Archos 605 player is no match for Apple’s video iPod

NEW YORK — Sporting a brushed metal case, a crisp, wide touch screen and wireless Internet capabilities, the latest portable media gadget from Archos sounds like a match for the newest iPods.

I had high hopes for the $300 Archos 605 WiFi, given the company’s experience in the area (it released another lookalike player, the $450 604 WiFi, last year).

But the 605 was a letdown. It’s still too clunky — with an overabundance of buttons and a difficult-to-navigate interface — to take the place of a standard video iPod from Apple Inc.

Like its predecessor, the player has Archos’ signature high-resolution 4.3-inch touch screen. Videos and images look great on the display, but lower-quality media — such as your average YouTube video — will look as pixelated on the Archos player as they do on your computer screen.

Watching the small screen for extended periods didn’t bother my eyes. But I wouldn’t use the included speaker to listen for long, as the sound was distorted when I raised the volume above the halfway mark — and it wasn’t that loud on full blast anyway.

Transferring files onto the player from a computer is not difficult, but figuring out how the Archos organizes them is. Discovering where my files went required a lot more poking at the screen and scrolling through menus than I would have liked.

In the end, I found it easiest to move things onto and around the Archos by opening the device up on my PC and organizing it there. An impatient user might find this overwhelming and might not search the “files” section for media that seems lost.

The player includes a seemingly unnecessary row of buttons on the right side of its screen that serve as alternative controls to the touch screen. The buttons are useful for fast-forwarding or rewinding, but I tended to forget they were even there — except when I bumped them.

As the name implies, the player can be used to browse the Internet. But unlike the earlier WiFi player, 605 users must pay $30 for the Opera Web browser. An Archos spokeswoman said the company found that just over half of 604 users used Opera, so Archos decided not to include it free on the 605.

The browser, which now supports flash videos from sites such as YouTube, was fine for reading online news in bed or while wandering my apartment, but the type was often obnoxiously small even when magnified. Given increasingly easy Web access through smart phones, I’m not convinced this feature would be useful on a regular basis.