But I agree with all the good points you mentioned, I love the kick stand, the USB ports, the openness, the 8″ 4/3 form factor. Only that screen is a deception.

Honestly the screen on the Archos 80G9 is not great: decent but quite bad viewing angles and far too shiny.

I prefer the Archos 80G9 but I can’t understand on what basis you state that:
“Again, the iPad3 screen is not worth paying $300 extra.”

The screen on the ipad3 is something that no other tablet can come close to right now. If one wants to read high resolution scans or pictures, I guess he can justify that amount of money. This is not true for all customers but I’m quite sure some would be delighted to invest 300$ for the best screen available in devices of that size and form factor.

Android tablets crossed 50% daily worldwide tablet sales/shipments in December 2011. 

Again, the iPad3 screen is not worth paying $300 extra.

Best in my opinion absolutely takes into account the price of things. Value is the most important factor. I don’t subscribe to those blogs that “review” devices without ever even talking for a second about the actual cost of the devices, just because carriers want to hide the cost of these devices behind $2000-$3000 2-year contracts, this is just the worlds biggest scam, and I’m not supporting it.

Most of the reasons Archos is better than iPad, it’s also better than the Asus Transformer Prime. And again, the Asus is not worth $700 (with keyboard, with taxes). The Archos OMAP4460 at 1.5Ghz is about as powerful as a Tegra3 for 90% of normal Android uses, and for some uses the Archos at 1.5Ghz actually performs faster (as Tegra3 clock frequency was limited to 1.3Ghz).

I quoted the retail price of Arnova 9 G2 which is pretty much the similar performance to that Boxchip based tablet I also linked. $199. Same exact LG-manufactured 9.7″ IPS screen as on the iPad1 and iPad2. It’s just plain logical, Android is better value for money than Apple stuff and has been so for over 2 and a half years now. And before Android, embedded Linux implementations have always provided much better value than Apple on the market back since before 1999.

Put an Archos 101 G9 1.5Ghz for $259, an Arnova 9 G3 for $199 (soon $149), Arnova 7 G3 for $119, an iPad2 for $399, iPad3 for $499 and Asus Transformer Prime Infinity (with 1920×1200) for $499 in that same store. It’s pretty easy to prove that more than 50% of the consumers buying a tablet will leave the store with an Archos or an Arnova. Not with an iPad and not with an Asus, consumers think.

The main reason Archos doesn’t sell more are these:

1. Archos can’t afford yet to manufacture more tablets to fill all stores that can sell them.

2. Consumers don’t yet know the Archos and Arnova choices, consumers simply do not see them in the store next to the iPad3 so most consumers simply do not know there is the Archos/Arnova alternative.

Same thing happens with the Kindle Fire:

– Of the consumers who bought a tablet and who visited Amazon.com at least once in November/December 2011 and saw the Kindle Fire banner at the top of the page, more than 50% of those bought a Kindle Fire and not an iPad2.

– That number is staggering. Kindle Fire nearly single-handedly sold more tablets in December 2011 than the iPad2. Those sales are only based on people knowing that the Kindle Fire even exists. When products like the Kindle Fire are available in every store, it’s not even a question, Android tablets will own more than 70% of the tablet market just as Android smartphones own more than 70% of the worldwide smartphones market.

Hi,

without wishing to get involved in a flame war :

first of all you didnt state anything about value in your post .. just “best” and on that score youre absolutely wrong, if you are wedded to android than the asus transformer is “better” than the archos

secondly (not wishing to be accused of being an apple fan boy) the ipad 3 screen is not a “little” better resolution its massively ! better resolution, brightness and viewing quality – the first thing i didk was compare to an ipad 2 and motorola xoom

as i’m sure you know the ipad takes a massive slice out of the tablet market in western countries – it was quoted in late 2011 as being around 70% (figures around year end are distorted by the HP touchpad firesale) of the total tablet market .. you then have the remaining 30% which is mostly android .. of that 30% (and i havnt bothered looking it up in detail) the vast majority of it are premium branded products with higher res capacitive screens.. the cheap chinese tablets being a very small proportion ..

now with fantastic value SOC’s like the Allwinner A10 (and no doubt decent dual core ones soon) and far better quality lower resolution capacitive screens the cheap chinese tablets are getting far better by now so the
differences between the branded android tablets and the cheap chinese
tablets will no doubt narrow.

incidently from your list of activities you seem to have email/facebook
etc missed off completely which one would think were the number 3 activity
after games and websurfing or maybe number 1 depending on how we count.

