Archos GamePad Android portable console review | Part 3: Tablet Performance

Archos GamePad boot

Archos GamePad performance: benchmark results

Test conditions:
– Arnova GamePad pre-production device with firmware build dated 20121126
– 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

Archos 101 xs vs Archos GamePad benchmark results

	Archos 101 xs (G10)	Archos GamePad
Test setup Firmware version	pre-production device, with beta firmware Linux kernel version 3.0.21+ built Aug 16 12:50:16 CEST 2012 Android 4.0.4 Build G10A-user 4.0.4 IMM76D 20120809.121151	pre-production device, with beta firmware Linux Kernel 3.0.8+ Android 4.1.1 Build JR003H.20121126.142255
Antutu Benchmark higher is faster	Total score: 5874 CPU: 2940 GPU: 1387 RAM: 1069 I/O: 478	Total score: 12167 CPU: 3922 GPU: 5831 RAM: 1748 I/O: 666
Linpack Pro v 1.2.9 higher is faster, benchmark run in multi-thread (we took the best numbers we could achieve, there is a lot of variance on these bench results)	94.9 MFLOPS	79.8 MFLOPS
CF-Bench v 1.1 higher is faster	Native score: 10756 Java Score: 3288 Overall Score: 6275	Native score: 10156 Java Score: 2836 Overall Score: 5764
ArcTools v 0.69 higher is faster	Read: 29842 Kb/s Write: 13780 Kb/s	Read: 27224 Kb/s Write: 7351 Kb/s
Smartbench 2011 v 1.2.1 higher is faster	Prod. index: 2816 Games Index: 2810	Prod. index: 2972 Games Index: 1795
Quadrant higher is faster	Total: 3557 CPU: 6170 Mem: 3346 I/O: 4671 2D: 1000 3D: 2599	Total: 3715 CPU: 6342 Mem: 4252 I/O: 4801 2D: 1032 3D: 2150
Vellamo v 1.0.3 higher is faster	1374	1384
Nenamark v 2.0 higher is faster	55.0 FPS	55.2 FPS
GPUBench v 1.0.0 higher is faster	Absolute: 39195 Relative: 34964	Absolute: 41931 Relative: 40939

While these numbers should be weighted by the fact they were run on the pre-production devices, they give the general idea about the machines performance. It appears the GamePad has about the same performance as the 101xs and that the Quad-core Mali-400 GPU is pretty powerful givent the high results in GPU benchmarks.

Battery Life

From a fully charged tablet, we played this video file big_buck_bunny_720p_AAC.mp4(Big Buck Bunny 720p, stereo sound in AAC format) in loop until the tablet battery gets empty.

More details about the test conditions:
– using latest firmware (20121126) available on the pre-production device
– machine started after a fresh reboot
– tablet fully charged (lockscreen says “Charged”, Settings / About tablet / Status says Battery level100%)
– media sound volume set to half (Settings/Sound/Volume, set Media bar to middle position)
– brightness set to half (Settings/Display/Brightness)
– Wi-FI disabled

During this test, on our pre-production Archos GamePad, we have measured an effective battery life of 4 hours and 36 minutes. For comparison, most other Archos and Arnova tablets of all sizes also give it up after 4-6 hours. We have used our ArcTools application to run the battery test for the details of the discharge curve, see below:

When it comes to battery life with gaming, it is worse. Running Asphalt 7 with full brightness and Wi-Fi on, the GamePad could only handle it for slightly more than two hours. Nova Battery Tester standard benchmark measured 1% drop per 72 seconds, or a battery life of 2 hours with maximum brightness and maximum CPU load(all the networks off). Archos 80G9 got more than the double in the same benchmark(results from Nova Battery Tester page). We can only say we would like to have a bigger battery in here.

Similar articles:

Archos GamePad Android portable console review | Part 5: Conclusion

Archos GamePad Android portable console review | Part 4: Software & Gaming

Archos GamePad Android portable console review | Part 2: Tablet design

Archos GamePad Android portable console review | Part 1: Introduction