Toshiba e400

At last, after a year of having the compact Pocket PC market pretty much to itself, HP's H1900 series has some serious competition. The e400 clearly has the iPAQ H1940 in its sights, but this is no replica. The e400's dark blue finish immediately stands out from the grey look of its rivals, and the all-metal chassis gives it an air of ruggedness. It's stunningly slim too at less than 9mm at its thinnest point.

Despite this, Toshiba has included all the features we'd expect, and more besides. There's an SD/MMC slot that supports SDIO, allowing you to add Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or a digital camera at a later date, plus 64MB of RAM (62MB of which is available) and 32MB of NAND memory. The latter can be used to save over 31MB of your most important data in the event of the battery running out.

One of the reasons this e400 is so slim is Intel's new PXA261 processor, which isn't only small but fast and power efficient. Although the e400 may not sound too speedy at 300MHz, it feels quicker than some 400MHz devices we've tried. The battery keeps on going for some time too, with the e400 lasting for seven hours with the backlight off in our light-use tests.

There's even better news for anyone who wants a PDA to play music, as Toshiba takes a leaf out of Sony's book by including a Hold button. This deactivates all the hardware buttons, including the jog dial and voice-recorder button on the left-hand side, making the e400 a fine choice for music playback. By switching off the screen in Windows Media Player, it lasted for a respectable five hours, 45 minutes in our music rundown tests - not up to the 14 hours we tend to get from Sony's CLIs, but commendable nonetheless.

The only bad news is that, unlike the H1940, the e400's battery isn't removable - you'll have to take the charger (which can plug directly into the bottom of the unit) with you on your travels. There's no docking cradle as standard, as per usual with a keenly priced Pocket PC, but you can buy this for £30 or just use the USB synchronisation cable.

The 3.5mm headphone jack is sensibly located at the top of the PDA, along with the power button and microphone, but sadly Toshiba has moved the infrared port to the left edge of the e400. This is an unfortunate feature it shares with the H1940, but HP's PDA is superior in several other areas. For one, it includes Bluetooth and a stylus that isn't telescopic.

This is all the more surprising as the H1940 is 6mm narrower than the e400 and 11mm shorter, although the e400 is slimmer (the iPAQ is 13mm deep). Another area where the H1940 wins is the screen. Although the e400 includes a bright TFT with accurate colours when looked at head-on, it has more obvious grain than the H1940 and its viewing angles aren't as impressive either.

However, the e400 boasts 32MB of memory for backup, comes with a slipcase and includes that handy Hold button. Which to choose boils down to your own preference when it comes to design - the dark blue finish won't be to everyone's taste - and whether you need Bluetooth, but the Toshiba e400 wins hands down for value.

Author: Tim Danton