Rating: 
Summary: Not worth it....
Review: I bought this a month ago because it played three formats of audio... good idea but it doesn't work. It seems that it does NOT play WAV files at all. The screen went dead after two weeks and it doesn't play more than seven hours without a charge. I would be cautious recommending this to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: cautiously satisfied, but buyer beware
Review: I will have to first admit that I only have one day's experience with the Gmini. All in all, the device does its job well; it is an excellent external hard drive and transfers via USB 2.0 are fast. The sound of the ear buds seem fine to me, and the UI isn't the best but gets the job done.Problems started, however, when I started trying to copy files from my CompactFlash card to the Gmini hard drive via the CF port (this is extremely important to me, since I bought this device primarily as a data vault for digital pictures while on vacation). I have three CF cards: Kodak (256MB), SimpleTech(128MB) and SanDisk(8MB). Both the Kodak and the SimpleTech have problems in the Gmini (firmware 1.9). You can browse the directory structure on the CF cards fine, but when you try to copy a file, the Gmini hangs; turning the device off is the only recourse. In addition, whatever directory you were copying into on the Gmini's hard disk is now corrupted. In desperation, I popped in my SanDisk 8MB card. Files from it copied perfectly. Hmmmmmmm. Next step was to call tech support. While not tremendously helpful, they seem to be loosely aware of the issue. Their claim is that they have seen a problem with SimpleTech cards and with Lexar cards (they were especially emphatic about Lexar). They are not sure whether it is a hardware or firmware problem, but the claim is that they are working on it. I plan to test some Viking, Kingston, and SanDisk cards tomorrow; according to another Amazon reviewer, these cards should work in the Gmini. We shall see. [UPDATE 4/29/2004, based on my personal testing]:
SimpleTech 128MB: NO
Kodak 256MB: NO
SanDisk 8MB: YES
SanDisk 64MB: YES
Viking 256MB: YES
Kingston 256MB: YES
[END UPDATE] So, this is the main showstopping problem I have with this device. As of today with firmware 1.9 on the Gmini, be very cautious about buying this device if you have "off-brand" CF cards such as SimpleTech, Kodak, Lexar, etc. and plan to use the CF port with these cards. A couple of other gripes: there is no belt clip, and the thing is way too big for a pocket. Where does it go while you are walking/jogging? Also, the earbuds are too large for my wife's ear, but that just might be an anatomical anomaly on her part. Also, the Archos website *clearly* states that the device ships with MusicMatch *Plus*. Mine only shipped with MusicMatch Basic, which is the the free version that you can already download from musicmatch.com anyway. This was important to me since the Plus version can rip mp3's 8x faster than the basic version. This player *will not* play secure WMA music files as of right now; I don't know if Archos is working on this or not. So, don't plan on playing any of that music you downloaded from your favorite service (musicmatch, etc.) on this player.
[UPDATE: according to tech support, secure WMA will never be added to the Gmini. I always take what they say with a grain of salt, but....] Since there was a significant amount of bad, I'll restate the good: the price, 20GB can hold a *lot* of music, the USB 2.0 connection is fast. Being able to hold 20GB of any data you like in a small portable device is just too useful.
Rating: 
Summary: Archos - Cheaper than the rest in price and quality
Review: I got my GMini for Christmas, after researching the market thorougly. It did everything I needed: WMA compatible, recorded into MP3 great, and held all my MP3's. But, all of a sudden, it wouldn't come on. So I sent it to Archos, and nearly a month later, I get it back, and it still is having issues! When I turn it on, it indicates a song is playing, but I hear nothing. Only after several restarts, will it work correctly. DO NOT buy this product - save a little longer and get a little more expensive product.
Rating: 
Summary: Gmini 120 - What are you moaning about?
