After another mishap with my last Archos (to do with the power supply), I got a new Archos 504. It’s a nice piece of kit but I do have a few gripes.
First, the move to a proprietary USB cable from previously standard mini USB is almost a deal-breaker. I like being able to carry data around on my Archos and pass anything on to people who ask for it. I do not like having to always carry around the supplied cable to do this. I can understand that someone probably thought this would help make money through supplying more of their own cables but they’re obviously ridiculously short-sighted: who is actually going to buy one of these since they come packaged? A few people will undoubtedly lose their cable, but I seriously doubt that number would justify designing, manufacturing, storing and distributing a proprietary component. Very annoying.
Also, while the physical interface is more obvious for first time users (old users have to make some small but ultimately good adjustments), it has flaws. Each of the buttons on the side is actually a double-button i.e. each side of the button has a different function and so has to be tilted in the appropriate direction. This is a little odd but becomes second natured pretty quickly. The real problem here, though, is that it interacts with the supplied leather case quite badly. Unless you spent some time stretching the elastic at the side, it is too tight and presses the buttons for you, commonly resulting in pausing, track skipping and volume changes, all functions on the right side of the interface.
Most annoyingly for the new user is that the TV dock, which was bundled as standard with previous models, is now an extra cost. However, this is somewhat mitigated by the new design which has reverted to being a proper dock (the AV500 series was little more than an infrared port) with a slew of AV ports to link up all of your devices.
Other pluses include a much nicer UI (aliased text, video thumbnails, better library for audio), an expanded hard disk (my model is now 80Gb), and expanded format handling (some are only available through paid-for plugins — nasty). Given that this was an upgrade due to a fault (because of Christmas pricing, I actually made money), I can’t complain too much. It is better than previous models, but the shift towards proprietary interfaces is a worrying and silly move.