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• (January 12, 2023, 01:18:11 AM)

[Demosthenes]

I just got one of these.  It arrived yesterday to replace my old one (which was a Gmini 400 I bought a few years ago, got good use out of, and then declared dead after the battery started crapping out and the hard drive finally gave up the ghost a few weeks ago on it).

This one is essentially like my old one, except it doesn't handle video -- a feature I admittedly didn't use on my Gmini 400 anyway -- and has a much less power-hungry screen, so it has much better battery life.  My Gmini 400 could get (at its best) about 10 hours of life on battery for audio only, but that was only if I never touched the thing.  No skipping of songs, no doing anything that would light up the screen's backlight.

And once the device had started to age a bit, that battery life went down considerably.  More recently I could expect about 2 or 3 hours out of it on a charge, considerably less if I wasn't very efficient about my playlist loading or listening habits.

My new one can get around 17 hours on one charge according to Archos, which seems to be fairly accurate... I've had it on all day and it's still got more than half its charge left.  Add to that the fact that I've been fiddling around with it and creating playlists and jumping from album to album in it.

Here's my breakdown of my experience so far with it:

• Price.  With shipping, the Gmini XS202s cost me $232 US, which I consider very reasonable for what I'm getting.
• 20 GB hard drive.  My old one was also 20 GB, so everything I was already carrying around fit on this one as well.  I've got about 17 GB of music on it right now, which is around 2900 songs.
• Sound quality.  Unlike the Gmini 400, the XS202s has equalizer presets ("Rock", "Techno", "Concert", et al) and a full equalizer to play around with.  The Gmini 400 only had the basics (bass, treble, balance, volume, yawn).  As a result, I have fine-tuned this device to sound quite a bit nicer than my old player, which is saying a lot, because despite the setting limitations on the old one, the old device sounded really good to my audiophile ears.
• Interface.  The controls on the XS202s are quite different from the Gmini 400, but I find them even easier to use.  Without consulting the instructions, and just by fiddling around with the device itself, I figured out how to navigate, build playlists, and even update the firmware in only a couple of minutes.  This is one thing that I think Archos has on Apple... I don't care how many people rave about iPods, I HATE the interface on them.  I find iPods to be clumsy, counter-intuitive, and confusing.  The interface on the Archos players is a lot easier to figure out and get used to using in my opinion.  I know I'm probably the only person on the planet that thinks that, but that's a plus for Archos in my book.
• Physical attributes.  The XS202s is a tiny little player for a hard drive based portable music device.  It's 2.3"x0.7"x2.9" and fits easily and comfortably in the palm of my hand.  The shell is a sleek black metal with a brushed surface that resists smudging and scuffing.  The screen is a 2-inch square, to which I easily applied a PDA screen protector sheet that I cut down with a pair of scissors.  The device as an overall feels very sturdy and durable, and considering the amount of abuse I put this player's predecessor through, I'm sure that perception is spot on.

[BlackWidow]

It looks like a very cool player.  I'm a total lemming when it comes to trends like iPods but I agree the interface is confusing.  I love the physical asthetic of my nano but I'm not a fan of the interface at all.

[Demosthenes]

I've been using it for a solid week now and I have to say, I like this a lot.  The battery life is everything advertised, and it's pretty small and unobtrusive for a 20 GB player.

Definitely a good buy.