It seems that there’s just no end to the amount of Smartwatch news coming out of CES. So far we’ve heard about the Pebble Steel,The Cogito, and The Meta, and now Archos is throwing their name in the hat as well. According to Archos though, they want to take a slightly different approach to the Smartwatch than some of their competitors have. Instead of just offering up one Smartwatch like Samsung that does a ton of different stuff, Archos is planning to release a range of different Smartwatches that will fit into every range of consumer budgets and tastes, but with less functionality.
Archos has narrowed down their range of offerings into three different categories, (a low, middle, and high-end) and launch is scheduled to be in the realm of sometime this summer. Archos hasn’t named their three devices just yet, but each watch has varied specs to fit the price range it will be launched under. The nice thing about the lines of Smartwatches coming from Archos, is that their going to follow a similar path to Smartwatches like the Cogito, in that they are going to be an extension of your phone instead of a little device that does nearly all the exact same things, resulting in somewhat replacing it.
The Archos line of watches is going to notify you whenever you get messages, tweets, emails, and the like, but you won’t be able to respond to any of them. You also won’t be able to make calls from it or take a photo, but when you think about it, is the camera on today’s Smartwatches really something you want to be snapping shots with in the first place? you will however get media controls on the watch, which will be a pretty nice feature for those who take their music with them on their smartphone but perfer to be hands free. The Archos line of Smartwatches are set to serve their purpose in complimenting your smartphone or phablet by letting you know of important notifications, which is little more of a modest approach, however there’s nothing wrong with that. As far as specs and price go, the low end model is going to cost $50 and will come with a 1.55 inch non-capacitive black and white LCD display. The battery life on this little guy is said to last about a week or two. The next model up is going to cost $100, and will come with a bigger display (although not by much) that has a size of 1.8 inches and will be in color, and will have a somewhat shorter battery life than the first model, lasting about 36-48 hours. Lastly, Archos will release a model that will cost $130, which will also be a color model and carry the same screen size as the $100 model Smartwatch, but comes with an Aluminum encasing instead. Archos says that $50 is going to be launched first sometime this summer, with the mid-range and high-end model getting a launch date in the following months after the first model.