Digital Trends

Archos Gmini 400

November 14th, 2004 | by Nino Marchetti

Features and Design Cont'd

Starting up the Gmini400 is as easy as holding down the on switch for a few seconds. After a quick boot up, you are greeted by a cheerfully colorful display which shows nine icons, the version number of the firmware, current sound volume and current time. Navigation through the screen is easy with the multi-directional button and selections are confirmed with a press of the on button.

Since the Gmini400 provides multi-menu options and sub-menus to choose from as you are selecting media or games to play, it is important to familiarize yourself with how each button responds. Failure to do this can result in a somewhat frustrating experience. Archos did provide a colorful sheet which falls into the lines of a “quick start” guide, but it is necessary to dig through the tiny, four language user guide (or access the more complete guide in PDF format which is stored on the Gmini400) to get more of a full understanding of each button's function under different conditions.

Another shortfall of the Gmini400 in providing information relative to using the software stored on the device's hard drive. A number of useful programs exist, including MusicMatch, Windows Media Player and a program to convert videos to a format suitable for playback on the Archos. Without digging through the contents of the folders on the Gmini400 however, you might not ever know they were there.

Other features built into the Gmini400, besides the aforementioned ones, are broken down across several categories. For the digital audio functions, music (supported playback file formats are MP3, WMA and WAV) can be recorded through the line in audio port (this is actually the A/V out port, but an included converter does an inversion for analog audio). Music files can be organized through built-in management software and viewed by artist, title, genre and year through support of ID3 tags. Building a playlist on the go is also a supported function.

In regards to video playback, the Gmini400 can display video on the television in addition to the built-in LCD display. An important note about video support on the Gmini400 — it is only capable of playing MPEG 4 Simple Profile format. Other video file formats are not supported and will need to be converted first using translation software which is installable to your PC from the Gmini400 hard drive.

For displaying digital photos, the Gmini400 supports JPEG and BMP formats which can be copied over through drag and drop when hooked to a PC/Mac or you can copy and paste them when a CF card is inserted into the player's card reader. Image display options, either on the LCD or a television, include solo, four images at once or nine images at once. The images can be rotated and magnified using the multi directional button.

Game play, the last of the Gmini400's entertainment options to be addressed in this part of the review, is based upon the Mophum game engine. One full game and several demos are pre-installed, with more games available for purchase and downloaded from the Archos website.