Archos 3 Vision 8 GB Video MP3 Player (Chocolate Brown)

by Archos

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3.7 x 2.2 x 0.4 inches ; 1.9 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B002GHBW16
• Item model number: 501338
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The ARCHOS 3 vision media player is a full-featured, affordable media player packed with a bright and sharp 3-inch LCD touchscreen, 8 GB of storage, and an FM transmitter. Just the ticket for making all your photos, music, and videos, truly portable.

Ultra-thin design with a sharp, bright 3-inch LCD touch-screen. Click to enlarge.

Matte chocolate back metal plate for added visual flair.

Browse music by title, album, artist, genre, or your own favorites. Click to enlarge.

Enjoy your videos in landscape. Click to enlarge.

3-Inch LCD Touchscreen
The ARCHOS 3 vision screen is big and bright enough to show off your best photos and videos, but the device will still fit into your pocket. The touchscreen interface boasts a virtual scroll dial that lets you quickly zip through long lists of music files.

Your Music
The ARCHOS 3 vision is perfect for music fans, with up to 14 hours of music playback before recharging and support for MP3, WMA, and WAV formats. The music library shows music by title, album, artist, genre, or your own favorites. With 8 GB of disk capacity to store over 4,000 songs, you'll have no problem saving tons of music and podcasts onto your device. And with the lyrics function, you can actually see song lyrics display right across the screen.

Your Video
ARCHOS has always been the leader in portable video. This device is able to read a number of video file formats meaning that most everything you throw on it will play without conversion--MPEG 1/2/4, WMV, FLV, AVI, RM, and RMVB.

Your Photos
The ARCHOS 3 makes a great little photo wallet. Display them one by one or play as a slide show. For a little more fun, add a soundtrack--your favorite song.

FM Radio
The ARCHOS 3 vision has a built-in FM Radio. Set the radio presets to your favorite stations and your music, news or other programs are just few screen-taps away.

FM Transmitter
With the FM Transmitter you won't need any cables in your car. Just select the frequency you want to transmit, lay your ARCHOS on your dashboard, and it will transmit your music or podcasts to your radio, for enjoyment right through your car's speakers.

Voice Recorder
Need a voice recorder for a classroom lecture or personal notes? The ARCHOS 3 vision has a built-in microphone that will allow you to record audio for hours if needed.

Stopwatch/Calendar
The ARCHOS 3 vision also includes stopwatch and calendar applications to round out the list of functions.

What's in the Box
ARCHOS 3, headphones, USB cable (for charging and file transfer), user manual

Product Description

The ARCHOS 3 vision media player is a full-featured affordable device with the video and music technical know-how which ARCHOS is known for. Packed with a bright and sharp 3-Inch LCD touch-screen, 8 GB of storage, and an FM transmitter, this handy little fellow is just the ticket for making all your photos, music, and videos, truly portable.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a great player for me, December 7, 2009

By 

Joseph F - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Archos 3 Vision 8 GB Video MP3 Player (Chocolate Brown) (Electronics)

this review was updated on 12/27/2009.

my archos 3 vision absolutely meets or exceeds my personal requirements for an mp3 player!

times are tough so when my mp3 player was stolen in july 2008, i honestly tried to use my aging windows mobile phone with windows media player as a replacement player for over a year. however, that solution had several limitations and frustrations. there were workarounds, but i grew tired of them.

the stolen player was an archos g-mini which i had owned for several years and i really appreciated it's features so that is the main reason i shopped for a new archos player first. the archos 3 vision player has all of those same features with heaping helping of style, storage and added features.

pros:
- it has style
- priced under $100
- plenty of storage space
- fits comfortably in all pockets
- good quality video on beautiful screen
- random play by folder, artist, album and genre
- better than average playback quality with a good equalizer
- total access to music at all times (without proprietary software)

neutral:
- battery life
- no firmware updates yet

cons:
- screen scratches quickly and easily
- the on screen control dial is almost useless for browsing tracks

the screen is beautiful and will also scratch quickly. my device had a 0.25" scratch within 24 hours of use, but i could only see it when the device was off. luckily, i have lots of screen protectors so cutting one to fit was easy. i could not see the scratch unless the screen was off. with the protector on, the screen looks much less beautiful.

the on-screen dial is certainly not the easiest navigation interface i have ever considered. if you prefer to use random play or pregenerated playlists, the on-screen dial will likely never be a concern for you. however, if you require the ability to browse through every song on your device so you can carefully consider which track is worthy of your listening time at this very moment, this device is not for you.

a couple bugs that i expect to be remedied with firmware updates...
- the button hold function sometimes requires a redundant switch on and off in order to switch off properly.
- the device will not remember my personal background picture; i select a picture, but when i turn the device on again, a different default background is displayed and my personal background picture is still available quickly by cycling through the default selections.

