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Archos JukeBox 6000

We get our claws on the latest hard drive-equipped MP3 player

Review MP3 players look set to take the place of personal CD players as our portable music device of choice. One of the key reasons for this is the ability to store literally hundreds of tracks on a single unit. However, in order to house your CD collection on a portable MP3 player you’ll need plenty of storage. That's where devices like the Archos JukeBox 6000, which combines an MP3 player with hard drive, come in.

The addition of the hard drive - a 6GB unit in the JukeBox 6000's case - means that a player not much bigger than a pack of cards can hold 100 hours of music – roughly the equivalent of 81 audio CDs. The JukeBox can only play MP3s, not WMAs, but you can save files in any format. Setup and operation is easy – once you’ve installed the software and connected the player to your PC via the USB port, the JukeBox will appear as a new drive on your desktop. To copy MP3 files to the JukeBox, simply drag your files from Windows Explorer and drop them into the Archos' drive.

The controls allow you to switch between bass, treble and flat settings and quick-scan through tracks, but it can’t fast forward or rewind. Sound quality is good and the JukeBox 6000 stores more music than any MP3 player we’ve seen. When you consider what it can do, the £248 price tag no longer seems costly.

One major quibble is the design: the chunky, box-shaped unit looks dated compared to the sleek, stylish Rio players. On a more practical front, you also need to unscrew the casing to replace the four NiMH batteries.

The JukeBox offers good sound quality and is simple to use, but it was the storage capacity that blew us away. With a built-in 6GB hard drive, the Archos JukeBox 6000 is the model to buy if you want to keep all your favourite music tracks in the same place. ®

Stats

Price: £ 248
Contact: 01672 810 366
Website: www.archos.com

Specs

Weight: 375g
Dimensions: 115x82x34mm
Other info: MP3 support only; 6GB hard drive; 4xAA NiMH batteries; headphones; MusicMatch software

Taken from the July 2001 issue of PC Advisor

Copyright © 2001, IDG. All rights reserved.

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