Archos introduces two tablets with Seagate Momentus Thin drives

8 and 10-inch tablets are first to come with HDD; should retail for under $350

Omar Qudsi, Published 06/24/2011

If yesterday’s announcement of the $99 Arnova 7 tablet by Archos wasn’t big enough news, then the latest announcement by the company definitely is. The most recent shocker from Archos is the new 80 and 101 G9 tablets that come with Seagate's Momentus Thin hard-drives; making them the largest capacity tablets on the market.

The two G9 tablets only differ in resolution and real-estate, as the 80 G9 comes with a 1024x768 pixel resolution on its 8” display, while the 101 G9 has a 10.1” display with a resolution of 1280x800 pixels. Otherwise, both tablets come with a dual-core Cortex A9 1.5GHz processor, a front-facing HD camera, and run Android Honeycomb 3.1.

Of course, the big deal about the new Archos tablets is the ample storage space, and the included 250GB should fit a whole bunch of movies. Interestingly, the 250GB HDD is equal in price to a 32GB flash drive thanks to Seagate’s new Momentus Thin HDD. The new drives from Seagate are only 7mm thin and come in 7200RPM and 5400RPM flavors with 16MB of cache.

The new Momentus Thin drives are also available in 320GB and 160GB capacities, but the 250GB drive is the only one offered for the new tablets. Archos also offers a 16GB flash version of the tablets along with a MicroSD slot, but most users will likely choose the larger Seagate drives.

Another interesting feature that Archos managed to fit into their new tablets is an external 3G solution. Instead of having to decide between Wi-Fi and 3G models, G9 owners can simply purchase an external Archos G9 3G module. The device is designed to fit inconspicuously in the back of any G9 tablet, but can also be hooked up to any other device via USB.

One would think that a tablet with the G9’s pedigree would top the price charts, but once again Archos manages to keep prices competitive. The company will be offering the 80 G9 for only $279 while the 101 G9 is priced at a very reasonable $349.

Unfortunately, the Archos tablets won’t be hitting the market till September, but the Momentus Thin drives have already been made available by Seagate.