The Archos 105 is a very, very basic portable player and part of the company's newly released Generation 5 family of products. Archos claims to have made the first portable video player, and its reputation in that category is fairly strong. But given the limited capabilities of the 105, we have to wonder why Archos felt compelled to offer up this bare bones device.

That said, the 105 does have some good points. Sound quality is impressive for an entry level portable device and images are quite clear, in spite of a small, 1.8 inch OLED display. Design-wise, the 105 is sleek little number: nice and light, and feels good to the touch. It comes in red, black and silver, and the included ear buds were above average compared to other entry level units (or even the iPod for that matter).

Transfering music and photo files couldn't be easier and there is no proprietary software to install--just drag and drop from any media manager already on your computer. But the 105 just plays music, video and photos, and forces you to choose among them. You can't view pictures or video while listening to music, further limiting the 105's functionality and with just 2GB of memory there's a lot less here to recommend Archos in this category over the Nano.

It's nice to see a portable player designed without a scroll wheel, and the buttons are large and easy to use. But the arrow system takes some getting used to and there's a good amount of guesswork early on just to get the device to pause or stop without more explicit control symbols. Nor is the operating system very user friendly, as the 105 organizes content in file folders that make you slog through several steps to access the content you want.

Archos is a favorite among gadget geeks worldwide and the praise is well deserved in the portable viewer category where it typically leads the market with products like WiFi enabled DVR devices. But its heart just isn't in the 105: A basic unit that fails to live up to the Archos reputation.

Pros: Stylish body, good image quality for such a small screen, impressive sound.
Cons: Limited features, difficult to navigate interface.