After testing the Archos Flip (which doesn’t look like a Lenovo Yoga BTW!) I’m disappointed that Archos are only planning to release this in France. Obviously if it sells well it will move to other European countries but I doubt it will happen this year. Here’s a rundown of my hands-on experience with it.
I’m here in Berlin for 5 days covering what’s usually the most interesting consumer technology show of the year. IFA 2015 opens on Thursday but before it does there are two days of press events to get through. Here’s a rundown of events, technologies and manufacturers.
My kit comprises the Surface Pro 3 (long-term loan from Intel. Full review here. Watch out for bargains as the Surface Pro 4 gets nearer.) running Windows 10. I’ve got the Lumia 830 smartphone (long-term loan from Microsoft with original OS) as my notifications and chat tool but it will also be used for quick videos, social media pics and map/transit information.
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad 8 tablet as a backup PC but that will stay in my room. A USB power-pack and a MiFi unit will be serving roaming WiFi when needed.
The camera is still the excellent Panasonic Lumix FZ150 bridge camera with a low-cost wired lapel mic and CN-160 dimmable lighting unit which mounts on the hotshoe.
Apart from the Surface Pro 3,5 this isn’t a high-end set of equipment but it’s well-tested now and reasonably mobile. Unfortunately I’ll need to take the charger for the Surface Pro 3 along with mini USB hub and SD card adapter. The Surface Pro 4 needs a full SD card slot and 8 hours battery life!
Full HD video editing will be done with Cyberlink Power Director 12 which I’ve always got on well with and always seen excellent rendering speed through its support of Intel Quick Sync video encoding hardware. It’s not expensive and it can do more than I need it to do.
I won’t be covering smart watches, smartphones or smart home equipment for my site so I’ve got a short list of devices to watch out for. The main focus for me will be around Core M and Atom X5 / X7 tablets, 2-in-1 and ultrabooks. The ASUS Zenbook UX305, for example, could get a Core M Skylake update. We might see an updated T100 Chi, and of course I’m looking forward to getting hands-on with the already popular Asus Transformer Book T100HA.
Lenovo will have a set up updates and the Lenovo Yoga 900 is hotly anticipated. An updated Thinkpad 8 with Atom X7 would be nice to see too. Speaking of Lenovo, what about that Archos Flip? Is it really a Yoga 2 11?
HP should have a few Skylake laptops and 2-in-1’s and I’ll be looking out for the Spectre X2 and Pavilion X360. The Dell XPS 13 will need a Skylake update if it’s to stay up in the list of top Ultrabooks too.
Toshiba are usually strong at IFA but I have no tips on their ultramobile products yet.
Microsoft has planned an event here but I’m not sure what to expect there. I’m certainly not expecting Surface Pro 4!
Early notifications will come though my Twitter account @chippy and videos will go up on my YouTube channel before they get posted here. Subscribe at YouTube and turn on notifications to be the first to see them.
At first this might look a little strange. The Archos Flip is launching at IFA next week. Take a look…
The Archos Flip looks like the Lenovo Yoga 2 11
Yes it’s looking like the Lenovo Yoga 2 11, but only in casing. The Archos Flip has a few interesting specifications that are definitely not in the Yoga 2.
Update Sept 2024: My Intel Compute Stick no longer boots. Sad, but true!
Update Jan 2020: The Intel Compute Stick is still getting updates, still works and runs for 24 hours on a 44Wh smartphone powerbank. More details below.
At $149 this is an interesting Windows 8.1 PC but when you know it weighs just 54 grams / 0.116 pounds it becomes a bit of an eye opener. The Intel Compute Stick, and its branded variants, are starting to become available in the market and I’ve had one for testing (from Intel) for the last two weeks. It’s not a tablet and it’s not a desktop. It’s not even a mini PC. This is a PC sealed inside a pocketable stick that can be plugged into an HDMI port on your monitor, powered by USB and used with a keyboard and mouse. It runs Windows 8.1 and can be upgraded to Windows 10. You will not find anything with this flexibility at this price, but is it powerful enough? I’ve been running tests on the Compute Stick and wanted to focus on one aspect that will interest a lot of people – web working.
I’m testing the Intel Compute Stick and the Ainol Mini PC. These two ultramobile PCs have exactly the same processing platform but completely different use cases. My analysis and video follows.
Intel Compute Stick and Ainol Mini PC. Same CPU, different markets.
Since the decline of the ultra mobile PC market there have been very very few handheld computing choices that have offered the same flexibility. Yes, UMPCs never had fantastic mobile battery life and were relatively big and ultimately failed but there’s still a big requirement for mobile, productive and flexible computing that’s not solved by ARM-based mobile computing solutions. IOS is off-limits to many people looking for UMPC-like flexibility and Android simply doesn’t have the quality software. The Google Nexus 7 could, however, change the economics and finally give ISVs a good reason to invest in high quality mobile productivity software packages for Android. Google in investing heavily into the OS, the cloud services and the applications and the important 3.x+ user base (Fragments-capable end devices) is growing fast. With the growing 4-7 inch ecosystem that Android is doing so well in comes more requirement and confidence in bringing new and niche designs to the market. The stars are aligning for handheld PC fans.
Sellout.Woot has the Archos 101 G9 Turbo on sale (for one day only, as is Woot’s style) for a reasonable $259 (permalink). The price has been dropped $20 from when we saw the same product on sale from Woot back in February for $279. This is a brand new 8GB WiFi-only version of the Archos 101 G9, though, unlike most tablets, you can add data connectivity thanks to a USB modem that can be optionally added after purchase. The ‘Turbo’ in the name denotes that this unit is clocked to 1.5GHz instead of 1.2GHz (an arbitrary limitation as far as we can tell). The cheapest you’ll be able to find the Archos 101 G9 from Amazon is currently $302, which means the Woot deal will save you $43 (14%) off that price.
The Archos 101 G9 has a dual-core 1.5GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, 1280×800 screen, and comes pre-installed with Android 3.2 Honeycomb — but fear not, you can upgrade the Archos 101 G9 (or Archos 80 G9 for that matter) to Android 4.0 Honeycomb with an update offered officially from Archos which you can download by selecting your product right here.
You can find a detailed list of specs and more at the Archos 101 G9 tracking page in our mobile device database.
With the Archos G9 series starting at £200 in the UK you have to give this a little look. Ice Cream Sandwich is being promised for early 2012 but @Charbax has seen a preview.
“Archos is showing a preview of Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich running on the OMAP4 based Archos G9 tablets to be finalized during Q1 of 2012. They still have to finish the hardware acceleration for video support, Samba/Upnp, 3G stick support and all of the other specific features that Archos provides on top of Android. ”
Via PR Email
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