it had the ability to sync with this unit, but it currently does not. (last time I checked)