Hands On With the Archos 9 Tablet (Verdict: Good Software Stack, Weak Ergonomics)

Today, I had the chance to play with the Archos 9, a $499 tablet running Windows 7 and (sigh) packing Intel Atom (a Z series CPU, to be exact). Other specs include 1GB of RAM, no fan, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, and a small 60GB hard drive. Archos claims it’s 4-cell battery life lasts between 4 and 5 hours (our experience with 4-cells would suggest otherwise, however). For various reasons, this is hardly the tablet you’ve been waiting for.

In playing with it, I had two main beefs: one was the resistive screen. It’s not just that it’s not capacative (let alone that it can’t support multi-touch gestures); it also wasn’t terribly responsive. Sure, you can use the stylus, which double as a kickstand for propping up the tablet when you want to watch movies, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the PC industry trying once again to make tablets happen.

I’m also a little skeptical about the ergonomics. On the right side of the bezel, you’ve got a speaker, and a tiny touch-sensitive patch– smaller than the width of your thumb– that functions as a touchpad. On the left side of the bezel there’s a CTRL-ALT-Delete button, another that shows the onscreen keyboard (this I like), and left and right touch buttons, stacked on top of each other.

It’s very reminiscent of the design some UMPCs (remember those?) used to sport: between the tiny trackpad, the stacked touch buttons on the other side of the 9-inch screen, and the display itself, which isn’t very responsive, this just isn’t as smooth a user experience as you’d expect. If this is to be the device you use while sprawled on the couch watching TV, after all, it had better be simple to use.

There are some things I already like, though: the tablet, at just .62 inches thin, feels light and slim, which makes it satisfying to hold. It’s also pretty: the screen might need some fine tuning, and I’m of course skeptical about the ergonomics, but aside from it’s shape, I also like it in both black and white. There’s also a SIM card slot, even for U.S. customers (Archos hasn’t yet announced a deal with a U.S. carrier). And while the screen wasn’t so good for touching, HD video didn’t look half bad on it (save for some a few parts where it slowed down slightly).

Aside from design, though, the Archos 9′s biggest strength seems to be its software stack. Like the Archos 10, a netbook whose hardware we panned, it has a generous– and eclectic– selection of apps, including Lotus Symphony for word processing, Archos Media Club for downloading media (to be fair, the last time we tested this the selection was skimpy and kind of random), and BitDefender security software. It makes the five-hundred dollar price point a bit more palatable.

We look forward to doing a full review. Until then, check out my hands on video and this gallery of photos.