The PDA market is very cluttered these days. Not only is there stiff competition between PalmOne and Microsoft Mobile based units, there is also quite a bit rivalry between quite similar devices in their own categories. It’s quite safe to say that HP IPaq’s dominate Microsoft Windows Mobile market, and even though quite pricey, offer the best reliability and features. There have been a lot of companies trying to challenge them, some more successfully than others, namely Toshiba (refer to my review of the excellent e750) and Dell with their moderately priced Axim series. Acer decided to try and enter the race with their new n10 unit.
Design
The design on this unit is very plain. There is nothing too outstanding or weird about it – it’s not something that has a wow factor in any way. For a business person I guess that’s ok, but I want my unit to stand out in at least some way. An interesting approach was to make it curvy, which is nice to the touch, but gives this quite big device an even chunkier feel. It falls somewhere between the compact and performance models from Dell and HP and feels like it can’t quite decide which way it wants to gravitate. The silver/black colour combo works really well and the finish of the device feels nice and smooth, and it seems to have been quite resistant to scratches in the couple of week I had to play with it. The functionality of the design is very well planned out. The buttons are all in the right places and are quite easy to reach and press. The left side of the device sports menu and scroll buttons, while the right hand side houses the hold switch, which is very useful – it switches off the screen and disables the buttons, whilst still playing the mp3s, which makes this a multimedia dream come true. It extends the battery life considerably so that you can use this as an mp3 player on the way to a meeting and still have enough juice to work on it all day.
Features
The processor choice for this device was quite strange, as Acer opted for the old PXA255 300Mhz model, which is not the speediest CPU out there. Video playback was very jerky due to this, however this is not an issue for a business user, as all applications worked quite speedy. The screen is quite nice at 65,000 colours, and while not as nice as the latest Toshiba and HP units, was quite easy to read. The unit sports 64MB of on board memery, and if that is not enough, there are slots for both Compact Flash and Secure Digital cards. Sadly the unit doesn’t come with built in wireless of Bluetooth which is a huge drawback, considering that 4 out of 5 units these days come with at least one of these features. Buying an SD wireless card can be a bit pricey. The box includes a limited software package, with applications such as Pocket Word and Windows Media player as well as Pocket TV for MPEG playback (useless really because viewing MPEGs on this device brings more frustration than enjoyment). There is no hotsync cradle either, just a USB cable, which is quite handy for people who travel a lot. The package also includes a carry case and a AC adapter.
Overall
The battery life was one of the unit’s strongest features, and it lasted me a train journey from London to Edinburgh, playing mp3s with the screen dimmed for just over 5 hours. I’m not quite sure what the price for this device is these days, however I got mine last year for 450 dollars, which is a bit pricey. Overall I think this device is not really worth it because it seems to be stuck between a lot of compromises. Its size is quite large, yet there is not enough performance to justify its size. For the price I would expect the device to have some sort of wireless capability. However you can probably find a good bargain on this device on eBay and if you want a decent business device that plays mp3s well, this may be worth your money.
More details
Speed
Slow
Robustness & Durability
Good
Range of Extra Features
Satisfactory
Instruction manual
Very useful
Manufacturer Support
Good
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