Customer Reviews

Archos 504 160GB Portable Digital Media Player and Recorder (500896)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

1. As a mp3 player it is still the best if you are like me who refuse to buy any music with copy protection. I bought a handheld device every 6 months and move my files all the time. The copy protected files prevent me from doing that so ipod is out of the question for me. The user interface is much better then creative lab.

2. As for pictures as other reviewer say it does not support raw format and if you need this go for creative lab and not the wolverine(very bad company will not repair under warrenty even if they admit it is their fault but they do not know why). otherwise it is great.

3. Reliability wise i have great luck with all Archos product and none have much problem. My 504 have lock up once for about 200 hours of using. I have to remove the battery to restart it.

4. The best part about the 504 is the mp4 support. I use CloneMobile to rip dvds for the 504. I actually do it mostly for music. So instead of just mp3 I have music videos. CloneMobile offer ripping by chapter which is a function I have not seen this in most other software. The best part about the 504 is that it allow me to play all the videos in one folder in normal order, shuffle or repeat mode. while you are playing your mp4 you can see a side menu which let you see and change parameters. The most useful one for me is the display format (auto,full screen, maximize, original) and the player is very smart when displaying the video. The fast foreword is good but only up to 8X. i wish it is 32x. there is no go to next video command like the mp3.

5. i highly recommend the dvr docking kit for use at home and the $26 small travelling adapter for traveling. The most important features lacking without one of the 3 adapter is a fast charger and the ability to use regular usb cables.

6. The little speaker is a convenient feature but useless as the sound is horrible. I hook the 504 to a device with a mp3 player audio input with a subwoofer. but the best sound is by using my headphone. I use the shure 500 when travelling and Sennheiser HD650 at home. It drives the Sennheiser HD650 without an amp with very good sound. I had a portable headphone amp but i find it too cumbersome to use it. It is possible that a headphone like the 701k that require less power to drive may be better for the 504 but i am currently very happy using the hd650. Also with the dvr adapter i can hook the 504 to my hi fi system but i just do not like to run long cables.

7. I upgraded the firmware immediately since someone said the sound quality has been improved with the newer firmware. The instruction given did not work. I have to click the firmware file manually after i copied it onto the 504 for it to run and then it upgraded fine.

8. Someone complain about the size of the 504 and i found it to be very acceptable. It is a lot bigger and heavier then my 400 but there is very little you can do if you want a large screen for the size. May be in the next few years they can cut down the thickness and weight but knowing what i know about hard drives that may take many years.

9. I still do not like the buttons and you cannot use them in the dark. I think some additional gui like the 400 that you push and small menu display on the side to let u pick choices will be a great addition for operating in the dark. This is not an issue if you are watching a long movie at night but an issue if you watch music videos. you have to turn the lcd to the brightest and keep some lights on to use the device. This is a bigger issue when travelling due to the drain on the battery. Talking about the battery it is very easy to remove, so an extra battery may be an answer.

10. I have not use the 504 to record anything because I have no need for that. I have other systems set up to do those task. Personally I have to say using a hand held device should be for travelling and I leave the heavy lifting of recording to my home video and hi fi system.

