Following the release of the 10.1-inch 101 XS tablet in Europe back in late September, ARCHOS has now announced the smaller 8-inch member of their XS tablet series – the 80 XS, which sports an 8.0″ display of 1024×768 resolution.

The ARCHOS 80 XS is powered by a Rockchip RK3066 dual-core processor, Mali 400 GPU, 1GB RAM, and will run on the latest version of Android, Android 4.1, when it hits the market some time this year. There is also an optional $49 Archos Coverboard Keyboard Dock, that allows for easy and full-fledged typing when you need to get some work done.

Perhaps the best part of the ARCHOS 80 XS is that it will be priced at just $199 in the US (without keyboard dock), directly taking on the Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7″ tablets, while in Europe it will be priced at €199 and €249, with and without the keyboard dock respectively.