A tablet that’s a breath of fresh air
Archos is a familiar name in the tablet and smartphone market these days, and a name that has earned some respect from users and critics alike. The company has had some shaky products in the past, but these last few years have seen it shine and come out with a catalogue of impressively designed kit.
The Archos 101 Oxygen is one such product. A remarkably slim and light weight 10.1" tablet, it boasts a full HD IPS 10-point multi-touch screen, a quad-core Rockchip RK 3288 ARM A17 processor at 1.8GHz, a Mali T764 quad-core GPU, 2GB of memory and 16GB of internal storage. Furthermore, there’s a micro-SD card slot with support for up to 64GB cards, a rear 5MP 1080p video camera, a front 2MP camera, USB OTG port, micro HDMI, micro-USB, Bluetooth, GPS, dual speakers and it comes with Android 4.4.4 (Kitkat).
It’s not a bad design; the raised, metallic power button on the right-hand corner is conveniently placed, as too are the volume rocker and connection port along the top of the tablet – with the headphone port located on the opposite corner of the power button. Admittedly, the ports do seem to be a little close to each other, with some larger cable heads in place things could get a little crowded, but it’s not often something like that will happen.
The rear of the tablet is metal, giving it a little more weight and greatly improving the quality and the feel. The outer edges are plastic, but tough enough to withstand knocks and without compromising on the aesthetics.
The touchscreen responds well, as do the CPU and GPU. We played around with a few games that take their toll on a tablet, Bloons Tower Defence 5 being one and we were happy to see that the 101 Oxygen was more than capable of keeping up with a Samsung Galaxy 10.1.
Battery life was pretty good too, with it managing to last roughly six and half hours after a mix of gaming, browsing and watching video. With light use, though, that life can be considerably extended .
Archos hasn’t incorporated too many pre-installed apps on the 101 Oxygen, which makes for a refreshing change. There’s just an Archos video player and a remote control function, the rest is stock Android stuff and ready to be personalised to the user’s tastes.
Though not in the shops at the time of writing, hopefully this model will be by the time you read this. The final price may differ, but it’s estimated that it’ll cost in the region of £170, which is certainly not a bad price considering what you get; in this case a tablet that’s capable of keeping up with one that costs at least a hundred pounds more.
The only negative was the quality of the cameras. While reasonable, they did seem to lack the clarity and quality of some other examples we’ve seen However, they weren’t all that bad and would probably suffice for most, even those who use video calling. The iPhoneographerm or whatever they want to be called, would probably scoff, though.
This is a pretty good tablet; It performs well, has enough connectivity and features and is lightweight enough to be carried around in a bag or in your hand for some length of time without unnecessary strain. It’s a perfectly fine tablet for 99% of the users out there and will continue to be so for a good couple of years. David Hayward
A pretty decent 10" tablet for the price.