Archos Gmini 402 Camcorder user reviews
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User reviews3
John Henry 5 September 2010
Good: easy to load stuff on
Bad: small screen
Comment: only have it a day
Anonymous 3 November 2006
Good: The idea
Bad: The product
Comment: Never have I bought a product with so much potential that has been such a flop.
I wanted so much to have a dedicated multimedia centre to free up space on my pocket pc for more business apps - so I foolishly splashed out on this.
Not only is the camera positioned in such an awkward place that you have to hold the Gmini with a difficult grabbing
technique, but there is no flash on it either - rendering it useless for much of the day. Added to this is the poor design of the shutter button, which is located on the back of the device. This means you have to push the device into the field of vision in order to take a picture, so causing unavoidable blur. How many other cameras do you see this on... er, none.
And then my biggest bugbear... after only 4 days usage (of taking pictures and camera clips) the access to the hard disk drive deteriorates rapidly.
From switching on in seconds, it diminishes to about 20 minutes... and now takes about an hour to turn on! And this with 18.5 GIG to spare! I dread to think how long it will take when I start uploading videos or music on it.
You can see why it has a 10 hour battery life as you have to switch it on in the morning just to be able to have it available to use when you most need it.
Want to quickly show your mates a picture/clip you took from yesterday? - forget it.
Archos... on the move!!! - yes - back to the shop I think.
I hate products like these that promise so much but are completely unviable as a usable device. Must have been designed by a group of techies with no end user experience whatsoever.
1 hour to switch on - they are having a laugh.
Incredible Ike 26 August 2006
Good: Nothing
Bad: Poor (pathetic) camera and sound, video conversion time consuming...
Comment: First the camera is absolute crap. A mediocre cell phone does better. The sound /headphones is even more pathetic.
Next, it doesn't play music from a library like the iPod, but you have to select files to play.
The screen quality / resolution is mediocre
It's sold as a 20GB device but it's actually got 18GB
The so called games are the cheap type you'd play like in the 18th century... well, in the 80s.
To watch a video, you have to convert it into the correct format (like it only plays mp4 and SOME wmv) which like takes ages... What's the point of converting if it takes less time to watch the movie on my laptop than it does to convert... get my point?
I'm returning it IMMEDIATELY and am getting a Creative Zen Vision:M instead. Don't need the camcoder 'coz it's, like, a total waste of space.