The Beauty within the Beast by Shaun McGill

 

A couple of months ago myself, Neil and Mike met up for a drink to discuss PDA247 and Neil brought along his new Fujitsu Loox 720. I spent the next hour or so laughing at it, and him, for owning one and decided that I would NEVER own such an ugly looking PDA. So this article is the low down of how I feel about my new Fujitsu Loox 720…J

 

I have been battling with an iPAQ 4150 for a few weeks now which in my view is a superbly designed PDA. The looks are lovely and how HP managed to cram WiFi, Bluetooth and all of those other features into such a small housing I will never know. My main reason to upgrade was because 64MB of RAM is not enough for my needs with running TomTom Navigator and various other programs that really need to be in RAM. Get anywhere near filling the 4150 up and it slows down quite dramatically with frequent soft resets required to get the RAM back up.

 

For once I did a lot of research into choosing this PDA and it came down to a straight choice between the Dell Axim x50 and the Fujitsu Loox 720. Had I seen the current Dell deals I would have probably gone for the Axim but the worry over battery life was my main issue with it. In the end I phoned Clove (www.clove.co.uk) and ordered a Loox 720. It duly turned up next day and I started to have a play.

 

First Impressions

 

Ugly. Very ugly. I can’t quite put my finger on it but it is truly very, very ugly indeed (in my opinion). The buttons look awful and the back is even worse than the front- there is a yellow thing above the camera lens (which also looks out of place) which is not quite straight and just adds to the overall affect.

 

As I look at it now it really does not have one redeeming feature in terms of its looks- not one. Even the cradle is ugly- a quite remarkable design effort from Fujitsu. There are two groups of design and the following gives an indication of where I believe the Look fits in:-

 

Group one

 

 

Group two

 

 

 

Now- would you rather be going out with Gwyneth Paltrow (grrrr!), drive a Jaguar Mk II and own an iPod or be dating Jackie Stallone in your Lada with a very odd Sony MP3 player on your dashboard. I know what I would prefer but I would still own the Loox above any other PDA.

 

Having upgraded from an iPAQ 4150 which is a lovely looking device the aesthetic differences are stark. Saying all of that, does any of the above really matter? Not when it’s so beautiful inside…

 

The build quality is good, not excellent but certainly able to stand up to every day stresses and strains. Everything you need is in the box- a cradle with charge and sync cable, ActiveSync software CD, a leather cover which is nicer than most I have seen bundled with PDAs, a spare stylus and some free ‘Loox point’s which gives you free software to get you started.

 

In use

 

Neil has already covered a lot of what the Loox can do in his review (http://www.clieuk.co.uk/loox720.shtml) so I won’t go into great detail but it’s great for me to have a machine that can cope with the following without any lag in speed:-

 

GPS (TomTom Navigator)

WiFi (BT Openzone)

Bluetooth (Mobile dialling etc.)

Films (DVD studio)- great quality films in movie files under 300MB

Wikipedia- everything you need to know in 500MB

eBooks (eReader and Microsoft Reader)

Gaming- I have found no problems running Atlantis Redux, X-Ranger, Tomb Raider and many other demanding games on the Loox.

 

All of the above are possible due to the high speed processor and 128MB of on board memory in the 720. Add a 1GB SD card and 1GB Compact Flash and you have lots of room for carrying lots and lots of data and for running HUGE games and applications.

 

The battery life is not as good as I expected but sufficient for most people’s needs. So far I have found it to be no better than the iPAQ 4150’s but Neil has advised to let it run down very low a couple of times as this apparently makes a difference- we shall see how well that works.

 

The camera is simply not worth having. It’s always nice to have one built in but this one is awful for a 1.3 MP implementation. It’s much worse than the 0.3 MP one in the Clie TH55.

 

The VGA screen was a revelation to me- it was like seeing the Clie N770CU for the first time (the first hi-res Palm OS device) and whilst it was not my reason for upgrading I am sure glad that I did. Fujitsu have implemented it extremely well and all bundled applications look superb on the Loox, as do many third party games and applications which take advantage of the enhanced resolution.

 

Conclusion

 

This machine is a beast to look at and a beast in terms of it power. It is also beautifully put together and works exactly as I would like. This is definitely the best PDA I have ever used and I can see it staying with me for a while to come. I have said that a few times before thoughJ

 

Pros

 

RAM / Memory

Speed

Connectivity (Bluetooth / WiFi)

VGA

Value for money

Expandability (SD / CF)

 

Cons

 

Ugly

Camera (terrible, really terrible)