t13monkeys's Full Review: Dell Axim X50v Pocket PC
I have never been a fan for PDAs. I used to own an Ipaq a year back but I ended up only keeping it for about 3 weeks before selling it again. The problems with PDA technology back then for me were numerous: the expansion ports were lacking, CPU power was weak, memory sizes were small, there was no wireless, handwriting recognition was irritating, and the resolution of the screen was far to low. That said, when I bought the Dell X50v, I took a great deal of time in researching it. And now that I own it, I am pleased to say that this unit has served all my purposes well.
I have decided to break this review down to three sections. One section is on design; how this PDA compares to other units in terms of physicality. The second section is on hardware; how the battery life performs, CPU benchmarks and so on, in comparison to other units. Finally the last section is a bit of an odd one but it is on functionality. For example, how useful is the Dell X50v when actually put into use?
Design
Overall in comparison to other PDAs, I feel the size is just about right for a Pocket PC. Palms in general, tend to be slightly smaller but contain lesser features, with the larger Pocket PCs having better hardware as a tradeoff for the added bulk. That said, other Pocket PCs within its class like the Ipaq rx3715 Media Companion or the Toshiba e800, are practically the same size as the Dell X50v with differences in size fairly insignificant. Pictures are available on some reviews on the internet which can show this, differences are usually only by a 0.5 cm - 1 cm at most. In fact, as far as Pocket PCs goes, I felt this was actually a fairly sleek and thin model, and is around the same size as a Palm Tungsten T5. The exact measurements are 4.68" x 2.87" x 0.63" weighing at 167 grams. The screen is a nice 3.7 inches a good viewing size for movies and reading books.
Holding the Dell X50v in my hand, I was fairly pleased with the rounded hard metal-like frame along the edges. Given the edges of a PDA are where damage is most likely, Dell added this rather rigid support so when holding the PDA it does not feel like squeezing it or accidentally nicking it on a table would cause much damage. In addition, it gives the PDA a nice sleek look.
Buttons for wireless and notes are on the left side below the lock key can be irritating. Many times I will pick up the PDA and find myself accidentally enabling wireless because the side buttons are very sensitive and very easy to depress when holding the PDA by the edges. It should have been moved slightly upward. In addition, it would have been nice if Dell had included a handy jog dial along with those two buttons.
Along the top there is room for a headphone jack, the stylus and two expansion slots, an SD slot and a CF slot. The SD and CF slots are blocked with plastic inserts, which are removed when you put a card in. In general, most people won't remove and replace cards often so you won't be busy swapping the plastic insert in and out, but the mistake here is obvious. Those plastic inserts are a pain to carry around if you ever feel like swapping out your CF from your digital camera to your PDA. If Dell had just installed a plastic flap, they could have easily kept the slots dust free, and eliminated the hassle of having plastic inserts. The stylus is the standard PDA type, nothing particularly special. It is small and thin, made of steel in the middle, and works well with the overall design. Not a bad stylus but it's too thin for my hands to write with efficiently and I am considering buying a pen/stylus combination to replace it. Lastly there is an IR port on the top, but I have never used it.
There are four buttons below the LCD screen which can be customized for whatever apps you use most. I have not used them at all however. There is a nice four way directional button in the center, which you can use as a page down or page up for reading texts. The center of the directional pad depresses like a button which acts as the equivalent of a right click. It is helpful especially because in some applications you can leave the stylus in the holder and use this directional pad for all the navigation (for example, MS reader, when browsing through a book).
Above the LCD screen is a green LED next to the Axim logo which acts to tell you whether you have a wireless signal present. There is a power switch and a microphone as well. The power switch has two colors, an orange one to indicate charging and a green one to indicate the unit is on.
The rear of the unit is just composed of molded black plastic with some texture bumps to prevent the unit from sliding when it is placed on a table. In general, I felt very comfortable holding this unit in my hand, and compared to other PDA units out there, this unit actually I think has one of the best designs and size given the hefty hardware they managed to pack in.
In addition to the unit, the box includes a charger cable with adapter, a USB cradle, an installation CD, a slipcover case and software manuals. The charger cable attaches to the USB cradle to charge the unit when you dock and it a bit of a nuisance when you want to charge the system without the cradle, because you need to remember to bring this small adapter that attaches to the charger cable so it can connect to the PDA. There have been quite the number of trips where I forgot to bring that adapter, and it is also somewhat easy to lose since it is just a small piece of black metal with the dell logo. They should have the cradle have its own power outlet, and the charger stand separate as one piece, rather than having to have cradle + charger, or charger + adapter if you get my drift.
The cradle has a very solid base to it and it is just the right weight. It's not so heavy that it would be a pain to carry while traveling and not too light that the stand feels like it will topple over.