Review: With much trepidation, having read all the bad reviews that people gave it on the 'Net, I bought a Gmini 120. Glad that I did! This is the first MP3 player that I have bought, although I have used MusicMatch on my laptop for a couple of years. What attracted me was that it was by far the cheapest player with this size of HDD, with this many features (MP3, WAV, CF card reader, Mic in, Analog + SPDIF line in). It also came with a universal (120-240V) power supply, an audio cable and adapter plug, and MusicMatch Plus 8.0 on a CD. It came with OS 1.3.0 installed, but I upgraded to OS 1.9.0 straight away. This is currently (Apr 04) a free download from Archos. This includes the Photo Wallet and Recorder plug-ins by default. Easy upgrade. 2 minutes. Sound quality is excellent through the supplied earbuds, although I like a little more bass. Will try later with my big Sennheiser headphones. To address all the negative points that people wrote:
Comments about the review
The only real problem so far has been getting my 2-year old laptop (HP Omnibook 500, Win2k, Intel 82371AB USB chipset) to recognise it as a HDD. Windows didn't find the drive although the Gmini displayed 'USB connected', and the PC wouldn't shut down afterwards. It took me about 2 hours, hacking about with it, downloading drivers from Intel and Archos and trying to install them. I don't know what I did exactly, as the Intel drivers wouldn't install (already there), but I think I added the Archos supplied driver for a HDD as 'Other Devices' in Control Panel -> Add hardware. Anyway, after a reboot, the PC found the Gmini and no more Windows lock-ups. In contrast, a new Dell desktop PC with WinXP found the Gmini first time, without drivers.
Rating:
Summary: The good, the bad and the return
Review: I wish I could write a scatheing review but I am not. I checked out a lot of MP3 players before purchasing the Archos GMini 120. I also looked at all the reviews here on amazon.com and weighed those for the iPOD, Zen Xtra and Diamond RIO before making my purchase. Here is my experience: The Good: Price vs. Features hands down goes to the GMini. At 249.00 (CompuUSA) with it's 20GB hard drive, Smart Card memory reader and voice recorder (I am a student and am tired of packing a tape recorder) no other player even comes close. After letting my batteries charge for 24 hours connection to my PC was a breeze, just plugged it in and boom I was up and running in seconds (literally). The icon based menu made browsing the units features easy. Before installing MusicMatch I uploaded a couple of hundred songs to the unit just to see the sound quality and options. After a little bit of learning the key layout I selected a song from Pink Floyd just to see how dynamic the frequency response was. I was pretty impressed by the playback. The environment setting were pretty basic and the EQ did not impress me too much but it was useable and the volume range was excellent. The Bad: I am not going to elaborate too much here just give the down and dirty facts as most of the dis-advantages have already been listed in prior reviews. The button controls are awkward to use even after using the unit for a week or two. The documentation provided was not very well put together and in a lot of places erronious. The earbuds hurt my ears and I had to go purchase a pair of sony headphones. Music Match is the only product you can use to transfer to the GMini to sync and update it's ARC library. The Return: While I did not experience some of the issues other users have listed and I was quite happy with the GMini, I did have to return it 2 times. No matter how long I left the unit charging it would only get to 2 bars, never 3. This meant a battery life of around 3 - 4 hours if I was lucky. My second unit done the same thing. After finally getting a hold of customer support (That was a nightmare) they told me that I must not have followed the initial instructions to let my batteries charge fully before using the unit. I asked them how long did that take, they replied 8-12 hours. I told them that I had let it charge for over 24 and basically they called me a liar. I really did like this player but without the option to change the battery pack without voiding my warrenty I returned it for an in-store credit and purchased the Nomad Zen Xtra.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing says BETA like a product from Archos
Review: This is my first MP3 jukebox, so I'm not sure if I'm just being too critical, or if it actually is as good (or bad) as the other brands out there. Disappointment #1: Controls. When navigating through menu's and directories using the player's controls, some buttons are sometimes interpreted incorrectly, so navigating through files and folders is a real pain. Whether this is due to bugs in the OS or me getting a bad player I don't know, email support from Archos is virtually nonexistant. Disappointment #2: Battery life. The advertised battery life of the player is 10 hours. The actual continuous battery life is 6 hours MAX. The advertised 10 hours isn't even an optimistic approximation; it's an outright lie. Disappointment #3: FM remote. One word of advice: DO NOT buy the FM remote. It is a badly designed, highly unstable, overpriced piece of garbage. The FM remote succeeds in nullifying the one aspect of the player that actually is any good: the sound quality. With the earphones (decent Sennheiser ones, not the craptacular phones supplied with the player) plugged into the remote, you can hear noises from *every* disk activity (access, spinup, file buffering during playback), and even text scrolling in the remote's display can be heard by small ticking noises in the background. Besides the degrading of sound quality, the remote also continually locks up, dims, or spontaneously turns on the backlighting and button illumination. All of these problems can only be solved by unplugging it or turning the player off and on. Maybe the remote's instability can be fixed with an OS upgrade, I am quite sure that all the noises cannot be fixed, since they are due to bad electrical design. I give it one star for design and one for sound quality, which is actually quite decent if you don't use the remote. Everything else about the player is just bad engineering.
