The K-Zone: Reddmango VX435: should Archos be worried?

Overview

At a high-street price of under £200, the 120Gb Reddmango VX435 is financially very competitive against the higher-capacity Archos media players, as well as less-known manufacturers such as Cowon. Its disk is not as large as the 504's 160Gb, but the Reddmango is more than a hundred quid cheaper -- two hundred quid cheaper, if you go by High Street prices rather than mail order. In fact, it's not much more expensive than the 30Gb Archos 404. However, the Reddmango's screen is only the same as the diminutive Archos 404's (3.5 inch), in a physical package of the size of the much larger 504. So its not easy to make a direct one-for-one comparison between the Reddmango and any model in the current Archos range.
      For all that, the VX435 and the Argos units do appear side-by-side on the shelves of some retailers, so it's not a waste of time to consider which would be the better buy. Reddmango only offers one media player at present, while Archos has a whole range, and it's not really fair to compare a single model with a range. So in this review I will focus on the VX435 compared to the 604, because they are about the same price.

Build quality and ergonomics

Subjectively the build quality of the Archos units far exceeds that of the Reddmango VX435 although both, in practice, are mass-produced in China. The Archos units feel solid and substantial, and have largely metal casing. The Reddmango feels plasticky and cheap. It doesn't look like it would stand much rough treatment (although it might -- I haven't tried it).
      The Reddmango front panel controls consist of two buttons and a four-way stick -- very similar in appearance to the Archos 204. The larger Archos units -- those more comparable to the Reddmango -- have ten buttons on the front panel, although they are densely packed. Having such a truncated control panel means that the VX435 does not provide a way to seek rapidly through tracks (neither does the 204); but it's easier to operate in the dark. On the whole, this is an area where there is no right answer -- there are benefits to having fewer controls, and to having more controls. It's a personal taste thing. Both the Reddmango and the Archos units have panel buttons for on/off, and to switch between internal and external video display.
      What is rather odd about the Reddmango's construction is its shape and balance. It's not flat, but has a bulge at one for the battery. In a sense, the bulge makes it easier to grip the unit, but it does put all the weight at one end, which is rather peculiar. The Archos units have flat batteries rather than round ones, and wear their weight more uniformly. All in all, the shape of the Reddmango puts me in mind of a Kodak Instamatic film cartridge, albeit a rather heavy one.

Feature overview

One of the interesting marketing tactics adopted by Archos in its latest product range is to keep costs down by including only core functionality in the basic unit, and pushing out less widely-used facilities to optional hardware and software. With the Reddmango, however, what you see is what you get -- there is no evidence that any additional features will be offered, even at extra cost. This makes it even harder to compare the units -- should we compare the basic functions -- in which case the Reddmango wins, hands down -- or the full set of available functions -- which pushes the price up considerably? The following table summaries the basic features of the Reddmango VX435 with its closest (in price) Archos rival.

Reddmango VX435 Archos 604
Capacity 120Gb 30Gb
Audio player support MP3, WMA (non-DRM) MP3, WMA (incl. DRM), ucompressed WAV, ADPCM WAV, AAC*
Video player support AVI, MPG, VOB formats; MPEG-4, MPEG-2, and MPEG-1 video; MP3, ADPCM, PCM, and AC3 audio AVI, MPG, WMV, VOB formats; MPEG-4, M-JPEG, MPEG-2*, MPEG-1*, and H.264* video; MP3, ADPCM, PCM, AAC*, and AC3* audio
Screen size 3.5" diagonal, 16:9 aspect 4.3" diagonal, 16:9 aspect
Subtitle file support SRT format None
Album art support No Yes
ID3 tag support Yes, files scanned on demand Yes, files scanned when USB detached
E-book support Text files, with bookmark support PDF files
Picture viewer JPEG, with slideshow JPEG, PNG, BMP, with slideshow
Video recording Not supported With optional docking adapters
Audio recording Built-in microphone Built-in microphone, analogue line-level**, digital**
Audio output Analogue headphone level Analgoue headphone level, analogue line level**, digital**
Video output Composite, component Composite, component**, s-video**
Remote control Yes (supplied) Only on 704; others get remote control with docking station
USB host support Yes (built-in), but supports only bulk file copy Yes** Supports selective file copying
Multi-tasking Crude -- picture/music only Slick -- music, file browser, PDF viewer, main menu, all can run concurrently
Cold boot time 35 seconds 32 seconds
Audio quality As good as anything on the market with decent headphones As good as anything on the market with decent headphone, except high sensitivity and active types (see below)
Charging Mains adapter (supplied)*** Over USB; mains adapter optional
* With optional plug-ins
** With optional hardware accessories
*** The VX435 does not support charge-over-USB, presumably for the same reason that the Archos 704 does not: the large disk just draws too much current

