Archos 97b Titanium

Archos 97b Titanium

Just as the Archos 80 Titanium was, shall we say, a homage to the iPad mini, so the Archos 97b Titanium is the French manufacturer’s take on the iPad 4. There’s no mistaking the influence of Apple’s tablet in the physical design, and the 97b Titanium even packs in a Retina-esque display, with a 9.7in diagonal, the same 4:3 aspect ratio and an identical resolution of 2048 x 1536. Yet where the cheapest version of the current iPad costs £399, the 97b Titanium is available for under half that price. How has Archos managed this, you might well wonder… Design Surprisingly, it hasn’t done it by skimping on build quality. The Archos has a plastic frame behind the glass screen and a plastic back, separated by a slim strip of chrome (or at least chrome-effect). The plastic on the rear has a little flex, but not much, and the whole construction feels surprisingly solid for a large screen budget tablet. The rear has two grilles for the speakers at the top and bottom of the tablet, plus the rear-facing camera sticking out in the top-right corner. At 650 grams the 97b Titanium is too heavy to hold one-handed like a 7in tablet for any length of time, but it’s a good size and weight for use on the move. I’d think about investing in a case first, however. Neither the screen nor the body seem particularly scratch-resistant. Physical controls are limited to a volume rocker and a power button, while connectivity is basic too. There’s a socket for the proprietary AC charger, a microUSB port and a headphone socket, but no HDMI output or anything more advanced. You do, however, get a microSD card slot, which you’ll need to boost the rather pitiful 8GB of onboard storage provided.

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