Product Reviews

While some may see Sony's recent Clies as innovative, there's something about them that smacks of a teenager wanting to be different for the sake of it. With the PEG-TH55, though, Sony has taken a more practical approach and opted for a traditional-looking design, as well as stuffing it full of some stunning features.

The first thing that strikes you about the design, besides the good looks that you expect from a Clie, is the size of the screen. At 3.8in and with a 320 x 480 pixel resolution, it's one of the largest, brightest and clearest screens we've seen; colours are accurately reproduced and text is crystal clear. That said, we were slightly irritated by the smoky plastic screen that protects it - while it may prevent scratches, it makes it rather cumbersome to hold when open.

All is forgiven when you take a look at the new interface. Recent Clies have been cursed by an entertainment-oriented display, but here Sony has enhanced the organiser application in Palm OS 5.2 to make it second to none. Taking the place of the Palm OS Home screen, Clie Organizer includes Calendar, Contacts and To Do tabs in an incredibly simple-to-use interface. There is also a built-in VGA camera round the back. If you want to take a picture of a contact you can drag and drop it from the bottom of the screen into the relevant contacts entry. The pictures aren't mind-blowing, but they're certainly good enough for this, and even for the web. Voice record and Memopad

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files can also be attached in this way. All this is very useful, though Palm veterans will be glad that you can revert to the old interface should you wish.

As well as looking good, the sleek black casing houses all the shortcut buttons normally found on a Clie. However, as the whole front is given up to the screen, all the buttons are crammed into the left-hand side. Notable inclusions are the Memory Stick slot, Hold button, which handily deactivates the screen but keeps music playing back, and a shutter lid for the camera lens. Fitting all these buttons on one side makes it a little fiddly (the voice record and picture capture buttons are particularly hard to get to), and positioning the jog dial on top of the camera lens led to a few snaps of our fingers.

Inside, the TH55 is a mixed bag. Firstly, you would expect far more than 32MB RAM and 16MB ROM for £300, and a 123MHz processor seems a little measly. But we found this Clie seldom sluggish. However, the processor, made by Sony, is capable of reducing its clock speed when idle to save on battery. This makes for a long battery life - it lasted for more than four days.

Also on the plus side is the integrated Bluetooth and 802.11b wireless LAN, making this the cheapest PDA around to include both. It's also one of the thinnest, being just 13mm in depth. But it's not all perfect: there are no headphones or Memory Stick provided despite slots for both; there's no USB cradle supplied either. Finally, all audio tracks need to be converted to Sony's own ATRAC format before playback - very annoying.

You'll need to download Palm Desktop from www.palmone.com to sync between your Mac and the TH55 and if you plan to swap photos, audio, or movie clips with your Mac, you'll also need to buy a copy of The Missing Sync from Mark/Space.

While PalmOne's similarly priced Tungsten T3 takes the crown for a business device, the PEG-TH55 still has a lot to offer - no other PDA has such a simple interface or offers integrated wireless LAN and Bluetooth at anywhere near this price.