Archos Gamepad

[originalbadboy]

Only thing is this bad boy has a quad core Mali 400 and dual core 1.6ghz processor. Those cheap china tabs would struggle to hit the same price point as this Archos. I received mine on Monday and am loving it. I had a few bad experiences with those Chinese tabs and wouldn't touch a Chinese one again with a barge pole. False economy, they look great in paper but when it arrives and feels like its held together with chewing gum it's no joke.

The archos has great build quality and has coped with everything I threw at it, N64, SNES, brand new game loft games. The button mapping tool is the killer feature. Just press it during a game and drag a hardware button n drop on an onscreen touch button in seconds. I mapped N64oid in moments was soon tiptoeing with analogue control in Mario 64.

Where did you gets yours from Dave, and also is the screen that bad?

[davek22]

Yeah Ikobo, I placed my order a couple of hours of it going live in their store and about two hours later it was sold out. I think next batch due out 18th December. Mine arrived with an eu plug so I mailed them and they said will mail one out to me. They also said all future batches will ship with 3 pin plug

Not tried perfect dark yet Kryss but I will slap it on this eve and post results. I can't see it being an issue given the grunt of the quad core Mali. All other n64 games u tried run great though. Only issue I have is back button doesn't work when going into an Emu options. End up having to go to home screen, close program and restart at the mo

[davek22]

Where did you gets yours from Dave, and also is the screen that bad?

I got mine direct from Archos.com. Had to pay ?11 fed ex but I guess that's the premium to get it early cos its not available anywhere else at the mo. there are some sellers listed on google shopping cheaper but check them on trust pilot. Airetech I know is a bad onone

in landscape I find the screen ok. It's going to hurt your eyes a bit if you are coming from a Nexus 7 but its better than those china tabs.
in portrait it's not too good. I have to tilt it slightly to one side to avoid colour wash but its not a deal breaker. I was one who actually enjoyed my time with the JXD 7100 but this machine shows it up big time. It's so light and slim it fits in my coat breast pocket perfectly

[kryss]

You're doing a good job of selling it to us!

[originalbadboy]

Don't get me wrong the JXD is an ok piece of kit ... it was the lack of updates etc and lack of analogue (which was debatable) which killed it as a device for me.

[originalbadboy]

You're doing a good job of selling it to us!

YES he IS!!!

[Colin]

Dave, Archos have been messing me about a bit here. I sent them ann email yesterday as i'd had no shipping confirmation, and the units are now on the site as shipping at the end of Jan. They emailed me back today saying they'd contacted me twice to let me know (They haven't) and that I have two options, receive one with a Euro plug, or wait to January. I'm taking the Euro plug option, are they only talking about a standard figure of eight lead that connects to a power block, or is the PSU a sealed/hard wired unit? Cheers.

[Colin]

Arrived today, I quite like the look and feel of it, lovely big screen. Just downloading my first game now, need for speed most wanted, only 73p!

[originalbadboy]

Hmm ... There seems to be an issue with the left hand buttons on the Gamepad ...







Obviously if this is a hardware issue I will not be getting one anytime soon!

[Colin]

I'll have to download something that would use that pad to let you know. I ended up playing shadowgun until the battery ran out, which seemed pretty decent.

[originalbadboy]

There is quite a few unhappy customers out there by the looks of it though ... The XDA thread probably isn't helping:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1859342

Also some have complained of battery life of an hour which frankly is shocking .. Even the WiiU Gamepad has a better charge than that!

Sounds to me like Archos has rushed this out, so I am glad I am going to wait for all this to get sorted first.

[Colin]

There was an update on the control mapping this morning, the diagonals shown as an issue in your vid work fine. To be honest you'd use the analogues over these anyway though. I've just been playing games on mine for 45 minutes and it still has 76% charge left. I like it, but for sure it won't be for everyone.

[QualityChimp]

Re: Archos Gamepad

You're going to have square eyes!

[Colin]

I don't know who reported an hours use out of these things, but it's utter nonsense. Used this a LOT today, though I did end up turning the wifi off when gaming to make sure I was getting maximum battery life out of it, lasted ages. With the controls mapped to my liking I have to say that Shadowgun is the best handheld FPS experience i've had to date, all at the cost of I think ?3. (Not played PSV resistance or black ops though) Also just downloaded Dead Trigger for free, which i've only quickly had a go on but it looked and played very impressively. Really chuffed with this little machine personally.

[kryss]

FFS, someone tell me how Perfect Dark is on it!!!