So you have a massive laptop with oogles of memory and fantastic processor capable of crunching numbers faster than a chilli eating monkey. Sony, with their infinitely advanced minds super charged with some sort of magical elixir, have came up with this little PDA (personal digital assistant in case you didn't know. If you did then sorry this for those who didn't). It looks like a micro laptop/tablet PC with built-in camera and touch screen instead of a mouse. Well comparison over let's review the little bugger!
When I first opened the box I actually read the manual. I felt it appropriate because it was a rather expensive gadget and I didn't want to risk doing something silly to it and messing it up. The manual is in black and white, in all honesty I am tired of reading instructions manuals in black and white, I mean we are a nation of colours right? At least the manual is very clear and uses standard english instead of techno babble you get with most PC freak magazines. It comes with a cradle so if you want to charge it or connect it to the PC you just pop it on top of the cradle and Bob's your figurative uncle! Instant charge/PC connection.
It's a very nicely designed device, looking at it closed or open just makes me
smile all over because it's cute, small and has these little curves that separate it from other PDAs. The silver grey colour combination gives it a very professional look and the entire machine doesn't feel cheap at all, you can almost feel the 400 or so pounds throbbing in the palm of your hand as you hold it. It is about the size of a Gameboy Advance SP but about 3 times heavier.
The 480 x 320 screen supports over 64,000 colours. It is rather small but it is immaculately clear (uses TFT technology) and can display moving images without blurring. The entire screen can rotate 180 degrees to face around the opposite direction so you can show your mates on the other side stuff on the screen. This is cool as you no longer have to hand your device over to your mate and risk dropping it (or them dropping it to be honest). You can even fold it over so that it turns into a sort of tablet PDA and not use the keyboard at all! The screen is very responsive as a touch sensitive surface. It is fast and accurate after calibration, responding immediately when I press on a button or select an icon.
The keyboard though is rather difficult to use. It is in a QWERTY layout and one would assume you could probably touchtype on it, but its too small for touchtyping even with one hand and the only typing you can do are the classic 'chopstick' 2 finger attack or the 'phone thumb' typing technique. The keys are also clicky like the button you press on your MP3 Player. This is annoying as everytime you type you have to endured the click click click. There's only so much clicking a man can take before he gets really annoyed and it's worse because this CLIE has a word processor... shudder. The keyboard is also designed strangely in a wavy thing that raises each row of keys up. It's a shame the keys are set level with the raising-ness because that makes it harder to press on.
The OS that comes with it is the Palm OS 5, it seems Sony have chosen Palm's latest OS over Microsoft's Windows CE 2003. But this OS is very fast and you can browse through the menus so easily using your stylus or the arrow keys on the keyboard (use your stylus!) The OSes interface is rather grey and boring. It's nothing as pretty as Windows CE 2003 but it's made for speed so who am to complain? There are a whole host of programs for business people such as internet browser, word processor, spreadsheet, Hotsync with PC, wireless connection, movie player/recorder, audio player, dictaphone... man there's just too many built-in programs to list... Kind of a shame that there's hardly any software out there for the Palm OS 5, the ones I could find were lame so I didn't even bother.
The camera lens is rotatable by 180 degrees as well, but vertically. This allows us to take pictures of our ugly selves as well as the person standing in front of you. The quality of the picture taken are also very good for a PDA. Maximum resolution is 640 x 480 but the images are crisp on the machine's screen. Colour is a bit dull but hey at least you can take the pictures!
The speakers give out very nice sound. Usually PDAs give out hissy, crackly, mumbled sounds but the Sony CLIE UX50 keeps the sound clear and static free. MP3s play on it like a dream and recordings made with the dictaphone is very clear during playback.
This device supports Bluetooth and 802.11B wireless networking. At first I thought "Why add these to functions at all?" but then to my surprise this machine was designed to connect wirelessly to any other device so it can share it's contents. You have no idea how much fun it really is actually, I've had this PDA connected to my wireless router 802.11B style and surfed the internet whilst walking around home looking like that crazy git out of Rainman seeing if I could severe the connection. Well I got a whole lot of internet, the severing never happened until I disconnected or the battery ran out.
The internet browser is very basic but it does it's job. It supports cookies and Javascript, but it doesn't support flash or shockwave websites. At least you can visit www places online unlike GPRS WAP on mobile phones and you can download files off the internet as well!
The battery life is rather decent as well lasting me a good 5 hours on constant use. However using this device for intensive purposes i.e. recording movie clips, playing games can reduce battery life significantly. Man why can't they design batteries with longer life or programs that use up less power?
You have only 40MB of built-in memory that is writable to. 64MB is already used up for the built-in programs so there's no changing them. Only 29MB of the 40MB can be used as storage, the rest of it is used as swap file for running the programs. No need to fear your stuff going bye bye if the battery cuts out as well as there is also another lot of memory that backs up everything when the battery drops dead and then restores your info when battery is recharged. Very handy feature! But the UX50 cannot have it's memory upgraded using cheap flash memory disks, you must use Sony's own brand Memory Stick Pro. These buggers are expensive (really expensive) and eat up battery life as well, this is rather annoying as the 29MB isn't really enough. But in case you haven't noticed, in total this device still has more internal memory than any other PDA. Touch to that at least!
What I enjoy using most is the movie player/recorder. This player can play MP3 as other PDAs can as standard, but the movie recorder is very unique to this device. It can record DIVX MPEG4 movies at 30 fps with a resolution of 160 x 112. If any of you guys out there know what DIVX MPEG4 is then you would know the great quality this format can produce. If you buy yourself a big enough Memory Stick you have yourself a mini camcorder to film anything you want. You can adjust the quality of the movie you are recording or switch off the audio completely to increase recording time, but that's no fun! The movie player can play DIVX movies, but they must be made the right format to be played before it is. Luckily, Sony's Hotsync program which allows it to connect to PCs converts movie files you wish to watch on the device into the right format then sends it to the machine. No hassle just drag and drop!
So overall this machine RAWKS! Very fast, very reliable, loads of features and good value for money. However there's little software support, badly designed keyboard and hardly any games for it's current OS. But if you are looking for an alternative to laptop computing then here is the solution! Built-in camcorder and all!
9/10
Pictures of Sony CLIÉ PEG-UX50
The swivel, the OS, the whole outside look of the machine!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Handheld - 64 MB RAM - Screen: 3.5 in inch - Display: TFT active matrix - CPU: XScale PXA310 - Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi - Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0, Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0 Classic
Handheld - 128 MB RAM - Screen: 4 in inch - Display: TFT active matrix - CPU: XScale PXA310 - Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi - Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0, Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0 Classic
Aug 28th, 2004
very helpful by (94%):
helpful by (6%):
