My search led me to the Sony Clie PEG-S320 (from this point on known as the S320). My search though was through many different devices. The main competitors were: Handspring's Visor Deluxe, Palm's m125, and Handera's 330. The Visor Deluxes that I was looking at were the extra low cost ones that were on sale, these were refurbished models. I have already owned a regular (2MB) Visor and liked it a lot, the screen was big and it had the Springboard expansion port. But a big screen means a big PDA. Also, the Visor Deluxe had no way of upgrading the Palm 3.5.2 OS inside of it -- it lacks flash memory. And in the end I decided against getting this older PDA. The Handera was looking really good to me, it had expandability via its two memory slots and it had a nice 320x240 screen. It is also a big unit though and the price was too high for me -- at $300, it would be a great PDA for someone who is looking for their first PDA, but I'm tired of spending more money on fancy PDAs. The biggest competitor would be Palms m125. It's rather small and has expandabilty. It lacks flash memory though and that ruined it. Plus the m125 has the same small screen as the m100.

One other competitor would be the Palm m500, which has most of the features that the S320 has, but is a hell of a lot more expensive. As you can see there were a lot of PalmOS devices on my list when I started, but I whittled it down to just one. The Sony S320. Why?

It has everything the big boys have, but at a bargain basement price. Looking at its impressive features list we find that it has: Flash memory for future OS upgrades, a Memory Stick slot for memory upgrades, a JogDial for scrolling through things (this is indispensable!), 8MB of built-in RAM, PalmOS 4.0, and the fastest processor available for the PalmOS line.

The biggest draw for me was the Memory Stick slot. Now I can use my Memory Sticks with a device other than my Sony CyberShot camera. I am able to stick in my 64MB stick and have it come up automatically. I can put whatever I want on the stick: apps, pictures, movies, etc. The choices are limitless.

The processor inside is a 33MHz Dragonball. The same one found in high end PalmOS PDAs. This fast processor makes the already quick PalmOS even faster and more responsive. You'll find that if you've used an older PalmOS device with one of the 16MHz or 20MHz Dragonball processors, the difference is very noticeable when you use the S320.

The screen on the S320 is nothing to put down. It is a 160x160 screen that has that familiar green tint to it. The screen is sharp and readable. Though I think that it maybe just a little too reflective sometimes. The one good thing about the screen is that the backlight is not an inverted backlight, it has the original backlight scheme of the old PalmOS devices. This is a very welcome feature in the machine.

The S320 comes with all the standard PalmOS applications (Contacts, DateBook, To-Do, and Notes). It also has its own slew of applications like gMovie (for watching tiny movies), MS Gate (for moving files between main memory and a Memory Stick), and PG Pocket (a picture viewer). Sony has also spruced up the Contacts so that you can include a small picture of the person that is being listed. A very nice feature indeed. The addition of the JogDial is a very welcome one for the PalmOS platform. The JogDial can be used in most applications. It is located at the top left-hand corner of the S320, just where your left hand thumb would be -- making it easier to scroll through documents or lists (instead of having to use the up/down toggle on the front face of the unit).

There are some drawbacks to this unit. The main one being the cost cutting measure that was taken: Not including a cradle. Inside the box there are two cables, one to charge the S320 and one to HotSync it. They cannot be connected to the S320 at the same time. It's not too big of a deal because you can buy a cradle separately, but it would have been nice to be able to charge and have the unit connected to the computer at the same time. Also the included software, Intellisync Lite is not as good as the software included with Palm's devices (PocketMirror). Intellisync Lite, like PocketMirror, lets you sync between the unit and Microsoft Outlook (instead of the Palm Desktop). PocketMirror just does a better job at handling the sync process than Intellisync Lite does -- especially with handling catagories and with archived data.

One thing to mention is that the S320 is billed as a "Personal Entertainment Organizer." I would argue with this billing -- and with the included apps like gMovie and PG Pocket. Yes, it's nice that the apps are there, but how "fun" is it to watch a 160x160 silent 16-grayscale movie on a PDA? And to see dithered 16-grayscale pictures has no umph in it. Yes, you can do that stuff, but if you're really looking to do it right, check out the PEG-N760C instead. Also note that there is a MP3 expansion for the S320 already, it is $129 and can be found on the Sony website.

So how did Palm lose at its own game? At the low-end of the PalmOS market -- the one that the S320 and the m125 are in -- Palm has lost not only in features, but in price point. When one compares the two units and sees that the Sony has future OS upgradeability (via flash ROM), a JogDial, a better and bigger screen, and is rechargeable it is hard to imagine why someone would actually pay almost $80 for the Palm m125. Now, it's even worse if you take into account that the Palm m105 is actually the low-end of the Palm 8MB line up and is the one that would actually be competing with the Sony S320 (the m105 is $20 less than the S320). The m105 has no expandability whatsoever and everything else is the same as the m125.

Sony has a winner in hand with the PEG-S320. It is small, light, and tough. It has all the features of the high-end PDAs, yet it costs less than a comparable Palm unit. It has OS upgradeability and expandability. And at a price point of about $169, the Sony PEG-S320 is a definite buy for anyone who is looking for a good PDA to carry around and use.

Recommended:
Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 122