Customer Reviews

Archos Jukebox 6 GB MP3 Player/Recorder/Hard Drive 500201

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Let me start by saying that if you spend the money, you will be satisified. The player works great, sounds great, and is fairly easy to operate. Anyone with more than a little computer experience will catch on quickly. When you get the unit upgrade the musicmatch software (for free) at there site. The headphones that ship with the unit are junk..Don't judge the sound quality until you hook up a better set of headphones. The instruction manual is almost useless, but the unit is pretty simple to figure out through trial and error. I have not been able to make the unit skip, the buffer works great. Store your entire music collection, plug it into your home stereo and it will blow you away. On a one to five scale:
Headphones ....2
Instruction Manual ...1
Jukebox .....5
Overall ...4+

I have used both the Archos Jukebox Recorder and the Creative Nomad Jukebox, and I'll say that the Archos is with out a doubt a much better player. Not only can it record directly to MP3, but it has a built in mic, is at least 1/2 the size of the Nomad(one of the big things that sold me on it), it has a digital input/output, you can drag and drop files directly in to the Jukebox, and it is much more portable than the Creative Nomad.
If you have no need for those features, then buy the Nomad or Archos 6000, but if you want those features this is the only MP3 player your going to find with them....

The Archos Jukebox is an excellent little multipurpose tool that has replaced my Sharp 722 Minidisc unit as my primary music unit. Of course it's an excellent MP3 player, but I've been using it more and more as a portable HD between my work and home computers. I had some problems with the provided USB drivers for Win2000, but I found better drivers at another site (it is now very well-behaved and shows up as a removable Fujitsu hard drive on my Win2000 desktop).

The MP3 functionality is outstanding. The large screen is very nice; it shows six lines of informational text at a time, which allows you to navigate through your folders easily. I cannot overstate the importance of navigational ease, since you'll end up with 6 GB of MP3 on this machine! You will definitely want to create a well-defined hierarchical tree to keep your files organised. The playback quality is fantastic as well. The sound is in fact too loud -- the lowest volume setting is a bit too loud for me when I'm trying to fall asleep to music (I use a Radio Shack analog volume controller between my headphones and the Archos). You will not have any qualms about sound quality on this machine.

The only cons I can state are: (1) the battery covers are very cumbersome; (2) the paint on the buttons are bit cheap; (3) the manual is written by a 12-year-old.

Other pros (besides what I wrote above) are: (1) battery recharges within the unit with the included AC adapter; (2) recording functionality (which I've not yet used); (3) rock-solid feel; (4) boots in under 5 seconds; (5) easily installable upgrades (just drop a file into the root directory); and (6) extremely small size for such large capacity -- it has a very small volume and is much smaller than the TDK Mojo CD-MP3 I used to have.

I was wary of purchasing this product given the extreme dichotomy of experiences - the people that were happy with it seemed extremely happy, and for others the unit was broken out of the box. Nobody had anything positive to say about Archos' customer service, either.

I went ahead and took a chance. The first unit *did* arrive broken - it would boot but it refused to recognize the hard drive. Fortunately Amazon's customer service was very good about it, and I had a working unit shipped to me at no additional charge within 3 days. You can find this unit at a lower price elsewhere, but the fast response from Amazon made me happy I'd chosen to buy it here.

I'm quite happy with with the Archos Jukebox. It performs well, and has many handy playback options. For the size, price, and capacity, this is an excellent unit and has served me well. The cherry on top for this device is the ease of file handling - it can transport any kind of file between computers, as long as I have the USB drivers installed on them. Moving files back and forth between work and home is a breeze. Since it behaves just like a hard drive, I can also run MP3 utilities (playlist builders, volume equalizers, that kind of thing) on my songs without having to off-load them onto the computer first. This more than makes up for the crankily-slow USB port; 6GB is a *lot* and USB 1 just can't shovel that much data quickly. If you add songs to the device in comfortable spoonfuls, it's no big deal.

