First look at the Archos 97 Carbon tablet – review part 3 (performance and multimedia)

Archos 97 Carbon performance: benchmark results

Test conditions:
- Archos 97 Carbon pre-production device (4 Gb storage model) with firmware build dated 20120602.104656
- all benchmarks were executed after all tasks have been killed
- test were run multiple times to check for consistent behaviour, the results shown here correspond to average values

Benchmark results interpretation
While these numbers should be weighted by the fact they were run on the pre-production device, they give the general idea about the machine performance. It appears the Archos 97 Carbon produce similar performance as other tablets based on a the one year old Rockchip RK2918 SoC, which is just average in today’s performance standards for mid range tablets.

Multimedia

The Archos 97 Carbon comes with a basic video player. We’ve successfully played 1080p video content without a problem, but the video player is limited in term of features and audio/video formats supported, it definitely cannot compare with the feature rich Archos player which ships on the Archos G9 tablets.

1080p HD test videos details
Here are the specification details the three test 1080p videos that played successfully on the Archos 97 Carbon:

Avatar – Trailer_h264_1080p.mkv
General	Format : Matroska, Format version : Version 2 File size : 194 MiB Duration : 2mn 25s Overall bit rate : 11.2 Mbps
Video	Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : High@L4.1 Format settings, CABAC : Yes Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC Bit rate : 9 488 Kbps Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Audio	Format : DTS Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems Codec ID : A_DTS Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 1 510 Kbps Channel(s) : 6 channels Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz Bit depth : 24 bits Compression mode : Lossy Delay relative to video : 11ms Stream size : 26.2 MiB (13%) Title : English DTS 1509kbps Language : English

h264_1080p_hp_4.1_40mbps_birds.mkv (Birds scene from Planete Earth Movie)
General	Format : Matroska Version 1 File size : 110 MiB Duration : 23s 65ms Overall bit rate : 39.9 Mbps
Video	Format : AVC (Advanced Video Codec) Format profile : High@L4.1 Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC Bit rate : 39.1 Mbps Nominal bit rate : 42.0 Mbps Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 072 pixels
Audio	None

Limitless – Trailer_h264_1080p.mp4
General	Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media / Version 2 Codec ID : mp42 File size : 154 MiB Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 8 696 Kbps Movie name : Limitless – Theatrical Trailer
Video	Format : AVC (Advanced Video Codec) Format profile : Main@L4.0 Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 8 550 Kbps Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Variable Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Audio	Format : AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) Format profile : LC Codec ID : 40 Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 144 Kbps Maximum bit rate : 175 Kbps Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel positions : Front: L R Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz Compression mode : Lossy Delay relative to video : -83ms Stream size : 2.53 MiB (2%) Language : English

Archos 97 Carbon 16 Gb		AMAZON USA	Usually ships in 1-2 business days	$ 129.99
		AMAZON UK	Usually dispatched within 3-4 business days	£ 150.88
		AMAZON DE		116 EUR
		AMAZON FR		130 EUR