14 DAY TRIAL // Tablets arrived in quite a force at this year's edition of the IFA trade show, and Archos did not let itself fall behind, having delivered two such devices, dubbed G9 80 and G9 101.
Archos is just one of the companies that included tablets in their IFA 2011 exhibitions, what with so many companies from around the world convening in Berlin, Germany.
For those that would like to have some sort of context before or after examining the G9 80 and 101, the past couple of days saw the appearance of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, Dell Streak 7, Toshiba AT200, etc.
The products that Archos created have partially similar hardware parts (to each other) and the same operating system (Android 3.2), but their dimensions, naturally, imply some different screen capabilities.
The G9 80 boasts a display diagonal of 8 inches, while the G9 101 is of the 10.1-inch variety.
Thus, the former has a native resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels, while the latter comes with a 1,280 x 800 pixel panel.
The 8-incher has touch input support, while the 10.1-inch device has multitouch (capable of keeping up with four points at once).
The insides of both are gathered around an OMAP 4 ARM Cortex dual-core A9 processor, clocked at 1.5 GHz.
Additionally, the company implemented HDMI connectivity (for streaming video to TVs and monitors), Bluetooth, USB (normal-sized, hidden under a lid at the back), WiFi and a digital compass, among other things.
Furthermore, the two newcomers have a certain asset that will put them ahead of the rest at least in respects to storage capacity.
Simply put, while the spec sheets do mention flash storage, users will have the option of selecting a hard disk drive with a capacity of 250 GB, which is quite a lot for media slates.
The Archos G9 101 is priced at 299.99 (8 GB), 349.99 (16 GB) or 299,99 Euro (250 GB), while the G9 80 will sell for 249.99, 279.99 and 329.99 Euro, respectively.
Note: Fellow editors Cosmin Vasile and Sorin Nita are on the floor at the 2011 IFA Show and are keeping us posted with pictures and live reports on the latest product previews and launches.