The Jukebox is not without its problems, however these are not a great impediment. Firmware updates can probably fix them, but that depends on Archos's development team.

First, I've noticed that the unit will crash when playing some songs. It will display ASCII garbage for the title, and cannot be coaxed to go to another song with turning it off first. I think this may have to do with a corrupted ID3 header, but I can't be sure. It does not fail gracefully, and that can be frustrating since I can't figure out which song the unit was working on before it dies.

Second, it will clip the first second or two of songs if you switch to a new song in the middle of playback. If your MP3s don't have a moment of silence at the front, this can be disorienting and throw you off your stride.

Third, it only seems to support one playlist. Period. You can build playlists on the fly, and the unit will recurse though nested folders to bring every file into the new list. This will eradicate any old list you had put together, though. I would like to see an option where I can create different playlists and choose among those as I see fit. This option may exist, but as has been noted elsewhere, the included manual is poorly written.

Fourth, I'm paranoid while walking with this unit in my pocket or on my belt while it plays. It's got moving parts, and although it proports to have shock protection, I'm still paranoid, so I walk more slowly. This is a personal issue - for all I know the hard drive could take a hit from an on-coming bus - but it still affects my enjoyment.

Fifth - More onboard RAM would probably save a lot of battery power, and make transitions between songs more smooth. Most MP3 songs don't go over 6 megs, 8 would be cherry, but the device only sports 2 megs. It can only load half of your song at a time, so the drive is constantly spinning up and down. Not a big deal - just an armchair engineer's aesthetic. I've found the battery life to be around 6 hours for me - less if I'm doing heavy-duty file transfers between computers. (I put 3 640MB Mandrake Linux 8.2 ISO images on it - copying them over took about 1/4 of the battery life.)

Six - There is apparently a Resume function with the latest firmware. I assume this means I can listen to a dong part-way through, turn the Jukebox off, and when I turn it on, it will resume where it left off. I'm damned if I can figure out how to make it work, though, or even what it's really supposed to do. Archos' webpage is no help on this issue.

Finally, the built-in mic picks up clicking from the hard drive, giving it almost no utility. I was hoping to use this device to record speaker notes in my classes, but it's just too noisy. Prepare to buy an external mic if you have a purpose like this in mind.

That's more problems than I thought it had when I started writing this review :) Fortunatly, most of them are minor irritations and nothing world-shattering for my needs. If one of those features is vital to you, however, you may want to reconsider.

All in all, the functionality and convenience of the Archos recorder outweighs the problems. If you can get one that works, odds are you'll be silly with enjoyment. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

I purchased the Jukebox recorder in mid August. When I first received it, it worked for a couple of hours and then stopped functioning, apparently due to the fact that the
original batteries were defective.

Once the batteries were replaced, I only used the Jukebox recorder for handful of of short sessions, mostly to add music and make sure it was working before my next trip. About a week ago, I charged the batteries and added a couple of new mp3 files to the hard disk, but now when I turn the Jukebox recorder on, I get a "Hard Disk Error" that appears to be fatal. Archos tech support doesn't respond to emails...

In the short time that I have had it, the Jukebox recorder is most often not functioning properly. I don't have hours to spend troubleshooting the thing every time I want to take it along. Each time that I have planned to take it with me on a trip, it has failed to work, so what good is it to me? This is not the kind of performance I expect from a product costing (...so much) (when I bought it).

Good idea. Poor implementation.

I have three mp3 players: Dlink 120, a sony memory stick and now the Archos. I got the Archos since it holds many CDs and it lasts for hours. I was worried that it would be to heavy and clunky to use while biking/commuting. I was wrong; this thing is lighter than most 'average' tape players.

The Archos recorder doesn't have many of the hang-ups older Archos mp3 units had (has - a co-worker has an older Archos 6000). The volume can be controlled with out having to go through a complex menu (as reported by some folks). The unit hasn't skipped yet, and it's survived a few drops (perhaps it's thick neoprene case helped). As for volume, this unit is LOUD. I was surprised, but a co-worker mentioned that his 6000 unit had a very low volume. This newer Archos recorder doesn't have that hangup. The batteries last past 9 hours of just playing, just over 7 with a couple of download/upload sessions. The one I bought through Amazon.com came with RCA adapters and an extra set of batteries in the box!

