Toshiba's latest Pocket PC is a competent performer, but there's little here to get truly excited about. Read our Australian review.Last month Toshiba released two new Pocket PCs, the e400 and e800. The main differences between the two is that the e800 comes with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, it has a slightly larger screen, twice the ROM, and it costs twice the price. The e400 retails for AU$599, the e800 $AU1249. Both are marketed towards the professional, but without built-in wireless and only 16MB ROM, the e400 isn't for the serious mobile worker.
Lets start with one of the most important features, even if we don't like to admit it -- sexiness. The e400 is small and light, weighing 137 grams and is 77 x 125 x 10.15mm. Looks matter, we know they do and PDA makers know it too. Toshiba has given its new line of PDAs a makeover, replacing the silver and charcoal finishes with a metallic blue. Also gone are the round buttons, replaced by a set of square buttons beneath the screen which serve as shortcuts to contacts, calendar, tasks, and home.
The problem with the metallic blue finish is that it all too easily chips. Unlike some of its competitors, Toshiba doesn't include a case with the e400. We put the e400 through an extremely tough durability test --two weeks in a handbag, unprotected. Other than a slight chip in the blue finish, but it held itself together pretty well and the screen, most importantly, remained unscratched. We'd would hate to see it a few months down the track, so would recommend getting a case.
The screen is good but fairly standard at 3.5in (diagonal) and 64,000 colour and not an improvement from the previous model, the e350. In the office both the screen brightness and colour definition were fine, however in direct sunlight--and even just bright areas--the screen was hard to read and colours virtually impossible to differentiate.
The e400 runs on a 300MHZ Intel Xscale processor (an improvement), with 16MB ROM, 64MB user memory, and 32MB NAND Flash memory, and a rechargable but unremoveable Li-Ion battery. If the battery fails you won't lose your data, however 16MB of ROM really isn't much, and it hasn't increased from its predecessor. It also has an infrared window and an SDIO expansion slot, making way for optional wireless connectivity via an SD Bluetooth card (the e800 also has a Compact Flash II card slot).
The e400 doesn't come with a docking station, which must be purchased seperately. Instead a USB cable is supplied to connect to a PC. Running on Microsoft Mobile software for Pocket PC Professional it comes with Pocket Word, Excel, MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and the usual games of Solitaire and Jawbreaker. Extras include World Clock, a voice recorder, text to speech, and voice command.
The bundled voice apps are promising but at this stage are more gimmicky then being of business value. The text to speech app is designed to read out your e-mails when driving to your next meeting. The app works fine, the male voice tells you who sent it, at what time, and then reads the message. We had no problems with this application once we got used to the American accent and the strange emphasis in sentences. We tried words using Australian spelling, and also made spelling errors, but the voice reader couldn't be faulted. However the speaker on the e400 is weak, easily drowned out by background noise. In the office it came out like static, even when holding it close to the ear. Using earphones it came through loud and clear. But any plans to play a recording in a meeting, or even at the pub with friends should be shelved -- it won't work clearly enough.
The voice recorder is an interesting addition. It's presumably meant for executives to dictate letters, because we can't really see another useful (business) reason for it. We tested the e400 in a meeting, leaving pen and paper behind, and tried taking notes and recording the meeting at the same time. There were a few teething problems. We opened up Voice Recorder first and hit the "record" button. Then we opened up the Notes program and the recording automatically stopped. The trick was to open up Notes first, and then activate the recording from that program. However, during the meeting we needed to check the calendar, and again that turned off the recording. It was also prone to turning itself off, for no good reason, and the longest recording we managed was 11 minutes. However the recording quality was excellent, with very little background noise being picked up. The microphone can also be configured to custom settings, it comes with three settings "interview", "conference", and "custom".
The e400 is Toshiba's entry level PDA for the mobile professional. If truly a mobile professional, then our advice would be to look at the e800 which has more memory, built-in wireless and more applications. However if you are after a PDA to store your calendar and contacts information, draft emails, and a bit of word processing, then the e400 is a good model, but not the cheapest on the market. The voice software is a differentiator, but unless you are a dedicated "note-to-self" kind of person, the novelty will wear off quickly. By spending just AU$100 more you can get a PDA with a faster processor, more memory, a case, docking station, earphones, and a removeable battery.
Toshiba Pocket PC e400
Company: Toshiba Australia
Price: AU$599
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 13 30 70
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well lets start by saying the only good thing to the e400 is how slim it is the rest is a peice of crap....i am most disaponted in this PDA mishap. i got mine in june 2004 and in the first 6 months the sync cable broke, the rom died, the power button falied, the speaker died, the Infrared port died, the power button went again, the screen stopped working, the SD slot stopped working, the U-Case Broke, peices of plastic were falling off, the stylus broke after 3 days of use, the flash rom kept doubling and partitoning every time it soft reset, the battery died...twice, sometimes when i soft reset the e400 it would reset the entire memory, the active-sync email stopped working, and the latest thing is. i sent it away to be repared after a little problem with the screen and Alex at toshiba 1-905-3500 ext. 87298 is accusing me of abusing my e400 when i clearly did not... i think toshiba is a stupid company that is here to rip off the candaian public...then have nothing better to do with there time so they make "FORD" computers...plus the people that do the fixing of the pda MUST smoke crack because they broke soo much when they "fixed" it.....if there is one thing you get from this review it is DONT BUY TOSHIBA!!