Fujitsu Siemens Pocket Loox 600

Low cost and good design make this an attractive PDA option.

Price: £470

Manufacturer: Fujitsu Siemens

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Verdict

Pros:

Battery-saving technology

Cons:
Add-on GPRS module might make it unwieldy

Henry Tucker, Computing 23 Oct 2002

The Pocket Loox 600 from Fujitsu Siemens is the company's latest entry into the personal digital assistant (PDA) market and one of the first to use Intel's new XScale mobile processor.

The PXA250 processor is Intel's fastest to date, running at 400MHz. However, the processor will reduce speed - in a similar way to SpeedStep notebook processor technology - where possible, to reduce battery power. This is crucial to dealing with PocketPC's notoriously short battery life. As yet, the operating system (OS) hasn't been optimised for the processor, so speed gains are going to be minimal.

Fujitsu Siemens claims the Pocket Loox will run for up to 12 hours from the supplied battery, which can be charged either with or without the USB cradle. To further aid battery life, the unit has a light sensor built into the screen, which raises and lowers backlight levels to suit the conditions.

It isn't the slimmest of units, but it's quite light and Fujitsu Siemens has managed to fit Bluetooth into it, along with both a Type II Compact Flash slot and an SD card slot. It's also been designed so that you can use it with one hand, because it has both a jog wheel on the side and a four-way navigation paddle on the front. Left-handed users might find this a disadvantage.

There will be a mobile phone add-on with GPRS connectivity out in November.

Thin, stylish and powerful, the Pocket Loox 600 is certainly an impressive PDA with some excellent features.

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