This portable video and music player may be the replacement for the much lauded AV500 device, but it actually has less in the way of features. The AV500 was a multi-talented gadget, as it could both play back and record video - but the more affordable 604 is only able to do the former, unless you invest in an optional DVR dock (which costs about £70).
It has a 30GB hard drive, onto which you can shovel all manner of digital media files from your PC or Mac via a supplied USB cable. Archos claims that you can cram around 85 feature-length movies, 300,000 photos or 15,000 songs into the 604, which is pretty impressive for a device only 16mm deep.
As with the AV500, videos are viewed on a crisp 4.3-inch widescreen. Picture quality varies depending on the codec used: it has some trouble getting XViD copies of Lost to play smoothly, resulting in some juddering motion, but other files run extremely smoothly. It may be that you need to tinker with or re-encode your digital videos beforehand to get optimal performance, but overall everything we threw at it was watchable straight away.
The colour reproduction and detail in Napoleon Dynamite, for instance, is excellent, and all of the test videos that come pre-loaded on the device look truly stunning. Is the picture better than on the AV500? We're leaning towards a 'yes' on that, but it's really close - both are strong in this department.
Happily, one area where there is definite improvement is the user interface. One of the AV500's few weak points was its confusing menu system which, coupled with a strange button layout, made simple tasks overly complicated. The 604 hasn't completely got rid of the weirdness (each control button to the right of the screen is actually two buttons), but the menu system is certainly clearer and easier to navigate.
Sound investment
Sound quality is also very good with headphones, but we'd like to see a bit more power given to the on-board speaker - it's nigh-on impossible to hear anything through it in anything but a completely silent room, which makes watching a video with other people almost pointless.
As we mentioned earlier, an optional DVR Station can be bought to expand the functionality. This works well, allowing you to both record from a variety of sources (including a TV or Sky box) and playback material from the 604 on an external source. All things considered, this is a great product - but potential buyers should be aware of the lack of recording functionality out of the box. And as we went to press, news reached us of a Wi-Fi version of the 604.
