Archos Gamepad

The Last Bandit

So 7" Tablet with physical controls - not bad for €150..

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/the-archos-gamepad-an-android-gaming-tablet-goes-on-sale/

Now if the android emulator writers (looking at you Robert Broglia) add support for this I'm definitely getting one !!

OwaynOTT

Interesting

KeRbDoG

The Last Bandit wrote: »

So 7" Tablet with physical controls - not bad for €150..

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/the-archos-gamepad-an-android-gaming-tablet-goes-on-sale/

Now if the android emulator writers (looking at you Robert Broglia) add support for this I'm definitely getting one !!

Wondered how you could use the controls if the emulators/games didn't support it directly and sure enough they can map screen touches to the buttons!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgsJ7gUK1cA

Might be a late present to myself..maybe

The Last Bandit

Ya it seems and touch buttons can be mapped to the physical controls, but you still see the touch control on the screen. If native support is implemented then you've the full screen for the games.

Anyways, first batch is sold out.

LuvSpudz

Will they deliver to Ireland? Was going to buy tonight but then realised no option for irish delivery... I suppose parcel motel is the way to go?

megaten

D-pad looks nasty. Also I wouldn't bet on Archos supporting anything they produce.

Tayla

LuvSpudz wrote: »

Will they deliver to Ireland? Was going to buy tonight but then realised no option for irish delivery... I suppose parcel motel is the way to go?

They do deliver here, you have to change your country to Ireland, shipping cost is €14.99.
http://www.archos.com/home.html?country=ie&lang=en

LuvSpudz

Tayla wrote: »

They do deliver here, you have to change your country to Ireland, shipping cost is €14.99.
http://www.archos.com/home.html?country=ie&lang=en

Ahh i was trying to change country, the scroll bar to select countries wasnt showing up well on my smartphone, thanks for the link! Now the question is will it get here in time for xmas!

Myrddin

megaten wrote: »

D-pad looks nasty. Also I wouldn't bet on Archos supporting anything they produce.

Agreed, like a low quality psp with an oversized screen. I don't see the point

LuvSpudz

Placed my order last night, hopefully it will arrive by xmas

EnterNow wrote: »

Agreed, like a low quality psp with an oversized screen. I don't see the point

I will be using it for retro gaming, comics, movies when travelling abroad and my wife will use it as a kindle. I was planning on a nexus 10 but recent budgetary constraints made me rethink my price-point

I would be a little concerned about the poor battery life, but I can always get a portable charger or a better replacement battery I'm sure once it properly enters the market. Anyone happen to know of any good options in regards to this?

Really looking forward to kitting this baby out with the snes, n64 and psone back catalogue

Myrddin

LuvSpudz wrote: »

Really looking forward to kitting this baby out with the snes, n64 and psone back catalogue

But its a 16:9 display & has no proper dpad. It'll do for PS1, but anything less will look & feel like sh1te on it. I can see it'll be handy for the things you mention, but speaking purely for emulation, I'm far from sold on it.

megaten

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=62319

d-pads confirmed to be separate buttons. Good luck playing anything fast paced.

Myrddin

megaten wrote: »

d-pads confirmed to be separate buttons. Good luck playing anything fast paced.

A slight ammendment

The Last Bandit

Think ye're all being too harsh on it considering no-one here as even picked one up yet.

I'll reserve judgement until a few actual unbiased reviews turn up.

Myrddin

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Think ye're all being too harsh on it considering no-one here as even picked one up yet.

I'll reserve judgement until a few actual unbiased reviews turn up.

I've never been a fan of dpad directions being separate buttons. I'd be very surprised if a cheap 3rd party device changes my opinion of that.

o1s1n

Interesting! Only seeing this now.

I guess if you look at it as being a 7 inch tablet for €150 with the added benefit of controls then it's pretty interesting.

The appearance would turn me off - it's pretty ugly and dated looking. I won't get started on those D pads... :pac:

Tayla

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Think ye're all being too harsh on it considering no-one here as even picked one up yet.

I'll reserve judgement until a few actual unbiased reviews turn up.

I got mine today, I had ordered one of the first batch when they were released. It's for my son for Christmas so I haven't had much of a chance to test it out yet.

LuvSpudz

Tayla wrote: »

I got mine today, I had ordered one of the first batch when they were released. It's for my son for Christmas so I haven't had much of a chance to test it out yet.

When you ordered it what dispatch date did it show? I'm wondering because when I ordered dispatch was marked as the 18th, wondering how accurate that will be.

Tayla

LuvSpudz wrote: »

When you ordered it what dispatch date did it show? I'm wondering because when I ordered dispatch was marked as the 18th, wondering how accurate that will be.

There was no dispatch date shown when I ordered, it just said that they were in stock but I ordered on the 6th and they shipped it on the 7th so I reckon they will ship them straight away when they get them in.