I am ecstatic about the sound of this player. I've compared it to ipod, Sansa, and Creative. The Creative comes close, but the Archos leaves the others standing still. This is my 1st portable video device so I don't have a comparison. But a couple of people I know with video ipods love the picture quality. The 504 is also easy to use. Now, here's the warning which may or may not apply to your situation. It does NOT work with all Plays For Sure services. I have thousands of tracks on subscription from Napster & Rhapsody that I download for my old player. They are all useless on the 504. The files will transfer and play for a day or two, but then they stop playing because the Archos says the files are copy protected. Of course they are, but I downloaded new files to make SURE the liscenses were current and they still wouldn't play. (Once you start getting this error message, any new tracks transferred won't even play once.) The only workaround I've found is to format the hard drive and reload, which works, but after a couple more days the files go dormant again. This is a BIG time waster, but even more inportantly, you can only transfer the files 3 times every 30 days. So at best you could listen to the files for 1 week a month. I sent my 1st player back because I though it was defective. The 2nd player acts the same. Archos tech support, (nice & helpful), told me to use the URGE service from MTV/VH1/CMT. It's working so far, but obviously this has and will cost me a LOT of time. The unit also will freeze ocassionally, but it's easy to unfreeze. This doesn't bother me because this is the only player I've been able to find with more than 80 gb, so I'm more than willing to cut some slack. I've got roughly a thousand cds, plus my subscription tracks. I need the space. Given the storage space, the ease of use, and the melt-in-your-chair sound quality, I didn't feel the Plays For Sure issue and the occassional hang-up were worth deducting a whole star. My ONLY other issue is when you set up a playlist, you can add by song, album, artist, genre, rating, etc. But when you view the playlist or want to delete anything from it, this can only be viewed/done track-by-track. I've put this suggestion in to tech support. Hopefully it will be a simple firmware upgrade. Also, if you're going to use this for video, (which I won't do very much), the accessories you need to perform most of it's higher functions are extra $$$. I know this is a LOOOOOOOOONG review, but it's a lot of money. The buyer should be informed.

This is the third Archos product that I have purchased. I had the Gmini404 which I was very pleased with but I ran out of space on the hard drive. So, I couldn't wait to get the 160gb Archos 504. It is absolutely fabulous. I have spent the last three days ripping my entire collection to the Archos--about 3,000 tracks and I still have room to spare for photos, movies, notes, etc. The controls take a little getting used to, you definitely have to look at the unit to navigate around. A touchscreen would be a nice addition. That's the only criticism that I have and it's really a very small complaint.

I have Shure E3 sound isolating headphones & coupled with the 504, you are transported to another place. I can't praise the player enough. If you love music, do yourself a favor and spring for the Archos 504 with really good headphones like Shure. You won't regret it.

I adore my 504; why would anyone bother with an IPod?????

I apologize in advance that I am able to offer no insight whatsoever into this player's capabilities. You see, mine does not work. This would be much less a problem if Archos' customer support functioned at all. Perhaps in this day and age it is too much to ask, but given what I paid for this device, to say nothing of the money you have to sink into accessories before it will do almost anything, it seems reasonable to ask for more. The only available technical support is a baffling webform on the Archos website, and although they promise a response in two business days, they have never gotten back to me in less than a week.

After some fantastically stupid "support", they finally agreed to fix it. I sent it to them, they sent it back and absolutely nothing has changed (it has a bad hard drive or processor, hard to say which) and the problem is obvious enough that they clearly did not QA the thing at all before they sent it back. So now I am getting back on the carousel. Sigh.

Many of the opinions on here seem well-considered, so you should certainly believe them about functionality. However, if you buy this and you ever need the company (this is not a $40 disposable player, after all), it will be a sad, sad day for you stretching on into weeks, maybe months.

I've had my Archos 504 160gb for a couple of months now and I love it. I did get the one add-on in order to play mp2 files but otherwise it has played everything. I read somewhere that it wasn't guaranteed to handle avi files but mine have all worked. I'm no techno wiz when it comes to this stuff and thankfully I don't have to be. The picture is great, sound awesome (more on that later) and overall I'm totally satisfied. The other reviews here go over the details of what the unit is like so I'll focus on other aspects that I wished I could find before I made my purchase. Hope it's helpful.

For add-ons I got the travel adaptor for quick recharging. It's quicker then using the USB to computer link but I could have skipped this purchase. I say that because I also got an extra battery & an external charger. This allows me to charge the battery away from the unit. Without that capability it's a pain to charge a battery on the unit, then remove it and swap with the other battery and charge it. This way I always have a fully charged batter & a way to charge the dead one without keeping it connected to the unit. For all of that I've never actually needed the 2nd battery as the main unit has never been fully depleted.

I also bought the leather case for the 504. Much better then the case that comes with the unit, which is useless. The new case allows me to watch the unit while it's in the case, charge it, etc. It still doesn't have a kickstand for watching but that's a minor point (Correction, it does have a kickstand). A worthwhile purchase IMO.

