Customer Reviews

Archos 10 GB Studio MP3 Player Jukebox

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have had my Archos Jukebox for a couple of weeks now and couldn't be more happy.

I did a lot of research into all of the players out there before deciding on the Archos. The negative comments listed about the Archos were: too big to hold, volume too hard to adjust, and battery life. Every review I saw said it had good sound. I ordered mine because I was looking for a MP3 player and was thinking of getting a portable hard drive. By getting the Archos I killed two birds with one stone.

When it arrived it was SMALLER than I expected. It is bigger than most of the other brands but not uncomfortably so. The menu screen is very easy to navigate through and adjusting the volume is not a big deal. In fact, it is very simple. I'm sure everyone wishes the batteries on their MP3 players lasted longer so I am not disappointed in that. Archos does include an extra set of batteries so I keep both sets charged up and haven't had a problem, yet. Changing the batteries was said to be difficult and require a screwdriver. The manual was a little confusing on how to change the batteries, but once I figured it out, I can change mine without tools. I don't like the headphones. They are the kind that sit on the back of your neck and come up over your ears. All of the features work like a charm. I have used it as both a portable hard drive and a MP3 player... both features work great. I run XP on my system and it recognized the hard drive right off the bat. I moved over about 400 songs without a hitch and haven't looked back.

If you are thinking of a MP3 player, and the thought of having a portable hard drive has crossed your mind. Look into the Archos. I would have given it 5 stars but the headphones aren't what I would have chose. Hope this helps.

The archos mp3 player gives everything it promises, and is the perfect mp3 player for the average music listener. When I first started looking for an mp3 player, I was wondering what size hard drive I should get. The big choice was between 20 gigs and 10 gigs. After getting the 10gb player, I'm happy I did. I have 153 cd's, and as of now all of them are on this player. Better Yet, I still have a TON of room left! If you feel that you have more than 2,500 songs that you must carry around with you at all times, then go for the 20gb player, but personally I feel that 10 gigs is more than enough.

The machine itself is very well built. It has a solid and durable feel to it. While the headphones are big, ugly, and sound terrible, the rest of the package is great. It should be noted that this is not the best player if you will be using it while jogging or working out. While taking it out on a jog one day, the thing had many disc errors. Once I took it out of my pocked and held it, I received no more errors. If you are looking for a good portable music player made for running and such, I would highly recommend one of Sony's fabulous minidisc players.

The user interface on the system works better than I ever would have expected. Very easy to use, and the small screen doesn't effect the performance at all. While the manual provided wasn't the greatest ever, I didn't think it was as bad as many of the other reviewers thought. One tip if you do buy this player...When using playlists, make sure that they are in a folder where all of the songs from the playlist are in. Playlists aren't covered in the manual and are very confusing.

Overall, I highly recommend this player. It has a great build, is extremely easy to use, and has great sound. All of the shortcomings pointed out in other reviews (No volume or hold button) are miniscule, as both of those options are available with two button clicks. In my opinion, the biggest flaw is that you cannot browse through the music folders while a song is playing. Besides that very minor gripe, this player gets 2 thumbs up!

I purchased the Archos MP3 player because 1. It costs about half as much as the IPod and 2. It is compatible with Windows right off the bat (no extra stuff to buy for a Windows machine). I've only had it for a short time, but I will say it - this player is fantastic. I had everything up and running in about twenty minutes. The instructions are rather sparse and not very well written, but there's not a lot of bookwork involved in the set-up. The most important thing to remember is to let the batteries charge for at least eight hours when you first start using the player. Everything else is intuitive for the computer-savvy and easily worked through by most everyone else. The device itself is smaller than my Sports Walkman. The navigation is easy, once you play with it a couple of times, and the drag-and-drop interface with Windows is seamless.

The only negatives I've run into so far is the interface on the MusicMatch Jukebox software is a little cluttered; The separate screens for play lists, recording, etc. do not lock together as smoothly as apps like WinAmp. Future MusicMatch versions will hopefully take care of that. The carrying case and headphones are kind of... too. I use my Sony headphones instead.

These are minor quibbles, though. Overall, I am very happy with my Archos player.

I have owned the Studio 10 for about a month now - during this period I have used the player a lot and have gotten comfortable with the controls. Overall, I am very please with my purchase and can highly recommend this player.

Positives
-Tons of space - size DOES matter(I own a lot of music, and have only used about 4G of the 10G available)
-Easy to use (after you learn the controls)
-Very easy to upload music (click and drag over a USB cable)
-Sounds great (using my own headphones)

-Durable, so far (I use it while exercising)
-Use of Playlists offers a lot of listening flexibility
-Multiple play modes - single, repeat, shuffle

Minor nuisances:
-MP3 Only, requiring conversion of all CD's to MP3 - a long process when you have a lot of CD's
-A little Quirky and sensitive - it sometimes Powers Off if you push too many buttons too fast.
-Battery Life was short at first - less than an hour - it has seemed to improve as time goes on. At first I thought I had a bum battery, but I no longer have any problems, and the battery has lasted several hours without a problem
-Headphones - throw them out

The Manual was OK, but as recommended by other reviewers on this site, go to the Archos Web Site, under Technical Support, and read - this site gives tips on Playlist creation, Folder set-up,and a bunch of other important issues. The FAQ section is also helpful.

I researched a lot of systems before plopping down my money on this one - I was on the fence between this, the RIO Riot, and the D-Link Roq-It. I think I made the right choice.

