The Archos 80 Titanium is an 8 inch tablet running Android Jelly Bean.
Archos 80 Titanium: design and screen
It looks an awful lot like a mini version of the full-size iPad, (see our review of the iPad 4) thanks to its curved edges and thick-ish white bezel. Only the off-centre front camera and big Archos logo give the game away.
Of course, it's a closer rival to the iPad mini, and has the same 8in screen with the same resolution and 4-to-3 aspect ratio.
By today's standards everything looks a little blocky, but it's acceptable given the low price. The good news is that it's a decent IPS display - just like the iPad's. This means viewing angles are wide in all directions and colours are realistic.
Archos 80 Titanium: build and ports
The 80 Titanium feels fairly lightweight and well built. It doesn't rattle or twist, mainly thanks to the aluminium rear shell.
Looking around the edges you'll find a volume rocker, a physical home button, a headphone jack, micro USB 2.0 port, mini HDMI output, a charging jack and a microSD card slot.
The slot accepts up to 64GB cards, which is handy since there's only 8 Gig of internal storage. A 16GB model is also available for £150.
There's built-in Wi-Fi but no Bluetooth or GPS. There's no 3G model either.
Archos 80 Titanium: performance
You get front and rear cameras but both offer pretty poor-quality photos. Video is dismal, being both low resolution and jerky.
In our benchmarks, the 80 Titanium surprised us by matching more expensive tablets such as Amazon's Kindle Fire HD, Google's Nexus 7 and even the iPad mini.
The only test in which it didn't beat the iPad mini was GLBenchmark, so it isn't quite as good for 3D gaming.
In general use, we were impressed with the Titanium's speed.
Archos 80 Titanium: software
Archos has sensibly decided not to modify Android, so you get an unadulterated Jelly Bean experience, and full access to the Play store. Archos also provides several handy apps including Archos Video and Archos Music, both of which are better than the standard Android offerings.
We particularly like the video player which has shortcuts to screen brightness, rotation lock, bookmarks and also lets you loop videos.
Since the browser supports Flash, virtually all websites will work properly.
Archos 80 Titanium: verdict
If you're after an inexpensive Android tablet with a decent screen, the 80 Titanium is a real bargain. It's lack of internal storage isn't a big problem thanks to the memory card slot, it's only a shame that it uses a proprietary charger and can't be charged over USB.
However, performance is impressive for the price, as is build quality. If you can live with the poor cameras, it's a great buy.
Comments