Audio player

Both units have perfectly serviceable audio players, supporting most MP3 files and Microsoft WMA. The Reddmango does not support DRM WMA files, nor integration with Windows Media Player. This doesn't bother me at all, as I don't use Windows. I don't really know how big a problem this is for Windows users. The Archos units will play AAC and AC3 audio files, as well as AAC and AC3 audio channels in video files (with optional plug-ins). The VX435 does not seem to be able to play these audio files, despite being able to play AC3 as an audio track in a video file.
      Playlist support is present on both units, as is folder play, shuffle, and repeat modes. The Reddmango playlist support is rudimentary, but probably sufficient for many people. It mantains three editable playlists, which must be managed in the unit itself. The Archos units support file-based playlists, which can be saved anywhere on disk and managed off the unit if required.
      Both units support ID3 tags, although this appeared to be broken on my test unit. Neither unit supports Ogg files, or any form of lossless compressed audio format (e.g., FLAC). If you want lossless audio compression, buy a Cowon iAudio.

Video player

Both the Reddmango and Archos units support MPEG-4, although neither support GMC or QPel extensions, unfortunately. Without optional codecs, the only other video formats the Archos supports are WMV and M-JPEG (popular with digital cameras). The Reddmango also supports MPEG-2 and MPEG-1, which require optional codecs for the Archos (adding twenty quid to the price). Archos offers H.264 video support in an optional plug-in, along with AAC audio support. This format -- H.264/AAC -- is one that Archos seems particularly keen on, since it is widely used by video podcasts.
      Both units support video files containing audio in MP3 and PCM format. Archos can also support AC3, AAC, and MP2 with optional codecs. The Reddmango supports all but AAC as supplied. So far as I know, the Reddmango does not support AAC audio either as stand-alone files or as an audio channel in a video file. Personally I think this is no great loss, although iTunes customers might like to see AAC support.
      Both video players are perfectly functional, and reasonably stable. The VX435 offers two features the Archos lacks -- arbitrary zoom and soft subtitling (subtitle files). Both have bright, high contrast screens, and are easy to watch. However, all but the 404 in the Archos range have bigger, higher resolution screens that the VX435.

E-book reader

I'm given to understand that, on average, women read more books than men. I also believe (without much evidence) that electronic gadgets appeal more to men than women. Consequently, there isn't much incentive for gadget manufacturers to provide decent e-book support in the handheld devices. Both the Archos and the Reddmango has some kind of support for book reading, but it's very different.
      The Archos units have a PDF viewer. It works pretty well given the limitation of the relatively small screen, but Archos don't really advertise it -- there isn't even an icon to launch it from the main menu. I suspect this is because they don't want users to expect too much. On the other hand, the Reddmango supports the reading only of plain text files.
      For text e-books (novels, short stories, etc) plain text is a hugely better format than PDF for use on a small screen. PDF is a page layout language, and PDFs are authored to fit an exact page size. You can't show a PDF file on a display of a different size from that for which it was authored, except by scaling it. And if you scale an A4 page (or even an A5 page) down to fit a 3.5-inch screen, you simply won't be able to read the text.
      Plain text, however, contains no formatting information at all, and files can be reflowed easily. The practical upshot of all this is that I can see myself using the VX435 e-book viewer all the time, whilst I hardly ever use the Archos PDF viewer (which is, in a sense, technically superior).

Networking and other hardware enhancements

Archos offer a wifi-equipped version of its 604 player for somewhat more money than the plain version. This variant also has a touch sensitive screen. So far Reddmango only offers the VX435, so it can't be directly compared to the more feature-rich (and more expensive) Archos versions. There's no reason to think that Reddmango won't offer models with wifi and touchscreens (and maybe other stuff) in future, of course.

