Do you remember the Archos 94 Magnus that was unveiled back at the beginning of the year? The tablet boasted a colossal 256GB of internal memory by default, plus room for another 128GB via a microSD card, making it ideal for the heavy media consumer. Unfortunately, Archos has decided to cancel the product, meaning that it won’t ever make it to store shelves.
The issue is very simply one of cost, the tablet was too expensive to produce, distribute and sell at a reasonable price that would entice consumers. Archos was planning to sell the tablet for around €299 ($340), but final retail prices were apparently ending up as high as €350 ($400), putting the tablet squarely in the higher price segment. Hence the decision to cancel the product.
Along with the super-sized internal memory, Archos also developed what it called “Fusion Storage” technology. This essentially combined regular internal memory and microSD storage solutions into a single memory partition seen by the OS.
The entire Archos Magnus range featured a lot of memory for mid-range tablets, but this ultimately made them more expensive.
Although 256GB of internal memory may have been enough to turn a few heads, the rest of the tablet’s specifications really don’t match up to the high price tag. The 94 Magnus would have shipped with a 9.4-inch 1280×800 pixel resolution display, 1.8GHz Cortex-A17 quad-core RockChip RK3288 SoC, 1.5GB of RAM, 5MP rear and VGA front camera, and a 6,400mAh battery.
While certainly not bare essential specifications, the 94 Magnus falls well behind other tablets in that price category and ended up as an overpriced mid-ranger. Given how relatively inexpensive micro-SD cards are these days and the amount of free cloud storage available, there are better deals out there if you need plenty of storage space.
Unfortunately for anyone who remains interested, the tablet is now listed as “unavailable” on Archos’ various European web pages and doesn’t look likely to be making a return. The other entries in the Magnus range also look to have suffered a similar fate.
Would you pay a premium for additional storage, or was the 94 Magnus doomed from the start?