When you think of Android tablets, usually the first brands to come to mind are Samsung, ASUS, Sony, Acer, Toshiba, and of course, the upstarts Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Archos isn’t really at the top of the list, but of the more inexpensive tablets, Archos is quite a decent brand. I personally remember them from the old-school, chunky, HDD-based mp3 players they used to make, but I digress.
Archos recently announced that by the first week of February, their G9 line of Android tablets would be getting updates to Ice Cream Sandwich. Likely the Archos 70b will get an ICS update soon as well. We got a quick look at the Archos 70b on the CES 2012 show floor, so check out our video below.
The Archos 70 Internet Tablet was introduced at IFA last year, so it’s about time for a refresh. The Archos 70b has a 7-inch capacitive display with 1024 x 600 resolution. It’s also running a single-core, 1.2 GHz Rockchip processor with 512 MB RAM and 8 GB of storage. It has stereo speakers on the front and a kickstand on the back, so it would be a great media consumption device.
It seems a tad low-end on specs, however, you can get this Honeycomb tablet for $199 USD or $199 Euros. That magic price point puts it up against the Amazon Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble NOOK Color and NOOK Tablet, and the Lenovo IdeaPad A1. But all of those aforementioned tablets are running a version of Gingerbread, so in this case, the Archos 70b has a clear advantage over all of them. It’s quite an appealing package, especially to users who don’t care for the extremely customized interface of either the Kindle Fire or NOOK Tablet.
The $199 Android tablet space is getting crowded, but it’s a great “problem” for prospective buyers to have. Check out the hands-on video below to see if the Archos 70b should be on your buy list.
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