Fujitsu Siemens Pocket LOOX 610

It has taken Fujitsu Siemens 18 months to release a follow-up to the Pocket LOOX 600, but it's now clear why: squeezing so many features into one device must have taken quite some time. Not content with 128MB of RAM, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and an SD card slot, there's also a Type II CompactFlash (CF) slot squeezed into the 18mm-thick chassis.

Although CF may seem like a luxury, it offers several advantages. For instance, buying a tri-band CF card means you can download data at GPRS speeds and use the LOOX as a phone. What's more, Pocket PC accessories such as digital cameras and presentation packages tend to be available in CF form alone.

But there's a drawback: the LOOX 610 is much larger than its rivals. Place the Dell Axim X3i (see issue 112, p78) by its side and you immediately notice the 610's extra height and depth. Fujitsu Siemens can't blame the CF slot alone - HP's compact iPAQ H2210 (see issue 110, p136) measures just 15mm thick and 115mm tall, yet includes Bluetooth plus SD/MMC and CF slots.

We also found the iPAQ's Bluetooth utility easier to use, with Fujitsu Siemens' documentation of little help. We were perplexed as to how to get ActiveSync to work over Bluetooth until a visit to www.pocketloox.org rescued us. Bizarrely, you have to manually tell the Bluetooth Serial Port on the device to be used for ActiveSync. The backup utility is far better, even listing how much memory is required to back up the entire system or individual components such as Pocket Outlook. There's a whopping 28.2MB available for this too, or you can back up to an external card.

There are no great surprises when it comes to physical design, with a programmable button on the left-hand side kept company by up and down buttons. The infrared port also sits here; a little inconvenient, but at least the 3.5mm headphone jack sits at the top. We're more concerned by the imprecise five-way navigation button: you think you've pressed down once, and it decides to scroll down two pages.

We can't fault the 610's general build quality, though, as it feels solid as a rock and sturdier than the Axim. We also appreciate the non-telescopic stylus and the removable battery that locks in place. It's a healthy size too, at 1,500mAh - compare that to the 900mAh unit in the H2210 and 950mAh in the Axim. The LOOX performed suitably well in our battery tests, lasting for six-and-a-half hours under light use with the backlight set to low, compared to four-and-a-half hours for the Axim. With Wi-Fi on, this dropped to under three hours (the Axim lasted two-and-a-half hours).

These times were both with the processor set to Power-Saving mode, which drops the CPU speed down depending on the running apps. But we found the LOOX to be a little sluggish in this mode and generally used it at full pelt, where it proved exceptionally nippy. Another potential drain on resources is the backlight, which we preferred at its medium to high setting. It's a good-quality screen, though, with vivid colours and good viewing angles.

The problems for the LOOX are its size and its price. The Axim X3i offers Wi-Fi for just £229, while the HP iPAQ H2210 provides both Bluetooth and a CF slot for £255 (from www.savastore.com). Together, these confine the Pocket LOOX 610 to a niche of its own, but it's not a bad niche. If you need a powerful, fully wireless PDA with great expandability, it's the obvious choice.

Author: Tim Danton