The included case unfortunately is not very good. It's a slipcover and does the job of sheathing the unit in a protective (cardboard?) layer, but that's all it does. Taking it off means you end up holding a case that is larger than the PDA in one hand, and it's kind of annoying as you might imagine, as stuffing the case into your pocket or something only flattens it. Dell should have just included a flip top cover so you do not need to remove the PDA from the case, but I suppose that would have upset the accessory makers if they had included such a nice case with the unit.
Hardware
I had a number of problems with PDA technology that I wanted addressed and the Dell X50v answers them all appropriately. There are other units that have somewhat similar specs, I think the most significant two are the Toshiba e800 and the iPaq rx3715, but the iPaq is much pricier, has a weaker CPU (Samsung 400 Mhz) and lower resolution (240 x 320), although it includes a built-in camera. The Toshiba e800 is a cheap unit these days going around as low as $300 on ebay but too has a weaker processor (Intel 400 Mhz). The resolution is the same as the X50v, which made it a very close candidate for me, but in the end I wanted the extra Bluetooth and the faster processor, and I paid the extra money for it, getting this at $390 from Dell with 1-day shipping. It is an easy deal to find if you scope out www.bensbargins.net and appears every few weeks or so.
That said, time to go over the important hardware features.
624 MHz Intel XScale PXA270 with WMMX
This is a very powerful processor and adapts according to usage to minimize battery consumption. Benchmark tests have been performed and unfortunately many of the review sites failed to come to any meaningful conclusion (benchmark scores don't have much to compare to in the PDA market). The X50v as they measured is slower than the X50 or the X30 possibly due to the higher resolution screen I'm guessing, but not by very much. The scores don't really mean much because most of the current software out there is designed for 400 Mhz processors, and few apps actually require heavy CPU usage. The few apps that do, such as Betaplayer work just fine, and I detail that more later in the functionality section.
CompactFlash Type 2 and SDIO slots
This is an important feature for me because it is very handy to be able to swap cards in and out from your digital camera to the PDA to view them or to email pictures to someone immediately if you have wireless connection in that area. In addition, the ability to expand space is so useful. With 512 Mb cards only costing around $20 these days after rebate, it's easy to get a nice whopping 1 GB in addition to the already 64 MB RAM (49 MB available); 128 MB flash ROM (90 MB available) specs that the unit comes with.
Integrated Bluetooth 1.2 and 802.11b WiFi
Bluetooth connectivity allows you to utilize foldaway keyboards that use Bluetooth technology and is a very practical feature. Built in WiFi is becoming more standard among units these days, and so while nothing special, it is an expected given and a very useful one at that.
Standard 3.7 volt, 1100 milliamp-hour Lithium-Ion battery; optional 2200 mAh LiIon battery
An important factor of good PDAs is their battery life. They should be able to last the time that you can utilize them in a day. For me, the Dell X50v has been satisfactory. For the time I spend away from the charger, sometimes 1-2 days, I have managed to do the following. I can play a 45 min episode of ER with sound and video, play 1 hr of mp3s and use the PDA for normal applications for about 2 hours, giving me about 4 hours of solid usage. Or if I choose not to use video playback I can sometimes get a good 5-7 hours. A lot of it depends on brightness setting though; I set mine to near minimum and find it adequate in most cases. Using full brightness, full processor and wireless gets the battery life at around 3-4 hours among most tests from more in-depth reviews. The theoretical max battery life is at about 8.5 hours with low CPU usage and low brightness backlighting.
3.7 inch 480 x 640 VGA screen; Intel 2700G Marathon graphics accelerator with 16 MB video RAM; VGA output
This is my favorite feature. Quite frankly after you use VGA mode (a hack program on the internet that enables high resolution; just search for VGA mode) it is nearly impossible to go back, except for the moments when applications are incompatible with the higher resolution. I specifically wanted a 480 x 640 screen because most tv/anime files on the internet get encoded at 352 x 624. Add that to the CPU and graphics output of the Dell X50v and one can actually use their PDA to watch tv/movies/etc. I use my Dell X50v to watch episodes of ER when I have that extra time on a plane or just bored in a car. The screen has been criticized for one major fault and that is the colors can appear a bit off, making photo viewing not nearly as great. The Toshiba e800 is known for a better LCD screen. The color washout in the X50v may be partly due to the extremely bright white backlit. This is a minor fault though, and I think most users would be happy with the extra crispness when viewing text or watching videos that is not found in most other models that possess a 320 x 240 screen.
VGA output will not likely be used by many, but it means if you wanted to you could display the screen on the X50v onto any VGA device so long as you have the appropriate adaptor. Not really certain how this works exactly, but that's the idea of it for those interested.
