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When I was doing research on the A81 a little while ago, I stumbled upon a Chinese webpage describing the build quality of the A81. There has not been a lot of news on this device, even in China. There was a writeup about the lack of build quality in the A81. I am wondering if this is still true for the A81E. For a device so cheap with said specifications, there had to be corners cut somewhere. That's the main reason I am holding off on recommending this. But if someone can give some conclusive input on this, I would like to learn more. At the time, I posted my findings at ArchosFans: Forum.ArchosFans.com - View topic - Wits A81 / A81EI'll repost the information. Original discussion at imp3 bbs
This is from early productions WITS A81, way back from February. Things seem to have gotten better since then. * * *One person who has it actually praised the build quality:




Now that same owner runs a blog, and has his teardown on Flickr: A81E Teardown - a set on FlickrHere are the pictures mirrored. I don't know PCBs, so can someone take a look and tell me how this looks?Not really. Build quality is a lot better than I was expecting from a chinese clone, despite the couple of obvious corners that have been cut. I was *extremely* impressed with the quality of the audio hardware, my Grados bring everything out and there was *no* discernible background noise at all. With "standard" usage of a pair of mid-range or cheap headphones and mp3s, that's gonna take some beating. Sound quality was noticeably better than on my son's Shuffle.

