Product Reviews

In our brief history of PDAs over the last ten years, Fujitsu Siemens doesn't get much of a look in. Although the company has produced some good products, most recently the sleek LOOX 420, it hasn't been able to match HP's iPAQ range for sheer innovation. Until now, that is.

This is the first PDA to take full advantage of Windows Mobile for Pocket PC 2003 Second Edition. This low-key update not only introduced WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and the ability to rotate screens from portrait to landscape, it also added support for screens up to 480 x 640 in size. And that's exactly what Fujitsu Siemens includes here.

At first glance, this is far from obvious: measuring 3.6in diagonally, it's only fractionally larger than a normal Pocket PC screen. It's when you open up a spreadsheet in Pocket Excel or browse the Internet that those extra pixels make themselves clear, although you'd need to have quite phenomenal eyesight to work at twice the resolution. For the moment, the main benefits come when admiring photos or videos.

There's the near-ubiquitous digital camera built into the LOOX for taking photos too. As ever, quality isn't great. At one point we were even suspicious that it wasn't really taking 1,280 x 960 photos at all, but merely scaling up 640 x 80 images. Its big bonus is a fill-in flash, which is of some help in low-light conditions.

This means the LOOX generally beats the HP iPAQ rx3715 when taking photos indoors, but the iPAQ still provides superior pictures overall. It also beats the LOOX for camera usability, with the 720 lacking luxuries such as a dedicated 'shutter' button. We won't dwell too long on the LOOX 720's video-recording abilities - at a maximum resolution of 288 x 352, they're of limited use - but it's good to see support for AVI and MPEG-4, and there's no limit on their length either.

With 128MB of memory, there's plenty of room to play with. There's even an extra 29MB of backup space, and more flexibility comes thanks to the Type II CompactFlash and SD/MMC

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slot; you could theoretically have a 1GB SD card and a 4GB CompactFlash card both in situ at the same time.

At first glance it may seem like there's little need to fill the slots with anything else, as both 802.11b WLAN and Bluetooth are built into the device. However, Fujitsu Siemens has other ideas, with its ConnectMobility E2C app offering a tantalising GPRS option. This becomes reality if you buy a Connect2Air GPRS CompactFlash card (£170 from www.insight.com), allowing you to browse the Web or connect with your office VPN from anywhere.

The LOOX's potential as a notebook replacement is made even greater by the built-in USB host. This means you can add a USB flash drive (without needing to load drivers) or a keyboard. It's a little too awkward for use on the move, as the USB host connector is integrated into the synchronisation cable, but this can plug directly into the LOOX - so at least you don't need to drag the docking cradle on the road.

Some might be tempted to take the cradle on their travels though. When using an external keyboard, you can look at the screen easily as you type, and when you get to your hotel room you can charge up the battery in the LOOX and a spare in the bay provided. We were impressed by how long the 720 lasted on a single charge anyway: over nine hours of continuous light use with the backlight set to medium, and 12 hours of MP3 playback with the screen switched off.

This is one of the benefits of a larger chassis, with a 1,640mAh lithium-ion battery in place. The size also leaves plenty of room for buttons. A jog dial accompanies a shortcut button (preset for FSCSpeedMenu, which provides quick access to frequently used programs) on the left-hand side, with the voice-recorder button on the right. The infrared port and 3.5mm headphone jack are sensibly positioned at the top.

Despite all this, Fujitsu Siemens hasn't let the LOOX grow too big. Naturally it's chunkier than the LOOX 420: 170g rather than 138g, 121mm tall rather than 111mm, and 17mm thick rather than 14mm. But you can still slip the 720 into a jacket pocket without having to worry about the lines of your suit being ruined - even with the supplied faux leather slipcase in place, it's thinner than a typical wallet.

Even more surprising is the price. We fully expected the LOOX 720 to cost close to £500 to reflect all its new features, so when Fujitsu Siemens told us it would retail for £330 we were a tad shocked. Especially when the iPAQ rx3715 costs roughly the same amount. Watch out HP, your title is under threat.