Quirks

After ten years in business, Archos has managed to fix most of the irritating quirky behaviour in its products. Reddmango, however, has some way to go. The VX435 is absolutely rife with eccentric behaviour, typical of an immature product. For example, there is no screen brightness adjustment; many important user configuration settings are lost on a shutdown; you can't see the battery or charger status except when media is playing; playback stops when you pop up a menu; filenames are not sorted into order unless you tell the unit to sort them every time you show a folder; that kind of thing. I imagine that none of these problems would be enormously difficult to fix.
      The Reddmango also lacks some features that would be relatively easy to implement. There's no way, for example, to resume playback automatically from the same place if the unit is switched off. You can't change any of the screen colours or fonts. And so on. A bit of attention to the firmware could radically improve the useability and appeal of the VX435.

Sound quality

Like many portable players, including the Archos, the VX435 needs decent headphones or earphones to get the most out of the sound quality it has to offer. I've been testing using my Sennheiser HD-25 heaphones, which are `real hi-fi' units, and also the Bose tri-port in-ear phones. Both work very well, on both the Reddmango and the Archos. The newer Archos units suffer a number of headphone pathologies -- heaphone set-ups that perform astoundingly badly. For example, I've heard reports that many active noise-cancelling headphones (particular from Bose) don't work at all well with the Archos players. I haven't used the Reddmango long enough to know whether it, too, has pathologies of this kind.

With decent head/ear phones, both the Reddmango and the Archos sound marvellous. The sound is what I think of as `neutral', with neither a predominance of bass (which bedevils many cheap players), nor an intrusive high-frequency response. Both units are equally limited in their abilities to drive high-impendance headphones -- the Bose and Sennheiser units I use are both at the limit of what the players can handle. Neither the Reddmango or the Archos can drive my test head/ear phones into a region which is likely to damage my hearing. Low battery voltage is often blamed for this -- 3-4 volts isn't much of a supply voltage -- but there are rumours that the manufacturers are worried about their customers being deafened and suing them. In any event, I don't think you need to worry about your hearing with most decent headphones with Archos or Reddmango units.

There is one area where the Reddmango scores over the Archos, as do most other modern media players -- sound quality with very high sensitivity earphones and canalphones, such as the Shure E2 and E3. The problem with these phones is that you need to operate the Archos at the bottom range of its volume setting if you don't want to blow your eardrums in. At this setting, machine noise (from the disk and CPU) can easily overwhelm the sound you're actually listening to. The modern Archos units are more-or-less unusable with canalphones and, with the Bose tri-ports, I can just hear machine noise in the silent patches between music tracks. With the Reddmango -- as, indeed, with most players -- at normal volume settings there is ansolutely no sound whatsoever in the silences, which is how it should be.

In short, I have no complaints about the sound quality of either the Reddmango or Archos units, but the Reddmango wins with high-sensitivity earphones in a quiet listening environment, and neither drive decent headphones very loudly.

Conclusion

The Reddmango VC435 is clearly a first-generation product, and rather resembles what Archos was offering about five years ago. It has one profound advantage, however, over its closest competitor in price from Archos -- four times the disk capacity. There doesn't seem to be any other audio/video player with this sort of capacity at anything like this sort of price at present.
      If you specifically need a high-capacity (>100Gb) media player, and you're on a very tight budget, then the VX435 might be for you. It does what it says it does, and some things it does pretty well. It's quirky, but not so quirky that a firmware revision couldn't sort it out.
      But for me, if I wanted a high-capacity player I would go for the 160Gb Archos 504. If it wasn't for its horrible proprietary file upload mechanism, the new iPod Classic 160Gb might be good value as well. By shelling out about a hundred quid more on the Archos, I'd get a bigger, higher-resolution screen, even greater capacity, a more elegant, sturdy construction, support for a huge range of video and audio formats, proper multitasking, and the stability and ease of use that you get with a mature, battle-hardened product. There's also the option to add a docking station and get digital audio in and out, and video recording facilities.
      If I were on a fixed budget and had only two hundred quid to spend, and the choice were between the VX435 and the Archos 604, it would be a harder decision. The Archos wins in all significant areas except capacity; but capacity is very important to me.
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