4:3 panels are far more expensive to make than their equivalent widescreen
but for anything (email, websurfing, facebook etc) other than games/video
their usable real estate is far greater.. I have a motorola zoom here as
well and email/websurfing etc involves far more scrolling etc and is a far
less pleasant experience.

I’m not going to get in to a which is better with android or ios .. as
personally i’m not impressed with either – android feels half finished and
half baked and ios is so closed and old fashioned – personally if theis
screen was on a windows 8 on arm tablet thats what i would have chosen i
think (as i havnt seen one yet in real life).

In terms of the prices you quote .. try to make them comparable … you
need to get to the destination market RETAIL price on your chinese tablet
wholesale price you quote .. for this you need to add duty/vat and also
the retailer/distributor markup (which is larger than the duty) .. so your
$130 increases dramatically. We wont go in to non compliance with the
android GPS licencing here or the possible future implications.

As i said I am no apple fanboy (this is the only apple product i own) and i
have no time for apples closed architecture (even copying photos to/from an
ipad and moving them between folders is virtually impossible out of the box
unless done through itunes on 1 specific machine and who in their right
mind wants to use itunes) ,, i totally accept the ipad is way overpriced
(less so with this very expensive early adopter screen the ipad 3 has in
it) but just look at the cost of the transformer prime .. thats way
overpriced as well ..

In terms of other factors one would look for in purchasing a tablet, A
review of the Arnova G9 101 (the best review i could find … from what
laptop mag at the end of 2011 albeit the outgoing iteration) probably
illustrates other important other factors people look for and why Archos
(and a lot of the chinese oem’s) has such a poor reputation for quality in
the UK (i can only speak of the uk) and some of the reasons the ipad
probably outsells it (despite being a premium product) by what should we
say a factor of at least 100 to 1 ?

———————————-

*Pros:* Inexpensive; Fast performance; HDMI output; Kickstand and remote
control app

*Cons:* Dull screen; Poor build quality; Short battery life; Remote control
app lacks volume setting; Runs hot

*The Verdict:* This Archos 101 G9 is a 10-inch Android Honeycomb tablet
that’s packed with multimedia features for a reasonable price.

——————-

The other quite significant factor (much like TV’s and settop box sales) in
my choice of the ipad is that it had several apps (eg lovefilm.com) that
virtually no other tablet has … lovefilm is hugely popular with its £5 a
month all you can eat tv/film streaming here.

rgds

ian

Archos is far better than iPad.

Look at the value per dollar.

Archos 101 G9 Turbo 1.5Ghz has a whole list of features that make it better than iPad3 when it comes to the main things most people do on a tablet:

1. Games
2. Web browsing
3. Video playback
4. Apps

That is in the order of what most average people spend the most time doing on their tablets regardless of brand. The features of the Archos make it a bit more useful for the video part so Archos users tend to spend a bit more time in video.

Your use case (opening and navigating PDF files?) is a very small minority of the usage of these types of devices at this point. Tablets are consumption devices, they are not for now productivity devices, people do not edit PDF files on their tablets, probably less than 2% of the usage of these devices goes to that.

Sure enough if you absolutely need 4:3 for the type of stuff that you want to do with it, then you can also go with a $130 Android based alternative http://138.2.152.197/2012/03/07/pierre-cardin-130-9-7-ips-boxchip-tablet/ and the Arnova 9 G2 selling MSRP with less than $199, those have exactly the same screen as on the iPad2. 55 million people have bought that screen on iPad1 and iPad2, so there is no reason it suddenly isn’t good enough. Getting a slightly higher resolution screen is not worth paying $300 (150%) more.

Also if you prefer 4:3, Archos sells the Archos 80 G9 Turbo 1.5Ghz for about $20-30 less than the 101 one. That Archos also has all those advantages over iPad1/2/3 that I listed.