Rating:
Summary: GMINI not compatible with all Compact Flash cards
Review: This player is really nice. I bought this for the ability to download JPEGS from Compact flash cards. I was suprised that it hang on downloads from my two CF cards. I tried my buddy's cards and they downloaded without a problem. Please note that I have upgraded the firmware. The cards that did not work are the lower priced, heavily discounted cards such as PQI 256 (bought at Fry's) and a SIMPLETECH 512. The better brands such as Kingston 64MG, Sandisk ULTRA 256, and VIKING 512MG all worked without problems. A call to ARCHOS tech support resulted in the tech support person not being aware of any compatibility issues. That's the reason I am giving it 3 of 5 stars.....
Rating:
Summary: My first Mp3 player
Review: This is the first Mp3 player I have had. I had never heard of Archos but after reading reviews I purchased it. I like it a lot although so far have not explored all the uses for it. As far as loading my Cd's into it I have had a few problems but the problem is not with the product. Sound is very good but have nothing to compare it to. So far I am happy with my purchase and hope to use it for a long time to come.
Rating:
Summary: Great MP3 player but crashes too often
Review: I have had the machine for a week now and while I am very happy with the size of the machine, its capacity, the sound and the functionality (especially the fact that you can browse your folders instead of using the id2/3 tags that are always wrong - you can do it as well if you want), i am upset with the stability of the product.
So here comes the big minus. It crashes nearly everytime i want to play a song after swithing on the machine and often twice before you can listen to the song.
I have updated the firmware to 1.6 but nothing has changed.
So, i guess this is more a problem of firmware than anything else, i am sure that when they release v1.7 it will be much better and by the way it does not crash anymore when you have managed to read a song until you switch it on again.
Another thing which is not perfect is the 4-way button, scrolling is sometimes not that smooth.
Finally, the battery is clearly not 8hrs but more 5-6hrs. Conclusion: i think when archos release the next firmware it will be great machine, until then i would probably advise people to wait or find another player to buy.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent player/portable hard drive
Review: My wife and I have each had one of these since Christmas. It's my first Archos; my wife was replacing her Jukebox Recorder 20. Pros: No drivers or custom software required; just plug into your USB port and it shows up as a hard drive. Drag/drop/go. Works as an external drive for transferring data very well, and since it's battery operated, it's better than any external USB hard drive out there. Organizes easily; you can either organize music yourself via nested folders and whatnot, or let it use the ID3 tags to organize for you. Cheap. Nobody else comes near the price. Cons: Interface is, well, non-intuitive. Sometimes it just doesn't behave as it ought; you can press left-arrow to go back a folder level, up and down to go up and down, but pushing right arrow makes some odd popup menu appear. Instead you have to push PLAY to go into a subfolder. Weird. Buttons are badly laid out. It will be quite some time before you're used to the odd up/right and left/down combo arrows. The play button is tiny, but the menu button (which you rarely use once the unit is set up) is huge. I don't get it. Volume is a bit low. But I rarely use headphones; almost all of my listening is either through a home stereo or a car stereo. Battery. Does anybody EVER get all three bars on their battery life? Mine seems to start at one bar down. Battery life is ok but less than advertised. Comments: To those who have complained about having to pay to use the recording or compact flash features...the plugins are now included with the unit. If you have an older unit, you can download them for free from the Archos website. Another review seemed to really favor the older Jukebox Recorder, and honestly I don't get that. The recorder was the same size (tho it looked bigger because of those wacky blue corner things), but a bit heavier, with a teeny tiny screen and awful OS interface. On the other hand, I agree that the new proprietary connecter required for line-in is annoying. Bottom line: a great value as either an MP3 player or portable storage unit.
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