The recording feature is great. I can finally attach a microphone to it. The DLINK was terrible. It recorded in a strange format only DLINK can use. Further, the sound broke up all the time, leaving some recordings at a loss. The Archos has excellent sound when recording. It's internal mic isn't as good as an external microphone, but it beats the pants off the DLink.

I needed a way of transfering large chunks of data, something that can hold many songs, play for hours and record conversations. The Archos fits the bill nicely, and for the price (an external hard drive, mp3 player and recorder), it's a very good deal.

Good: high capacity, easy to use and data transfer (no copy guards - what's the point?!?), portable, long playing and really excellent sound (sorry Sony, but this thing rocks!), XTRA batteries, and RCA adapter

Bad: Semi-cheap costruction feel (hasn't cracked yet!), strange way batteries are set in player, CHEAP headphones (for the money, you'd think they'd be nicer), no external microphone

I bought my first Archos Jukebox HD-MP3 Recorder at Fry's Electronics (since, at the time, Amazon didn't have them), and it kept crashing about every fifth MP3 and powering itself off. After I would power it back on, it would play that same MP3 just fine. So I took it back, and bought one from Amazon, since noone locally had any. It arrived this morning, and it does the same thing. I called tech support, and they gave me the runaround between MP3 filenames being too long (if it's too long, why'd it work the second time?), batteries not being charged enough ([1] It's on AC power right now, [2] So you're saying it'll only work correctly with fully charged batteries at all times?), and then had me delete the newer 1.17m firmware off and run 1.17i. Well, 1.17i crashes too. The tech said he would "mention it to engineering", and told me to call back if it crashed again. Well, apparently they all left early today. So, back in the box it goes. Avoid this one, folks, I don't think they've got the bugs worked out yet, and I don't think they're very keen on doing so, either.

I guess some poeple have found a lot of happiness in this product, but I have had a very poor experience. I've gone through two of these. The first one began malfunctioning a few months after I got it. When I went to email Archos, they never answered. Then I tried their customer support phone number and finally got through after about 5 tries. I succesfully returned it, (which was hell in and of itself), and the Archos poeple gave me a new one in the mail a few weeks later. It came with about 7,000 fragmented files. When I managed to recover them, I was unable to delete them. I was also unable to remove any mp3s that I put on the player. I dont even try to turn it on anymore, because it takes over a minute to turn on, and if it gets hit in the slightest, it restarts or freezes. I wasted 300 dollars on this.

I ordered the Archos Jukebox Player/Recorder and right out of the box it didn't work. I called tech-support (which I was able to get through to fairly quickly) and they informed me that the device had a bad hard drive. I shipped it back to Amazon on a Friday afternoon and they had a new one off to me on Monday morning (I'm always very impressed with Amazon). The new one worked for about two hours and then would no longer boot up. I again called Archos' tech support and was told that the hard drive was defective. That's two units in one week with defective hard drives. I don't think that I am going to take a chance on a third one. I'm very disappointed as I think that this is a great idea but Archos definitely has some work to do.

I just got mine yesterday, and so I cant be sure that it will not break like some other models I have read about. However, my initial impression is that it is the coolest thing since apple pie.
The onboard sound amplification exceeded my expectations 2-fold.
Integration with PC and other devices has been seemless and intuitive to execute.
The archos sounds really nice and LOUD. When I output it to my $400 stereo, I cannot tell the difference between the original CD and archos MP3.
If you can afford it, and @269 it aint that bad, and if you are a fan of music, GET IT! GET IT NOW!
Oh, and one last thing: the battery covers are from HELL. Changing the batteries on this thing is like a Herculean task. But, with an onboard charger, you shouldnt have to be doing that all that often.