Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(9 customer reviews) 67 of 67 people found the following review helpful
Almost Perfect,
February 26, 2005 Aram R. Vartian (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Archos 400 30 GB Pocket Media Assistant (PMA430) (Office Product)
FIRST LOOK: GOOD
That aside, I am quite pleased with this device. Right out of the box the weigh and construction of it felt right; some might find the 9.9 oz weight a bit hefty, but I prefer sturdiness over a light, plastic casing. And it looks sharp too, though I wish Archos would leave its 1970's tech school logo behind once and for all.
SET-UP: GOOD
Setting the device up was easier than I anticipated, though the amount of wires involved along with the stiff docking cable to power/connect the PMA430 to the dock were bothersome, though all work well. I have average to good skill with Audio/Video hook-ups and it took me only 15 minutes to get the device running and ready to record. However, there are some rather odd quirks that keep me from giving this a GREAT rating (for instance, resetting the time/date is a major hassel, and for no aparent reason)
VIDEO RECORDING: GREAT
My friend Michael has been eager to get his massive...Read more
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Best MP3 player, and plays and records movies and way more.,
March 31, 2005 Keith "Keith" (Laguna Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Archos 400 30 GB Pocket Media Assistant (PMA430) (Office Product)
The PMA430 is the size of a PDA but a little thicker. Not much though. It has a nice big screen, so the bigger size is worth it. And this is the only PDA you can buy at the moment with a 30 Gig hard drive. And the only PDA with built in video recording. So you can get videos on it without a computer. That makes things much eaasier.
It has Wi-Fi, which I have used at my home to surf the internet from any where in my house. And I have connected to my companies Wi-Fi network at work.
It is seen as a hard drive when you connect it with USB. So you can just drop files, liekl say MP3 fiels on it. And once you have MP3s on it, it will create playlists automatically for them. So it is very easy to play music. Movies are very easy to play too. And it automatically puts bookmarks in movies to mark your last position. Great if you want to watch a two hour movie but only have say fifteen minuites at a time.
It also has built in photo viewer. I tried...Read more
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Great Music and video, Not bad Wi-Fi; USB Host Mode Problems,
June 30, 2005 K. J. Maxwell "quantum-theorist" (New Carlisle, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Archos 400 30 GB Pocket Media Assistant (PMA430) (Office Product)
The other reviews are mostly accurate and fair but you may want to know about a couple of important "gotchas". After 3 months of evaluating alternative devices (iPOD, Epson, dedicated external drive, etc.), indecision and refinement of my "requirements", I bought and I will keep the Archos PMA430. All of the conventional PDA features, music and video work very well. The Wi-Fi works up to about 25-30 ft from my Microsoft MN-500 wireless base station at home. I still need to go out in public to see how well it might work at, say, Panera or Starbucks. But the USB host mode (for digital cameras, etc) has limitations. First, you need to have the PMA430 on external power to get it to connect to a USB device like an external hard drive or thumb drive. Otherwise it just sits there and you get no indication that it IS or ISN'T doing anything. After long connection times (yes, I decided to wait it out) it gives a cryptic error message. But, connect it to external power and it quickly detected...Read more