And I got an adaptor to allow two sets of earphones to be connected so my son & I can both enjoy this thing while we're on a plane.

As far as sound goes the external speaker is pretty useless. It is barely audible. The earbuds that come with are also a pain, but I hate all earbuds. I considered some Shure ec? units but the cost is nuts. So I finally settled on some Sennheiser PMX60s and love them. They were $30 and sit on your ears (neckband types) quite easily. Love the sound.

If I was buying again I'd consider the 604. I avoided it because of the 30gb max size. But now that I own one I realize that you don't really need that much space. It's not like you need to archive videos on this unit. That's what your computer hard drive is for. All you need is enough space for a good 10-20 hours of watching (I mainly use this unit for videos/dvds). As you watch something you delete it and make room for more. The Wifi aspect of the 604 would be worth the smaller storage space.

So it's two thumbs up for the 504 and a strong consideration to move up to the 604. You can't lose, this is a sweet unit.

The Archos 504 160 GB PMP does just about everything right, but it will cost you. The styling is much better than my old AV480, but still no home run in the looks department. Direction buttons are kind of counter-intuitive but you get used to them. To be able to watch and listen to a wide variety of formats you need to download several plug-ins at $20.00 each so figure on adding $40.00 to the price of the PMP.

The display is absolutely beautiful, both on the Player and when connected to a TV. The sound is great. Storage can't be beat. The one problem I have is with controlling the cable TV box. It tries to turn the cable box on before it selects the channel. If the cable box is on, as mine usually is, the 504 shuts it off. You cannot disable this "feature." The work-around is to program a short dummy program just before the show you want to record. The dummy program shuts the cable box off and then the actual progam choice turns it back on.

I ordered the optional DVR with this and I think everything works great and is easy to use. I can set all the shows I watch in yahoo and load them right to the 504 set it in the DVR cradle and it records all of my programs on its own. I just grab it as I run out the door and I can watch all of my shows on the run. The case it comes with is worthless but I just went out and got a cheap $5.00 camra case and that works just fine. With 160gb I'm able to carry all of my music and all of the movies I own in my pocket. with the dvr I can play them on any tv. So far I'm impressed with the quality of this device.

This baby is a little big for the athlete but as mp3/pmp toys go its awesome. The screen is very high quality, the OS is very user friendly, down and up load times are relatively fast. The one negative thing I have to say about it is that it does not support all file types. The company has made it so you can do firmware updates for free which is great but these updates should include codec/plugins for all video file types. This particular product does not include mpeg 1 or 2 type videos. So you have to go to the Archos website and order a disc (you can't even download it from the site) with the plug-ins. That said everything else about this thing is really great.

You cannot complain with the feature set supported by the Archos 504. It has 160 GB that should cover most big MP3 collections. It has a phenomenal Video capability. Most importantly, it is not tied to a specific platform such as iTunes. However, this is not a product comparable to the iPod (that's like apples and oranges). It is unwieldy in comparison to an iPod. But it will let you record video directly from external sources (without iTunes/Windows media). The controls are a bit non-standard (though you would find more keys here than in iPod/Creative). The design does not give in to single-handed use like in traffic (might be done with some experience over months?) so you will have to plan ahead for the journey. But the real gotcha is none of the above but the fact that everything from the power charger the fancy case is an accessory for which you have to cough up extra and THAT hurts.

This is my second ARCHOS that I've had and I feel that it needs to be more durable for all the money you shove out to get it. My first one fell out my locker and I definitely accept responsibility for that, but this second one I've bought takes the cake. At first, it was doing fine. No issues. But now, it has shut down and it won't start back up. I went to the site and tried to reset it like the instructions said but that didn't work. So, I sent an email to the ARCHOS site and now I'm awaiting a response. I think I've finally learned my lesson. All that glitters is not gold!!! Beware Buyer, unless you are the type that don't mine spending money or super careful of all your stuff.