I have reluctantly bought an an ipad 3 to replace my 10″ irex DR1000 eink reader .. the ink reader was the only thing that did a half decent job reading A4 and pdf texts … the super his res ipad 3 screen is excellent and perfect for this unlike anything else around on the market for anything near the ipad 3 price !  .. thats why i bought it .

The 4:3 screen ratio of the ipad lends it perfectly for text, pdf’s etc and its not that big a deal that i have small bars top and bottom of the screen when watching movies

I had a motorola xoom before and while it was ok for email, android always has the feeling of being “cobbled together” and the wide  screen ratio (like just about all other tablets now the touchpad is dead) makes it (as its long and thin) far less useful for anything productive than a 4:3 

Now dont get me wrong I am far from an apple fanboy (its my only apple product) and in many critical respects ios is AWEFUL, not that we see much about these huge issues as apple fanboys control much of the media ! 

Of the god aweful things that ios forces you to endure the worst by far is the fact you cant copy pictures to the ipad and rearrange them in to folders etc … you have to use the god aweful itunes to sync to ONE and ONLY THIS ONE device and make your changes on the non ios device and sync the changes to the ipad .. in this respect ithe ipad is like a dumb flashdrive with a screen !  … the workaround is to use driopbox and the like to upload download pictures to your cameraroll and forget about folders in the cameraroll or elsewhere … piss poor really and i thank the fanboys for the lack of progress on this 

not quite as onerous restrictions exist with all other file types though you can get around these with apps (half decent video for example needs the purchase of an app and then you transfer files using this app bypassing the itunes/ios main interface) .. hardlt satisfactory

the provided apple main apps eg calendar etc are pretty weak as well with very little possible integration (other than twitter) in to facebook etc (again other apps need to be purchased as workarounds) 

I have to say having used windows phone 7 for a year or so that post mango it really is very good (stopped me from moving to iphone)  and if this ipad screen was due out on a windows 8 on arm tablet i would almost certainly go for that rather than the ipad 3 …

but this archos better than an ipad 3 .. come on really 

I have reluctantly bought an an ipad 3 to replace my 10″ irex DR1000 eink reader .. the ink reader was the only thing that did a half decent job reading A4 and pdf texts … the super his res ipad 3 screen is excellent and perfect for this unlike anything else around on the market for anything near the ipad 3 price !  .. thats why i bought it .

The 4:3 screen ratio of the ipad lends it perfectly for text, pdf’s etc and its not that big a deal that i have small bars top and bottom of the screen when watching movies

I had a motorola xoom before and while it was ok for email, android always has the feeling of being “cobbled together” and the wide  screen ratio (like just about all other tablets now the touchpad is dead) makes it (as its long and thin) far less useful for anything productive than a 4:3 

Now dont get me wrong I am far from an apple fanboy (its my only apple product) and in many critical respects ios is AWEFUL, not that we see much about these huge issues as apple fanboys control much of the media ! 

Of the god aweful things that ios forces you to endure the worst by far is the fact you cant copy pictures to the ipad and rearrange them in to folders etc … you have to use the god aweful itunes to sync to ONE and ONLY THIS ONE device and make your changes on the non ios device and sync the changes to the ipad .. in this respect ithe ipad is like a dumb flashdrive with a screen !  … the workaround is to use driopbox and the like to upload download pictures to your cameraroll and forget about folders in the cameraroll or elsewhere … piss poor really and i thank the fanboys for the lack of progress on this 

not quite as onerous restrictions exist with all other file types though you can get around these with apps (half decent video for example needs the purchase of an app and then you transfer files using this app bypassing the itunes/ios main interface) .. hardlt satisfactory

the provided apple main apps eg calendar etc are pretty weak as well with very little possible integration (other than twitter) in to facebook etc (again other apps need to be purchased as workarounds) 

I have to say having used windows phone 7 for a year or so that post mango it really is very good (stopped me from moving to iphone)  and if this ipad screen was due out on a windows 8 on arm tablet i would almost certainly go for that rather than the ipad 3 …

but this archos better than an ipad 3 .. come on really