Archos 700 series

The 6" wide screen has only 480x234 pixels: the resolution is only just acceptable-certainly not superb.
The TV Freeview version even on a good outside aerial is blocky, freezes, half-blank screen: certainly unwatchable.

The navigation buttons are not intuitive, badly designed and difficult to fathom.

internet and email from a wireless LAN would be better.

The 504 series seems to be a far better bet...

The unit runs very hot-enougfh to fry an egg!
It is heavy, certainly not pocketable.

Even so, a clever gadget, but buy a later model line!!!

Steve Sanford

Why hasn't someone thought of this sooner!

Absolutely fantastic. Really easy to use. Makes swapping music between ipods a doddle. Just wish someone had come up with this sooner!

[...] - Best £[...] I've spent this year!

I bought this direct from the [...] site for £[...], about a week ago. It arrived on the day that the said it would.
I have tried most of the functionality and for the money I think I got an absolute bargin. It would be cheap even if it was just a pocket sized 40Gb external hard drive but you can record and playback video sources (including direct tv encoding. Just price up an Mpeg4 ipod or a 40 Gb MP3 player or a hulking great Hard disk DVD recorder. The only downside I have found is that there can be a bit of a lag (a fraction of a second) with some audio on recorded tv sources.
All in all you get a sturdy, well made piece of gadget bling for the price of a tank of petrol.

Some good, Some bad

We discovered the benefits of in-car DVD a couple of years back with a very cheap setup. Having decided to replace it for this years holiday travels we settled on the NextBase 685AC. We had three main reasons for chossing this model.

1. The nice big 8.5" screens
2. The ability to watch two DVDs at the same time
3. The USB port, which claimed to play mp4 & divx movies from a USB stick.

The kit is certainly comprehensive, with two of almost everything:
2 x Screen/DVD Players
2 x Headrest Mounts
2 x AC power supplies
2 x 12v Car adapters
2 x Remote controls
2 X Lithium battery packs
Plus lots of cables for connecting to other equipment and joing the displays together if you want to share a movie

We also purchased two pairs of NextBase IR Headphones.

First the good:
-Very comprehansive kit with everything you need to watch in car or home.
-The Screens are very clear with bright colours.
-Easy to setup and use.
-Everything worked and it all comes in a nice carrying case.
-The setup menus are clear and reasonably intuitive.
-The headrest mounts provide a reasonably steady platform for the screens although viewing angle ajustment is difficult depending on the design of the headrest (NextBase do a set of stanchion mounts at extra cost which might improve this).
-The IR headphones sound good and are easy to setup, with two channels available to avoid interference between sets.

Now the Bad:
-On opening both DVD players I found a small rectangle of black plastic and a similarly sized rectangle of metal about 1mm thick rattling about inside. These should have been secured in the player lids and rather than go to the hassle of shipping them back, a couple spots of superglue secured them back in the right place (for £300+ you wouldn't really expect this sort of thing).
-The two remote controls are identical and either remote will operate both players. We had to confiscate them to prevent all out war on the back seat!! It would have been better if they were coded to only work one player.
-The USB socket seems to be a dead loss. As soon as you connect the USB stick the player opens a file browser from which you can scroll around and choose the file using the remote. We were hoping to rip all out DVDs to mp4 or DivX and leave the originals safely at home. So far we can't get mp4 to work at all and although DivX will play the performance is hopeless. Note that USB hard drives don't work. The marketing blurb doesn't mention this one way or another, but the instruction manual does, and having tried it there is no doubt.
-The IR headphones are quite bulky and don't seem to have any adjustment for head size, which makes them a bit uncomfortable for my 5 year old.
-Built in speakers are a bit feeble.
-The top loading process is quite awkward foir a child when seated (the screen is hinged at the bottom and folds partially down to open the DVD lid)

Somehow I've managed to write more about the bad points, which is perhaps a little unfair. With the exception of the USB the whole thing does actually work very well and I would certainly recommend it as worth looking at.