With the iPad mini
selling for a mighty £269 (US$329, AU$369) despite its small size, it
was never going to be long until those responsible for 2012's slew of
10-inch iPad beaters turned their attentions to Apple's newest, smallest
pad.
In truth the likes of Archos, Acer and Samsung were almost
certainly working on 8-inch tablets well before Apple's launch of the
iPad mini - and so-called 'phablet' phone-tablet hybrids aren't much
smaller - but it's against the market leader that budget efforts such as
the Archos 80 Titanium must be judged.
Announced and previewed way back in January at the CES 2013
trade show, this 8-inch tablet from Archos is just one of the brand's
impressively large haul of new 8-to-10-inch tablets, all of which come
sporting the Android operating system.
As
the name suggests, the Archos 80 Titanium has a metallic back plate
that's highly reminiscent of an iPad, as is its all-white bezel.
In fact, a brief glance at this tablet and you'll likely mistake it for an iPad 4,
partly because it looks nothing like an iPad mini. The main differences
are purely physical; the Archos 80 Titanium isn't as slim, it weighs
much more, and the sides of the bezel - when held in portrait stance -
are far wider than those on the iPad mini.
It's
also well under half the price of the iPad mini, and we'd do well to
remember that, despite the omissions on the Archos 80 Titanium.
That
said, we must report that you won't find Bluetooth connectivity on this
Wi-Fi-only model, while GPS is missing, too. Arguably the lack of
Bluetooth is more of a worry, since it rules out pairing with a
Bluetooth keyboard.
This makes the Archos 80 Titanium less attractive and credible as even an occasional laptop-killer for word processing.
We've
noticed a trend recently of smaller tablets becoming popular as
dashboard GPS systems in cars, which is something that the Archos 80
Titanium will have to excuse itself from, too.
That
metallic back isn't all it's cracked up to be either. It feels very
cold in the hand, which is important at this size since the 8-inch size
of the tablet is primarily designed to be held in one hand.
It's
not a problem that lasts for too long, though, with the Archos 80
Titanium getting pretty hot after 30 minutes or so of use.
However,
we've related these niggles just to make you aware of the Archos 80
Titanium's limitations, and we're confident that for many users -
particularly those who simply want a tablet around the house for
browsing the web and perhaps some home networking for photos (it's
particularly good at the latter) - will be delighted with the Archos 80
Titanium. After all, it's something of a bargain.
Speaking of
which, the Archos 80 Titanium comes with either 8GB or 16GB or built-in
storage, and is priced at £149.99 (US$169) for the smaller capacity
model, putting it up against budget tablets such as the Acer Iconia A1 and Disgo 8400G, and considerably undercutting the 8-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0.
Both
the 8GB and 16GB versions of the Archos 80 Titanium contain a microSD
card slot for either increasing that storage up to as much as 32GB or
transferring music, photos and videos from a smartphone or computer.
The
Archos 80 Titanium is one of four models in the Titanium family, and is
joined by smaller brother the 7-inch Archos 70 Titanium and bigger
brothers the 9.7-inch Archos 97 Titanium and 10.1-inch Archos 101 Titanium.
Other tablets in Archos's new range include the Archos GamePad and Archos ChildPad in the Themed series and the Archos 80 Platinum and brothers in the Elements series, of which the Titanium family are a part.
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it takes up to 64 gig micro sd card,, i have one in mine.