PDAs - reviews and price comparison

What is a PDA/Palmtop?

(show answer) A PDA is a small, portable computer and most PDAs on the market today can be used for surfing, e-mail, playing games, listening to music and as phone book, organizer and more.
If the PDA has a large memory it can also be used as a portable hard drive, where you can store your most important files.
hide text

Processor

The processors on new PDAs are fast enough for handling most tasks, such as calendar/contacts, editing documents, surfing the Internet, handling emails and listen to MP3.
If you want to use the PDA to play 3D action games or videos a processor of around 400 MHz or more is recommended.

Memory

There are three types of memories to PDAs

• Internal memory/RAM which is used for running programs on the PDA. For most programs 32 MB is enough. If you want to play 3D action games you may need 64 MB.
• Flash memory/ROM-memory stores the programs of the PDA, plus all the files you want on the PDA, such as e-mail, text documents, music files and so on. A big flash memory is useful to:
  • Store many/large documents on the PDA (100 pages in a Word document is approx. 1 MB.
  • Store a lot of music/video on the PDA. (1 min. MP3 audio is approx. 1 MB)
  • Use the PDA as backup for important files.
  If you need an extra large flash memory (more than 128 MB) you can expand it with a memory card.
• Memory card Many PDAs has a memory card reader which gives the opportunity to expand the memory. Memory cards are bought separately and can have a capacity of several gigabytes.

Card reader

PDAs usually have 1 or 2 card readers. The most common using of these is to expand the memory. If you plan to only use the card reader for memory expansion the type of memory cards usually don't matter.
(show more about memory cards/expansion cards) These are the most common memory card types:

SD (Secure Digital)
SD is one of the most common memory card types on PDAs

MMC (MultiMediaCard)
MMC is used to expand the memory. This means that you can not buy accessories in MMC-format. SD- and MMC-card have identical design, but SD-cards can not be used in MMC-card readers. MMC-cards can however be used in SD-card readers.

miniSD (mini Secure Digital)
miniSD is common among PDAs, which have the shape and size of a mobile phone. No expansion of functions.

CF (Compact Flash)
CF-cards are bigger than SD-cards and therefore have larger memory capacity.
There are two types of CF; type I and II. Type II is thicker than type I, this means that CF-cards of type I fit in type II-card readers, but not the other way around.

SD card	MultiMediaCard	miniSD card

Compact Flash card	One penny

Expansion cards

CF and a variation of SD called SDIO can, besides working as memories, also use expansion cards with for example GPS, Bluetooth, modem, network, VGA-ports, bar code scanners et cetera.
Just as for memories there are two types of CF; CF I and CF II. CF II is thicker and can not fit in a CF I reader, while a CF I-card fits in a CF II-reader.
If you already know that you want a certain additional function; check its compatibility with your intended PDA and see which card reader is required before purchasing.
Some PDAs can handle both CF type II and SDIO.
hide text

Kortplats

Do you need any type of card reader for memory cards/expansion cards in particular? (Multiple choice possible)
Yes, SD Yes, MMC Yes, miniSD Yes, CF Yes, SDIO

Display

If you are going to use your PDA for multimedia, Internet or to edit documents you want your display to fit as much as possible which means using a high resolution.
A PDA with lower display resolution usually costs less.

The pictures below compare how much contant that fit on displays with different resolutions.

240x320 pixels	320x480 pixels

480x640 pixels

Note that how a web page looks on a certain PDA display depends on how the browser builds the page, which can vary.

Operating system

There are two dominating operating systems to PDAs; Microsoft Windows Mobile/Pocket PC and Palm OS.
If you buy a PDA with Pocket PC and have used Windows before it will be really easy for you to get started, there are slimmed (but fully functioning) versions of Internet Explorer, Word, Excel, Media Player and so on.
Palm OS is also recognized for being very user friendly. Here you have programs like Web Browser for Internet, Versamail for e-mail and simpler word processing programs among others.
The two different operating systems can perform similar functions, adding video and music playback to the list.

Internet

Most modern PDAs can connect to the Internet to receive mail or surfing with a web browser. (When it comes to surfing the functionality on some web pages is limited)
The connection to Internet can be made through:

• Built-in mobile phone. The PDA can connect to Internet via the mobile operator.
• IrDA. IrDA is an infrared wireless connection, with which the PDA can use a mobile phone with IrDa and built-in modem to connect to Internet with the phone's connection.
• Bluetooth. Bluetooth can be used the same way as IrDa but doesn’t require that the devices are placed next to each other. Bluetooth can also, besides using the mobile phone modem, enable you to connect your PDA to a laptop and use its wireless headset, keyboard, adapters for presentation on a projector and much more.
• WLAN/wireless network. If you have access to wireless network a PDA with built-in WLAN card is very handy. You don’t have to pay any extra mobile fees and the connection is better than with mobile.

Size

A PDA is normally small enough to fit a shirt pocket. The weight varies from 100 grams to 300 grams.

Rating/awards

On testwinner.co.uk all the different ratings given by expert testers have been translated into a percentage from 0 to 100 with 100 being the maximum rating.
The average rating for a product can indicate different things. A low average rating is a warning that the product maybe won't live up the expectations created by the ads for the product. A high rating often means that the product has great features and works well. The more tests of the product the better accuracy in the average rating.

The amount of test wins/awards shows how many times the product has been named winner or been selected "Editor's Choice", "Best Buy" or received similar positive awards in tests. An award means that the product stands out from the competition in one way or another. It can be by giving value for money or by being innovative, or simply by just filling its purpose in a really good way.