Archos 7 home tablet

The basics

Straddling the divide between smartphone and laptop, this affordable Android tablet is considerably cheaper than the iPad at just £129.99. As the name suggests, it's designed to be used as a digital hub for your home.

The good

The Archos 7 has a solid build, with a mainly plastic casing and a brushed aluminium back to add a touch of style.

The Home Tablet is designed to browse the web, run apps and act as an eBook reader and media player – which makes it a good option for those who don't want or need a full-blown PC in their home. It's also a good option for casual browsing when you're lounging around and don't want to fire up a full PC experience.

The Home Tablet truly excels when it comes to media, as you'd expect from an Archos. It handles MKV files and AVI clips, while video playback looks good on the 7in 840x480 screen.
There’s also support for MP3, AAC and the higher quality FLAC and APE music formats. The built-in speakers are decent too and there's a generous 8GB of storage (expandable to 32GB via micro-SD card).

The bad

The resistive touchscreen can be an annoyance, compared to super-responsive capacitive screens and needs a good prodding to get going. It also runs Android 1.5, so the browser has a tendency to crash.

Perhaps the most annoying aspect is the fact that restrictions slapped on Archos by Google means that the Archos 7 Home Tablet can’t access Android Market. So you need to search the web for apps yourself or rely on the Archos AppsLib Store which is very sparsely stocked and doesn’t include many popular items.

The bottom line

There's no denying that the Archos 7 packs in a good list of features for the price, but the restrictions of its aging OS and the slow screen are a definite annoyance.