Product Reviews

The N311, successor to Acer's n50, is incredibly slim and light. It's about the same size as a box of kitchen matches, but only as thick as a CD jewel case. As you'd expect, the n311 is controlled using a stylus, which is comfortable to use and works fine. The joystick is fine too, although it's so near the bottom of the device that it's hard to use the n311 one-handed. The screen has a resolution of 480 x 640 - four times that of its predecessor. Not only does this make text and graphics sharper on the screen, but it also leaves more room for Pocket Internet Explorer to correctly display web pages.

If you are near a wireless hotspot, connecting to the internet is easy using the n11's built-in wireless networking. You can also connect to the internet

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through a Bluetooth mobile phone, though this is more difficult to configure.

Long-term memory

The biggest improvement to the Windows Mobile 5 operating system is its support for flash memory. This can store data even when it's not receiving any power, so you don't lose all the documents you were working on when your battery runs out. The n311 has 128MB of flash memory to store programs and data, as well as an SD card slot for adding more. There's plenty of room for plenty of contacts, emails and documents, and it should be enough to store at least a few audio files too. If you want to use the n311 as a portable media player though, you'll need to invest in an extra memory card for that SD card slot. The only disadvantage of flash memory is that it is slightly than standard memory, so loading documents isn's as quick slower than it was on the last generation of handheld PCs.

The n311 plays both MP3 and WMA audio files, and sound quality is reasonable, although the treble is slightly muddy. Windows Mobile 5 will also synchronise your media with Windows Media Player 10 on your PC, so any audio and video files Media Player in its library are automatically converted to the right format for handheld listening. The n311 played our test video files without a problem, but frame rates were jerky during fast action sequences.