Measuring 76 x 124 x 24mm and weighing 320 grams this portable media player is one of the smaller ones on the market, sure its heavier than your average mobile phone or MP3 player but it is one of the more portable players with a useable sized screen.

All these stats are great but the first thing that slaps you about the chops when you get the large black case out of its box is the screen, the 4 inch LCD screen which has a 480 x 272 pixel resolution, while not class leading it is incredible bright and yet colourful. The angle of acceptance is better than most meaning you don't have to sit exactly in front of the screen as you have to with some devices.

The start of our tests would have normally been trying to record files on some form of half baked central heating timer that most PMP's laughably call a VCR mode. The Gmini 500 does away with all those pretensions and instead accepts files in 2 main formats MPEG-4 up to full PAL 720 x 576 resolution or WM9 simple profile 352 x 288. We created and downloaded files of both formats along with a host of AVI files and managed to push them all over the device from Windows Media player 10 on a host PC. Archos are using the play for sure system which is inherent in WM10, it is a simple configuration to sync your entire library (or part of it) to your "portable device".

Getting files over to the Gmini is a quick affair using the USB 2.0 connection and we soon had a whole host of files ready for testing from some short music videos and a couple of feature length movies ripped from DVD. We started with the short form music videos in WM9 format, these played smoothly throughout and looked stunning on the bright Archos screen. Audio quality was disappointing on the inbuilt speaker with all of the videos sounding poor at anything above 50% volume. Using a set of headphones (we used Shure E2C's) the audio quality is greatly improved however there is still some distortion on high volumes and bass rich tracks, this is not so noticeable when watching a movie but as an MP3 player its not good.

Switching to a movie encoded as MPEG-4 was more of a test for the Gmini 500, we chose a copy of the fast and the furious as a good test of any compression and replay system. Surprisingly the movie played back flawlessly and was very watchable on the large screen, we've tried the same thing on many PMP's and only the Archos range seem to carry off replay of a whole feature film. You can quite easily lose yourself watching the relatively small screen when you have headphones in, both the fast and furious and Oceans Eleven were great on the Gmini 500 and would be very workable on a daily commute or long business trips.

AVI files proved more problematic with those encoded using Pinnacle tools refusing to play as well as a large slice of our downloaded AVI's, this is mostly due to proprietary headers wrapped around the MPEG-2 video by the various encoders. We did mange to get several AVI files running and one of 2 Divx files which we had downloaded, but to be sure of replay WM9 or MEPG-4 seemed more reliable.

The Archos Gmini 500 comes in 2 flavours either a 30 or 40gb hard drive, we reviewed the 40gb version and found that with careful management you could live this level of storage, we put some 25gb of MP3 files onto the device and then filled the rest up with a few movies.

The interface is similar to the AV500 and as such easy to navigate with clear menu options and intuitive controls, we like the layout of the media gallery and it is not dissimilar to windows media player which reduces the time taken to learn the device. The extras include the photo wallet which allows you to browse images stored on the unit either as thumbnails and then full screen. Combine this with the USB host which enables you to hook up any digital USB camera and suck photos onto the Gmini and you have a basic photo editor. This is ideal for those who take hundred of photos on holiday but want a larger screen to view them on or a device onto which they can offload them to make space on memory cards.

Archos have also provided audio recording as an extra on the 500, it captures audio as WAV files from either the line in via an optional adaptor or through the built in microphone. Owning a PMP needn't be a solitary existence huddle round your screen as you can hook up the AV output to a TV screen. We found that when playing back an AVI in full PAL resolution the result was very watchable and much better than many Sky TV channels in terms of visual quality, the WM9 files suffered more from their heavy compression and did not look as good given their reduced resolution. It is also possible to build a slideshow with music for replay via the AV outputs.

Battery life is king on PMP's, there is no point pushing a movie onto a device only to find the battery dies before you finish watching it. Archos have been quietly working on increasing battery life for a few years and despite the power hungry nature of PMP's this latest Gmini managed 4.5 hours of video replay in our tests which is impressive and enough for at least one if not 2 feature films. Battery life from MP3 replay was not quite so hot with only 14 hours from a single charge of the lithium Ion battery mostly due to the screen and high power processor which the Gmini 500 is built around, although it is good news that the Gmini does have a user replaceable battery.

Like most Archos products this PMP is compatible with both Windows 2000 / XP and Mac OSX or higher but the lack of support for Quicktime and ACC make make this limited use for Apple users.

The Gmini 500 is squarely a portable media player, it has no real video or audio (MP3) encode features and as such has to be priced accordingly, Archos seem to have done just that and pitched the 500 at the price point still occupied by the largest Apple iPod's. The whole package includes headphones, a carry pouch, AV cables and adaptor, USB cables and AC charger. On sale now in the UK for £269 it really is good value for money for anyone who wants mobile video playback that is reliable and hassle free.

More Archos Reviews

Published - 27/04/2006

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