Decent screen, powerful processor, solidly built, reasonable price
Heavy and bulky, poor camera
French firm Archos has been working hard to provide cut-price alternatives to the big names in smartphones and this midrange tablet could be one of its best efforts yet, with a powerful processor and decent screen for very reasonable price.
Design
This isn't a skinny, lightweight device. At 636g and 10mm thick it's quite hefty, especially if you add a protective case, and there's a sizeable bezel around the screen, which all goes to make it a bit of a handful. Not disastrously so, but it's not the kind of tablet you might mistake for an e-reader. On the plus side however, its plastic and aluminium casing feels extremely sturdy -- you won't worry too much about slamming it into a bag or pushing it around a table.
On the side are buttons for power/sleep and volume, plus mini HDMI out, a headphone jack and a dedicated power port -- it's a shame this couldn't have been incorporated into the microUSB port though.
The 10.1-inch screen offers a little over a basic HD resolution with 1,200x800 pixels. It can be bright and it's nice and sharp with small print on websites and detail in pictures alike. It's not among the very best but it's perfectly decent for the price.
Hardware and Android
The quad-core processor is backed by a full 2GB Ram and clocked at 1.6GHz. Those are pretty big numbers for a low-price tablet and it delivered a respectable AnTuTu benchmark score of 19,537 -- a little ahead of Tesco's £100 Hudl, but way behind the likes of the Galaxy Note 3 and Sony's Xperia Z Ultra. Benchmarks aren't everything though, and it felt reasonably nippy in use and didn't give us any problems when opening apps or playing HD games. Speaking of which, it can handle HD video gaming and HD movies look fine on the screen but the onboard sound is a bit tinny -- you're better off using headphones.
It's running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean which is very recent, if not the very latest 4.3. Archos has chosen not to add anything to the operating system but that's really not a problem. In fact, it's a bonus. Minor tweaks tend to add little except brand identity and can even slow the device down.
Photography
The two-megapixel camera lets the side down a bit. It's really rather poor and raises the question of why it was included at all.
It would have been better to put it on the front as a decent webcam for video calls rather than the low-quality VGA version that's actually there. At least that way you'd be sure of a good selfie.
There's 8GB of memory on board but you can add up to another 64GB via microSD, which is a fair enough compromise.
The battery neither disgraced or distinguished itself. It'll get you through the day with reasonable use but won't deliver much more.
Conclusion
The Archos 101 Platinum is a sturdy tablet that's much more workhorse than racehorse. Screen and processor are good rather than great and it will do pretty much everything your require of it fairly well, for less than half the price of Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 or £130 less than a Wi-Fi-only iPad 2. It's let down by the poor camera which was hardly worth the bother but otherwise, it's a solid, if unremarkable device for the price.
Price: £199
Software: Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
Processor: Quad-core 1.6GHz A9
Memory slot: Yes
Display: 10.1in IPS, 1200x800 pixels
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Ports: microUSB, mini HDMI, 3.5mm headphone jack, Archos power port
Camera: 2 megapixel; VGA front-facing camera
Video playback: H.264, MPEG-4, AVI, MP4, MOV, 3GP, MPG, PS, TS, MKV, FLV
Audio playback: MP3, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, Vorbis, FLAC, WAV
Radio: No
Battery: Li-Ion
Size: 262x172x10mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