I purchased a studio 10 from Archos just this evening and have been using it for about 6 minutes.
After pulling it from the box, I charged the batteries, plugged the USB cable into my PC running Windows 2000, and braced myself for the usual headache involved with a new computer peripheral.
The computer recognized the device immediately and assigned it a drive letter. I then opened my desktop MP3 directory and dragged a couple hundred songs over to the studio 10 drive. The transfer took approximately 10 minutes.
Based on several reviews I read I expected the sound quality to be lacking. However, I am at this moment most pleasantly surprised. This thing sounds good.
The documentation was somewhat slim, but informative. The menu navigation is simple, and after a quick read of the manual, which I will admit is written in somewhat "broken" english, I was up and running.
I will agree with the other reviews I have read... the headphones are not very good. In fact that is the only reason I
did not see fit to give this fine device five stars.
My current plan is to use the unit in the automobile so I no longer have to lug around hundreds of CD's. Also, the device will come in handy as a portable hard drive for use in carrying files to/from the office.
We will have to see how the batteries stand up over time as I cannot comment on their performance at this point.
I am pleased with the purchase and would recommend the studio 10 to anyone that was thinking about carrying a boatload of music or data around in their pocket. A very cool gadget.

Pros
150 CDs in your pocket - how cool is that?
Easy device-to-PC interface
Open source replacement operating system available

Cons:
Seems "fragile"
Operating System bugs
Poor User Interface on the device itself
Feature set needs improvement: needs bookmarking, total disk shuffle, restart current song.

Buy this MP3 player if you want big music storage capacity on a budget. If price is not an issue then you definitely want an Apple iPod. I paid $... for this (after rebate). I now see third parties asking for over $... - at that price stay away!

- 150 CDs in your pocket - how cool is that?
When it works, it works. You can load about 10,000 minutes of music and play it on the go. For $... that's a good deal. Just don't ever look at a friend's iPod. The iPod is about 2/3 the size, it super reliable, and the user interface is excellent. Plus the iPod uses Firewire which is much faster than USB 1.

- Easy device-to-PC interface
Install the driver and plug it in. It shows up as another drive letter. Very nice.

- Open source replacement operating system available
For those willing to tinker with such things:
http://rockbox.haxx.se/

- Seems "fragile"
In the 1 week I have had this so far, I have seen 3 hang-ups or boot glitches. I've been able to clear these and restore function by restarting the device, but this indicates a certain fragility in the O/S (or maybe the hardware).

- Operating System bugs
A search of the net finds that past O/S versions have been bug ridden. The most recent appears to be better, but I still found a bug in that you cannot delete all of the songs from a playlist (all but 1 is OK, just not all). This problem has a reasonable work-around in that you can do whatever you want to the playlist using a text editor when the device is hooked up to your PC.

-Poor User Interface on the device itself
It's actually not bad for 2 LCD lines and 6 buttons. I'm sure this helps keep the price down. Again, if you want a stellar interface, go iPod.

--- Feature set needs improvement:
- needs bookmarking:
It's annoying that when you turn it off and back on, you're always back at the top, and have to browse to find where you were previously at. Also, forget about audiobooks on this thing.
- needs total disk shuffle
Shuffle only works within a given folder. One workaround is to create a huge playlist of all your songs and shuffle that
-needs restart current song
Pressing "-" brings you to the previous song. To restart the current song requires the more arcane: on and >, followed by >.

I use this not only as an MP3 player, but to back up and move files between computers, and also as an extra drive for my old laptop.

It's heavy, but compact, and it has survived a couple of drops so far.

Menus are not the easiest, the only reason I knocked off a star.

I've had mine over a year and half now. The first two months I had it, I returned it to archos because it would not boot up. They sent me another one and that worked very well for about a year of everyday use. Then sadly (after the waranty expired) the internal harddrive locked up... What to do, what to do?? Ripped it apart and swapped the microdrive with a Fujistu microdrive I bought at a local computer store. A bit tricky to pull out the drive, but a fun experience, especially since I went from 6GB to 15GB... also the new drive is rated to use less power so batteries last longer... A bit fragile not to be thrown around but if you treat it like a laptop its completely GREAT!!!

10 gigabytes is probably more than you need to store all of your music, so unless you have an incredibly huge collection, the studio 10 is sufficient. This player has great options for playback, and the file system works well. However there are quite a few bugs in the OS, even though I downloaded the most recent version. The supplied computer software is pretty lame, I must say. I bought this player because I though I would put all of my music from CD onto mp3, but I find that I don't use it often. Playing a CD always has better quality, unless you encode at some huge bitrate. Also, the USB connection takes its time. One great feature is the audio out, so you can attach it to a sound system. The rechargeable batteries are great. There's a line in as well, but that is completely pointless since you cant record mp3s. I also thought people would be intrigued by the player, but a lot of people I know confused it with a tape player when they first saw it. If you want to buy this because you dont want to lug around all your CD's, and if you dont mind slightly [worse] quality, go ahead and buy it.

Hello everyone,
I received this player for christmas and in the beginning, yes it had trials. The manual was difficult to use and it didn't have all of the normal buttons such as a standard player. For example, there is no volume buttons or dials. Instead, it is done digitally withing the player after using hotkeys/ menues. However, it is quite easy to use. Just drag and drop your files directly to the removable hard drive. I am using windows 98 which requires me to preload the USB drivers so i cannot just plug in and go. With a friend on a windows 2000 computer, the drivers were already there so I didn't have to mess with that.

THINGS I WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENT:
1. GET THE RECORDER: It has smaller text which is nice because you can see where you are better in a playlist.
2. Found out about rockbox.haxx.se first. This site was very helpful. For example, they have free games for your jukebox RECORDER. Simple but adds features.
DO NOT DEPEND ON THE ARCHOS'S FIRMWARE UPDATES-USE rockbox.haxx.se, it is the BEST.
Otherwise, enjoy this great product's sound quality.