Could The Archos 604 Be The Core Of Your AV World?

My my, what's this slinky little madam?  Colourful touchscreen, clear GUI, handy hardware buttons?  Let me introduce you fine gentlemen (and ladies, of course) to the Archos 604 – $350 worth of audio, video and image viewing loveliness.  dapreview.net took it in hand and gave it a thorough fingering.

While video is handled beautifully and photos dealt with in a pleasingly straightforward manner, they found that audio was somewhat more tricky to manage.  To quote: "as a video player, the 604 is superb but as an audio player you are better off looking elsewhere even in the PMP market".  Necessary add-ons (like a DVR docking station and a number of AV-codec plugins) to make the unit the core of a home cinema setup would take the total investment to around $500, which is a whole lot of money.  Still, they give it an overall score of 83%, so it's obviously impressing on more levels than it's failing!

Archos 604 [dapreview.net]