Archos 604 WiFi review

A personal media player with a particularly good screen.

The Archos 604 WiFi was on many a Christmas list last month, and with good reason. While Personal Media Player (PMP) devices are ten a penny, ones with the 604 WiFi's features are few and far between. Just in case compatibility with a long list of video and music file formats isn't enough, it also has built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, which means that you'll be able to connect to both your wireless network at home and the many hotspots dotted around cities and airports.

To make use of the wireless capabilities, a web browser written by Opera is built in and while the touch-sensitive screen isn't necessarily up to writing long emails, it's the perfect size for gently perusing news sites. You can even connect to wireless networks with encryption. But the 604's chief strength is its media abilities. The screen not only helps make the device look striking, but it also works extremely well. It's a widescreen panel with a 4.3in diagonal and its matte finish means no distracting reflections. Image quality suffers a little from graininess, but the contrast is good and dark areas appear as they should.

You'll be able to squeeze plenty of films onto the 604WiFi, too. Inside is a 30GB hard disk and we recommend buying a copy of DiVX (www.divx.com) so that you can convert DVDs to compact video files. Once your files are in DiVX format, all you need to do is drop them into the video folder on the 604.

Battery life is respectable, but you won't be able to watch films all the way across the Atlantic. When we were doing nothing more than simply listening to a large list of music files, the 604 ran for seven hours. Playing back videos with the screen left at its default brightness drops this to three and a half hours, which is good enough for a couple of movies or a fair number of TV shows.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to overlook the 604's high price. It's hardly an impulse buy, but there's also no disputing its capability when it comes to doing its job and if you want to watch videos on the commute to work, besides taking advantage of wireless networks along the way, it fits the bill nicely.