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Library Navigation
Navigation (4.21)
Navigating through the Archos 7's library is similar to how you'd do it on the iPod Touch, only slightly worse in myriad ways. For one, as will be mentioned many times throughout this review, the touchscreen requires a bit of pressure to register commands and the software is sometimes sluggish to register. This means that sometimes you'll mean to scroll but accidentally click and vice versa. Also, unlike the Touch, there's no way to scroll through an extensive list of items (the Touch lets you skip to a specific letter). Also, to select something you have to double-tap, which is annoying yet necessary given the sometimes spotty controls. The giant screen does help navigation a bit, since you won't likely misclick, but unfortunately this boon doesn't circumvent the responsivity issues.
This is what the Archos 7's libraries look like. This is the video library, and those
thumbnails by the photo will animate when highlighted, which is awesome.
We were able to perform our standardized browsing test in 6.79 seconds. To put this number in context, the iPod Touch got 4.23 seconds and the sluggish iPod Classic took 8.27 seconds. Most non-touchscreen media players get 7-9 seconds. The Archos 7 is definitely better than a lot of other media players out there, especially those that still have d-pad browsing. It isn't the best, however.
Sorting options (5.50)
The standard stable of sorting options are all available on the Archos 7: artist, album, genre, song title, and year: basic options. If you've created your own folder structure on the device, you can also opt to search out a song in the file browser. If you've created your own ingenius folder structure, you will undoubtedly enjoy this feature.
You can assign a rating to your song, from 1 to 5. Unlike some media players, where the number you give a song is just for your own bookkeeping purposes, you can actually sort your songs by rating. Selecting the rating (or "Unrated") will give you details about how many artists, albums, and titles in total are under that category, and also the total length of all songs from that category.
Search options (5.23)
The Archos 7 will let you "flick" through menus, which is a lot quicker than using a d-pad to navigate the same distance. There's also a full QWERTY search, which will let you sniff out any song by typing in either its title, artist, or album. The only limit to the QWERTY search is your own imagination or maybe your spelling capability.
Playlists (3.72)
The Archos 7 will let you make a playlist on the device itself. The playlist creation process is easy enough, but not the most intuitive process we've come across. Basically, the screen will split in half, where the left side of the screen shows the file browser and the right side of the screen, lists all the songs currently in your burgeoning playlist. You can toss songs from the left side to the right side by double-tapping them. If you want to add an entire album or folder, you have to single-tap to highlight them, then hitting the menu button > Insert in Playlist > All Files.
One feature to be aware of: the menu in the top-right is context sensitive. Depending on which side of the screen you were last in (either the song window or playlist window), the menu's contents will change.
Equalizer & Filters (8.75)
There are five equalizer presets in addition to the default, "flat" setting that equally emphasizes all frequency bands: rock, techno, jazz, classic, and live. You can also create a custom equalizer setting, which consists of five mysteriously unlabeled bands. Each of these bands can be boosted to +6dB, or dampened to -6dB. We typically see more equalizer presets on media players that have them, but the custom equalizer makes up for a slightly less granular list.
There is also a balance setting, which will skew volume towards either the left or right channel. It has six stops on either side of the neutral position. We're not sure why you'd want to use this feature on a handheld device, but we're nevertheless grateful for its addition.
This is the audio settings menu, that'll let you fiddle around with how the speakers
behave, customize the equalizer, or for some inexplicable reason, make the left
speaker louder than the right.
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