I’ve always felt that the Archos AV400 was the best personal video player in the market. It had a big, beautiful screen, great design, incredible ease of use and some very practical features.

Well, now comes the Archos AV700. And it’s… huge!

This is not something you can fit into your pocket and use as a personal music player (which you can still do, to a point, with the AV400). No, this isn’t meant to be tucked away. The AV700 is a real, honest-to-goodness digital video recorder that’s portable but doesn’t have much pretensions about being personal.

And it’s loaded! Featuring a whopping 7″ widescreen 480×232 LCD, this is something you’d be glad to mount on your dashboard. Record shows from your home video devices using the easy-to-use cradle: the 40GB model can store 160 hours of video,while the 100GB (!) model can store up to 400. Video can be recorded at up to VGA resolution at 30 fps. USB 2.0 means fast PC connectivity. And the battery actually lasts an impressive 4 hours for watching onscreen video (and up to 30 hours for music).

Unlike the AV400, this doesn’t have a built-in card reader. But it does have something that’s even better: USB Host Port capability (via an included adapter)! Simply plug your digital camera, card reader, or external drive directly to this device and upload or download contents! Regardless of brand, if your camera has a USB port, you can use the AV700 as your storage drive!

It’s not a personal device, but it’s mobile enough and is very car-friendly. I drooled over the AV400 when it first came out (although I couldn’t justify it in my budget, heheh), and the AV700 will give me something new to drool about now!