Archos G9 Android tablet to ship with hybrid 250GB HDD

Due to the cost and space considerations, it’s unusual to see a tablet with more than 128GB of on-board storage. 16 or 32GB are more common, with anything above that being a premium option at a premium price. You can also argue that a tablet really doesn’t need storage beyond those levels.
Archos disagrees though, and will be offering its G9 Android tablet with the option of a 250GB hybrid hard drive. It’s a hybrid because Archos wanted more than the performance of a standard hard drive, so they added a 4GB flash memory chip to speeds things up a little. This is a technique some hard drive manufacturers have experimented with in their standard drives, with Seagate even going so far as to say 80% of hard drives will by hybrids by 2015. 
As you’d expect, the inclusion of a hard drive makes the tablet a little heaveir (599g or 755g) and thicker (14.7mm or 15.6mm), but the use of a Seagate Momentus 7mm 2.5″ drive means it still remains a very portable unit.

The 250GB option will be available on both the 8-inch and 10-inch models of the G9, which cost $369.99 and $469.99 respectively. If you consider that getting 64GB of storage in an iPad 2 costs $699, the G9 could be considered a bit of a bargain. Alternatively you can opt for a 16GB flash-only G9 model if you really don’t want or need the additional storage.
As for other features of note, you get Android 3.2 running on an ARM Cortex A9 OMAP4 1.5GHz, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and a camera capable of recording 720p.
The question is, does any want 250GB of storage in a tablet? It would certainly come in handy for a long holiday where watching movies is your best form of entertainment and there’s no internet connection for streaming. As a media center it sounds ideal.

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