Archos G9 Turbos On Sale Next Week, OMAP 4460-based G9 At CES (Updated)
by Jason Inofuentes on December 2, 2011 11:51 AM EST
The saga of the Archos G9 tablets, once dubbed the world's fastest, has been a little drawn out. Archos originally intended to have 1.5 GHz variants out by this holiday season, but we can now confirm that the week of December 5th US buyers will be able to get their hands on the 1.2 GHz Archos 80 and 101 G9 Turbo lines. Pricing should reflect the prior annoucnements, and performance should be similar to the other recent Honeycomb tablets. To review, these 8" and 10.1" tablets differentiate themselves from the pack most by their inclusion of 250 GB of mechanical storage, perfect for media hogs.
Part of our excitement when we first caught wind of these tablets was that they were based on the launch platform for Ice Cream Sandwich, making this potentially one of the easier ports for this tablet generation. Archos aims to please, targeting the release of their ICS port for the end of 1Q12. That might seem like a lot of time given the hardware similarities to the Galaxy Nexus, but consider that the Archos name is made on their vast codec support, and media capabilities, which may take some time to bake into Android 4.0.
The last bit of news we received was that Archos would have G9 models based on TI's OMAP 4460 SoC waiting for us at CES. Though similar to the OMAP 4430, the increased CPU and GPU clocks (1.5 GHz and 384 MHz, respectively) should provide a satisfying boost in performance. We'll update with confirmed pricing when we have it.
Pricing has been confirmed as $299 and $379 for the 80 and 101 G9 Turbo 16GB models, respectively. This takes the spot of the original 1.0 GHz 80 G9, which never saw release here, and is just a $10 premium over the non-Turbo 101 G9. Archos will also be offering a free case and free shipping on both devices when they go on sale next week.
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Rick83 - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Friend of mine is expecting her shipment to arrive next week.But then, the 'Turbo' version was never going to be that exciting, the advantages over the 1GHz version are minimal.
On the other hand, even the 4460 only brings enhacements for some extreme HD/3D formats, and slightly more graphics clock....but then why would anyone game on a tablet?
JasonInofuentes - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
The 20% performance increase in the processor for the Turbo variant is certainly worth $10, and will likely gut whatever sales of the lesser model Archos has had here in the States. The 4460 upgrade will provide a substantial improvement to both 3D games and the general UI, once Ice Cream Sandwich hits. This won't be a differentiator though, as any device with an as powerful GPU will have the same performance. With media playback as Archos bread and butter, they will no doubt be working to take most advantage of the GPU for HD media playback, both on-board and through HDMI. As for gaming on a tablet . . . well plenty do on the iPad/2. But like the mainstream gaming space, developers go where the money is.Thanks for the comment.
jason
Zink - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
the first word of the article is appearing on the same line as the picture for me in google chromeXZerg - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Firefox 7 as well.JasonInofuentes - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Fixed.Charbax - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
You can find it for $269 here: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtool...Who tells you Ice Cream Sandwich isn't going to be ready before the end of Q1 2012? My guess is it's ready to be showcased by CES a month from now.
Rick83 - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
Point in case:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedd...
Ice Cream Sandwich alpha build on G9 Demo (at Archos HQ?)
fic2 - Monday, December 5, 2011 - link
Wonder if you could replace the mechanical HD with an SSD. Don't really have a use for 250G of storage in a tablet, but wouldn't mind 80-100G SSD.