Sound
Most of the time I rely on the headphone jack which provides adequate power (if not excessive) and so I never have problems with getting the right volume I want from listening to mp3s or when watching movies. In terms of quality issues I would say it depends more on the kind of headphones you choose to use. The built-in speaker is adequate enough for playback but not really recommended, however, it is there if needed and is of reasonable quality given the fact it's a built-in speaker.
Operating System
Depending on what software package you get, there might be added games, but I bought mine with the minimal package, so it just came with a copy of Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition (which includes Word, Excel, IE, and other basic apps), and Windows Media Player 10. Windows Media Player 10 I quickly ended up not using. It is not very practical as Betaplayer is a better application. All in all the OS is pretty much included in barebones condition, with no extraneous preinstalled software, which is just the way I like it.
Functionality
Ok, so the hardware is nice, the design is acceptable by most, does it actually play out the way it should?
Here are the applications I use it for and I think this helps users determine whether it actually is the product for them:
Video file playback with betaplayer
On the internet there is a program that can play mp3s and divx files. So if you download or save TV files under divx encoding you can watch them on the X50v! A year ago, processors would not have had enough power to do this and on a 320 x 240 screen it does not look good at all because it is less than the files native resolution. To compensate for that pixels get deleted and the image will look grainy. With the X50v, the pixels are exactly 1 to 1 and the image remains sharp. I was a bit worried that maybe subtitles would not come out sharp enough for some files, but they did, and fps stayed at a steady 23 fps, rarely dropping. That said the X50v can double as a nice PVP given you have the expansion space to hold the files.
File transferring between CF to SD card
I thought this would work well but it did not. Imagine the scenario where you're with a friend and they have a camera with a CF card. So you decide you'll copy some of their pictures over onto your PDA for keeping to your SD card. Sounds good in theory but in actuality it does not copy fast enough! One picture at 2.3 mb approximately took about 12 min to copy. I do realize CF cards come in different access speeds, but I do not know why the file transfer was terribly slow. Copying files to the PDA is also slow through the cradle, but if you remove the SD or CF card and plug it into a CF/SD card reader and copy it directly it's much faster, sometimes taking half the time it would take to copy using the cradle. I'm not sure why, but I think there is some hardware lag in how the unit copies that is different from accessing the card directly. I do not know though whether this is a symptom only of the X50v or of other Pocket PCs as well.
I can read books without going blind!
The sharper resolution screen helps a ton. With my previous PDA, I felt there was too much eye strain to be able to read an actual book on the low resolution screen, with X50v what I do is I turn it on in VGA mode, max out the font and get a very crisp, large font to read. It does result in a lot of page turning, but thanks to the directional pad, it is easily taken care off without having to tap on a stylus. I ended up reading an actual ebook for the first time and found the experience quite practical on the X50v due to the display.
Writing notes / recording
The recorder that comes with the PDA can only take a 2-3 minute recording which is kind of a bummer. I was hoping to use it to record lectures, and I think software might exist that can do that, but the built in application does not support it. Writing notes was doable. The technology has improved from the days when you had to learn special writing styles. With the current handwriting recognition I was surprised to find that after adjusting to a few awkward things (like the letter i) I could write at about the same pace I would write normally on paper.
Conclusion / Buying remarks
If you are considering this purchase, it is a big investment at about $390 but still far below the list price of $499 when purchased using coupons provided by sites like www.bensbargains.net. As far as Pocket PCs in this high-performance category go however, this is probably the best one, next to the Toshiba e800 with its jog dial. The HP iPaq rx3715 Mobile Media Companion is another decent competitor, but the lack of high resolution screen for a unit about the same price I think makes it less worthy of a purchase.
Overall, I was very pleased with my purchase and I can see myself continuing to use this device for a number of things. The WiFi in particular makes it easy to get connected when traveling through a city and the VGA screen is particularly unique to this Pocket PC. The design and broad amount of features are rare to come by for the price it sells at, making it a worthy investment for those in need of a high performance PDA. Recommended for techies, as they will likely get the most out of this gadget than those who are not nearly as sure as to what all these features are for.
Pros:
-solid design
-CF/SD expansion slots
-IR, WiFi and Bluetooth (rare for units to have all 3, especially Bluetooth)
-strong processor
-sharp VGA 480 x 640 LCD screen for viewing photos/movies/text
-included cradle
Cons:
-no jog dial
-side wireless button easy to depress accidentally
-slipcase instead of flip case
-charging requires two parts (charger + cradle or charger + adapter)
-high battery consumption (depending on application use)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 390 Recommended for: Gadget Lovers - Trendy and Hip
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