when i posted this review, i had owned the player for 2 months and the video features were basically useless to me. i thought i would occasionally use video playback during long train rides or plane trips, but music is really all i need... i knew i had paid a price for the feature so i felt committed to actually using the video playback and realized 1 very good use when i thought ahead to load it with a few downloaded holiday shows that i knew both of my youngest kids would enjoy. i also purchased a cheap speaker carrying case and the result is that watching shows on daddy's player was a hit during stressful holiday road trips and it is not something they will expect for everyday driving.

however, i still could live without video playback and i have recenly had a chance to play with the archos 2 vision player, which a friend purchased as a gift to himself. it has a screen that is barely big enough for showing id3 tags, but if you do not need and will not use video playback, i highly recommend that player because it has the same basic player features for about 40% less price. that player also has a simpler control scheme for browsing tracks.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bit Dissapointed, November 5, 2009

By 

D. Blackman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Archos 3 Vision 8 GB Video MP3 Player (Chocolate Brown) (Electronics)

This is a cool looking gadget but that is all below are the thing to watch out for:
1) Very poor product documentation
2) Very poor technical support
3) No play list function
4) Very week FM radio receiver
5) Very very very poor FM transmitter
6) Touch screen is not responsive often requiring second, third, fourth...touches before the function is accessed
7) Menu navigation needs a rethink as once you have loaded it with more artist or albums than can fit the screen, scrolling to an artist or album is very difficult
8) Very very very very crappy headphones; you need to buy a pair of decent headphones to fully appreciate the music experience
9) No carry case as yet

The Pluses:
1) Excellent sound quality (playback)
2) Excellent video quality (playback)
3) Cool looks
4) High quality look and feel

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Archos' worst effort, and definitely the worst touch screen PMP, April 12, 2010

By 

Pavel Popa - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Archos 3 Vision 8 GB Video MP3 Player (Chocolate Brown) (Electronics)

I bought this Archos 3 Vision player online for around $70. I was lured in by the chocolate brown color, the wide range of file support, and the FM transmitter. Impressed by previous Archos offerings, I decided to try this new player out.

When I first saw the item, I was extremely surprised by how small it was. My old MP3 player (a Philips SA6145 MP3 Player (Black)) has a 3.5" screen and is quite large. I regretted buying this Archos 3 immediately after seeing its small size, which is (no joke) barely bigger than a credit card. The only reason I left my perfect Philips was for a touch screen interface that the Philips didn't have. I very much regret doing that now, as I realize that my Philips was really a great player.

And the touch screen, you may ask? It's truly horrible. It always requires at least two presses to respond correctly; pitiful for any touch screen player. And there's no way to scroll by dragging. No, you have to use a "scroll wheel" (a little circle that lights up when the touch the area of the lower, right-hand part of the screen) and turn it in a circular motion to move the page. I really missed real buttons then.

After loading some files onto the Archos, I was very happy with the 8 GB of storage space on this Archos compared to only 4 on my Philips. I loaded some AVI, FLV, and WMV files on the player and was extremely impressed with the quality of the Archos' screen. But after only 3 seconds of a high-quality AVI file, the player froze completely. The touch screen didn't respond at all, neither did pressing the home button (one of the only real buttons on the player located on the face of the player underneath the screen). I had to turn off the player and back on again, only to have it do the same thing. I converted this AVI file to WMV using my Philips' converter software, and the files played fine on my player, although the quality was, disappointingly, not as good. I then loaded several MP3 files onto the Archos and was saddened to see that, although the quality was good, half the album art and tagging info didn't show up on the player. This was never a problem with my Philips.

In addition, using the touch screen for music control was abysmal. The volume slide would not change, and several presses was what it took to change the volume to where I wanted it to go. Now, the truly main reason why I wanted a touch screen was to be able to press the seek bar and instantly go to any part of the movie I wanted, and the Archos did this fine. 1 good thing, finally.

The accessories included are the USB cord for charging and file transfer, the included earphones, and the user manual. The USB cord was fine, but the included headphones were the definition of terrible. Sound quality was extremely poor, and running was impossible, after about 15 seconds of running, an earbud would pop out of my ear. Terrible. The user manual was simply a fold out map in three languages of the stuff you can read on the Amazon webpage. However, there was an offer for 75 free songs from Archos, but it was really a scam to get my to sign up with my credit card on an obligation-based program.

My overall views on this product spell out one word: disappointment. I was extremely impressed with the Archos 5 and the Archos 604, but this player was a sore disappointment. Archos really lost out on a great opportunity of making a smaller player in their line. Instead of making a quality product, they threw together a player and polished it. Everything was abysmal about this player, and not even the color satisfied me. It turned out to be more of a purple than brown in natural light. But in more serious terms, the horrible touch screen, the freezing while playing back files, the poor earphones, and the uncertainty of album art and info transferring to the player makes me award this player with a 1 star. Stay far, far, away.