The Archos 101 is the largest, fullest featured of the 5 Android tabletsArchos introduced a few months ago. It’s just starting to ship in some parts of the globe, and the folks at Laptop Magazine have published one of the first detailed reviews I’ve seen.

The Archos 101 features a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel capacitive touchscreen display, a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU with support for HD video playback, and runs Google Android 2.2. Prices are expected to start at $299.99 for a model with 8GB of storage.

Laptop Magazine seemed reasonably pleased with the build quality. The tablet measures less than an inch thick and weighs just 1.1 pounds, making it one of the lightest 10 inch tablets in its class. The multitouch display is also reported to be quite responsive for playing games, navigating web pages, and using on-screen gestures such as pinch-to-zoom. On the other hand, the reviewer was less impressed with the reflective display which had poor viewing angles.

While the Archos 101 doesn’t come with Google’s Android Market preloaded, the company’s AppsLib store provides about 18,000 apps, including popular apps such as Angry Birds and Slacker. That’s still less than one fifth of the apps you’ll find in the full Android market though. You may want to hack your way to full Market access if you pick up this tablet.

One of the strong suits for Archos tablets tends to be multimedia support. Archos includes a custom media player which supports almost any DRM-free audio or video file you can throw at it.

Laptop ran some benchmarks which show that the Archos 101 can hold its own against the competition — but it’s certainly not the fastest Android device on the market. The reviewer also reports that the Archos 101 gets excellent battery life, lasting for about 11 hours while surfing the web over WiFi.

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