vincent nguyen

If you’re following the exciting world of MP3 players, then you may have heard of Archos’ XS104 digital audio player. This one was supposed to hit stores sometime around May, but was apparently delayed for some reason. Well, audio lovers now have both good and bad news concerning this player. The XS104 is on sale now, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have lived up to all the hype. It’s a decent player, but it’s priced like an excellent one, a face that will limit the consumer base of the product.

From a physical point of view, the XS104 isn’t too shabby. Its dimensions are 91 x 43 x 14mm, and it only weighs 80 grams. Understandably, it has a small 1.5” screen, which sports an impressive 262k colors. However, all that this screen will be used for is navigation and displaying pictures (JPEG). No video support or anything of the sort. Audio formats accepted are also pretty limited for a strictly music-based portable: MP3/WMA/ WAV. There’s no FM tuner, which would have been really appreciated in such a small featured MP3 player. There’s a 4GB mini HDD, which is nice, but of course Flash memory would have been preferable (no moving parts). The price is around $230, which is a bit too much, in my opinion.

This long awaited player just doesn’t seem too appealing to the common consumer. It’s very limited in terms of features, and supports a surprisingly small amount of audio formats. The small physical size and somewhat attractive exterior design is nice, but there’s just too little besides this. Some sort of video playback and an FM tuner could have really added value to this package, but they are nowhere to be found. If you dig it, I guess it’s not a terrible purchase, but anyone looking for a general MP3 player should look elsewhere.

Archos XS104 out and about [DAP Review]