Archos previews G9 tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich, promises “child-sized robots” for everyone

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd8ZZhjWNIQ]

Archos, a French consumer electronics company that was established in 1988 by Henri Croha, makes some pretty nice and inexpensive Android tablets. Back in August, 9to5Google updated you with pricing and release dates for their upcoming G9 series, which had been introduced back in June. Even though Archos pushed back the G9 a bit, the company appears to be getting there early nonetheless: Today, they previewed Ice Cream Sandwich version 4.0.1 running on the G9 tablet, as seen in the above video (via ArmDevices.net).

There’s a lot to look forward to with Archos’s G9 series . The annoying laginess of the user interface often plaguing other Android tablets is nowhere to be seen, even though they haven’t yet implemented hardware acceleration for video support. Yes, Android 4.0’s user interface is looking butter-smooth on the gizmo.

The G9 lineup will come in eight-inch and 10.1-inch flavors, starting at $299 and $399, respectively. In its review of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 8.9, TechCrunch noted that the screen size is “just right” so the eight-inch G9 should be somewhere in the middle, just about right for folks deeming the seven-inchers such as the Kindle Fire from Amazon too small and not terribly impractical for those in the market for a smaller-than-iPad form factor.

Both G9 devices run Texas Instrument’s OMAP4 dual-core 1.5GHz chip and come with 16 gigabytes of storage built-in. Additionally, Archos is throwing in their own features on top of pure Android experience, the stuff like 3G stick and Samba/Upnp support. Interestingly, per Archos CEO Henri Crohas interview with French daily La Libérationell, they are looking beyond personal media players, e-readers and tablets and setting their sights on a “child-sized robot, sold for less than €300”. Go figure.