Archos launched its first Android-powered gaming tablet, the GamePad, back in 2012, and to be completely honest it wasn’t too impressive, particularly when compared to the beastly NVIDIA Shield.

Now, the French consumer electronics company is taking another shot at conquering the mobile gaming industry, with the announcement of its new, revamped successor to the original 7-inch gaming slate.

The GamePad 2 packs a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen like its predecessor, however, this time round the resolution has been increased to 1280 x 800 pixels. It now sports a 1.6GHz quad-core Cortex A9 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB/32GB of internal storage (expandable up to 64GB via microSD) and a full set of gaming controls, including thumb-sticks, buttons and a new and improved version of Archos’ mapping tool. This tool enables users to map any area of the screen to one of the physical buttons, therefore, permitting compatibility with games that do not natively support hardware controls.

In addition, Archos is also throwing in full versions of Gameloft’s Asphalt 8: Airborne and Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, which have both been fully optimized for use with the gamepads controls.

The GamePad 2 will be available to purchase from the official Archos webstore at the end of the month, for the fairly respectable price of €179.99.

• SourceArchos