LuvSpudz

Tayla wrote: »

There was no dispatch date shown when I ordered, it just said that they were in stock but I ordered on the 6th and they shipped it on the 7th so I reckon they will ship them straight away when they get them in.

Did you recieve an email stating that it was shipped? I ask because I haven't received anything. Looks like I won't get mine in time for xmas, oh well. I emailed them last night looking for information, don't know if I will get a response though...


EDIT: Update, just got an email soon after posting this, gamepad on its way, should be with me tomorrow or Monday, just in time for xmas, whee!

LuvSpudz

Okay, so happy xmas and soon to be new year and all that!

I thought I'd post here with my thoughts on the gamepad as there were a good few people looking for a hands on opinion.

Now I haven't had much time with it in fairness, it being xmas and all that not much was spent messing around with my new toy.

First impressions are that it's a nice machine. It was prone to shutting down randomly and using up battery power even when on standby, but a firmware update was released on the 27th which seems to have solved most of the problems the release version had. It's now a more stable device. It took me a while to get used to how it operates, my prior android experience being with the Galaxy S2.

So I suppose the easiest thing is to break it down:
Screen: Screen is good for the price you're paying. It's no Amoled, but reasonably clear when looked at head on. Works best in landscape, in portrait I found I had to tilt it away slightly to get a clear image. Perfectly fine for video, comics, and gaming, my main uses so far!

Battery: The battery life is not great, although a good portion of my experience was pre-firmware update when the device was using battery for no reason. It will need more testing away from home before I can properly give a verdict, but basically I can see a charging pack in my near future! A definite downside to a portable gaming machine.

Emulation: So far I have tried snesoid, gensoid and n64oid. All worked well, the main bone of contention however would be the D-Pad. For one thing, they are seperate buttons as mentioned previously in this thread, which is akward enough, but I found with snesoid even pressing the two together didn't seem to cause a diagonal command to be send to the application. I am guessing that this is because the controls are mapped to the on-screen touch controls. Hopefully the emulators will provide direct support in future and there will also be a true D-Pad cover you can fit over the buttons. The N64oid works best as a result - it mainly uses the analog sticks, which works much better as the onscreen touch control is an analog sensitive icon. The controls do take some getting used to and you would need large hands to use it comfortably. Mario64 is near perfect on the device. I must note that I haven't really messed around with any configurations at this point on any of the emulators, so it is possible there are ways to sort out the diagonal issue. The analog buttons take some getting used to as well.

Android Gaming: Using android specific apps, the gamepad handles really well. I tried a few mappings (trials, army of darkness, paladog) and it worked perfectly every time. A definite win here. Shame about the 8GB space though.... waiting for someone to root it safely so I can hopefully bypass this limitation, although android gaming is not the reason I got this device in the first place. I haven't tried any high-end apps on this device as of yet so cannot speak for performance once pushed.

All in all, I am very happy with my purchase, once these few little issues are ironed out I think this will be a powerful device.

The Last Bandit

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-archos-gamepad-review

So it sucks then... disappointing...

megaten

The Last Bandit wrote: »

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-archos-gamepad-review

So it sucks then... disappointing...

As if there was ever any doubt.

LuvSpudz

Just to update this, there has been a firmware update which resolves a large amount of the gamepads problems. Battery is still an issue but response time, buttons work including diagonals on the d-pad. Here's a review following the update. Emulation and games running starts around minute 11 if you want to jump right to it.

Oh also I forgot to mention the issue with power usage even in standby has been resolved. I have casually tested and the gamepad will last about 2 days untouched now.

looking_around

I know this is old.

But I got the Gamepad and it's been nothing but troublesome. More so, I wanted to tell people to STAY AWAY from archos. They're customer service is TERRIBLE. and they try to get you to pay for fixing, even though still in warranty!!!!!!

Myrddin

looking_around wrote: »

I know this is old.

But I got the Gamepad and it's been nothing but troublesome. More so, I wanted to tell people to STAY AWAY from archos. They're customer service is TERRIBLE. and they try to get you to pay for fixing, even though still in warranty!!!!!!

Can't say its surprising, it looked rubbish to begin with

Logical_Bear

EnterNow wrote: »

Can't say its surprising, it looked rubbish to begin with

god i hate told you so posts:pac::pac:

Myrddin

Logical_Bear wrote: »

god i hate told you so posts:pac::pac:

Hmm, I wonder what this poo tastes like...
Eww...it tastes like poo!!!

CosmicSmash

looking_around wrote: »

I know this is old.

But I got the Gamepad and it's been nothing but troublesome. More so, I wanted to tell people to STAY AWAY from archos. They're service is TERRIBLE. and they try to get you to pay for fixing, even though still in warranty!!!!!!

Their customer service may be terrible but it's no worse than their products. I bought a portable dvr years ago and it had the worst compatibility ever, no firmware update to fix this either. They may have had some good ideas over the years but they lost any semblance of being useful products during the production phase.

Casey120

Well, at least they stick to a constant quality so no surprises there :pac: