Archos has officially announced their latest family of tablets, the Platinum line, one of which we happen to have seen come up in rumor form earlier this morning. Rumors aside, this latest Platinum series announcement includes three tablets — the 97 Platinum, 80 Platinum and the 116 Platinum.
Archos has said these Platinum tablets will arrive with “sleek” aluminum designs and “the best” high definition IPS displays. As we have come to expect with Archos, the names clue us in on the display size. In this case we have 9.7-inch (2048 x 1536), 8.0-inch (1024 x 768) and 11.6-inch (1920 x 1080) models. These tablets will all be running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean at launch and sharing many of the same specs across the board.
For example, they will all have a quad-core 1.2GHz processor with 8-core GPU, 2GB of RAM, front- and rear-facing camera, microSD card slots, mini-HDMI and access to the Google Play Store as well as the Archos Media Center applications. The 97 Platinum and the 80 Platinum will both be available this month and the 116 Platinum is expected to arrive in April.
The tablets will arrive with price points of $299, $199 and $349 for the 97 Platinum, 80 Platinum and 116 Platinum respectively. And as we have seen with other Archos tablet introductions, they have taken the opportunity to compare with the competition. The 97 Platinum is going after the iPad with a “comparable” display and 40 percent less expensive price tag and the 80 Platinum is said to be “a fraction of the cost” of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9.
