Monday, October 25, 2004
Loox Like a Winner - A Review of the Loox 720 Pocket PC
Posted by Doug Raeburn in "HARDWARE" @ 09:00 AM
The Screen
Figure 13: Agenda Fusion in VGA on the 720 – Click the image above to see the real screen shot.
Figure 14: Agenda Fusion in QVGA on the 2215 – the real screen shot.
Figure 15: Pocket Excel in VGA and landscape on the 720 – Click the image above to see the real screen shot.
Figure 16: Pocket Excel in QVGA and landscape on the 2215 – the real screen shot.
VGA resolution promises an outstanding screen on a Pocket PC, so does the Loox deliver on this promise? Absolutely. Everything is sharp and highly detailed, text is laser printer crisp and the colors are bright. When entering text in Calligrapher, the online “ink” almost looks like real ink, and it looks better with the anti-aliasing mode turned off than on the 2215 with the anti-aliasing mode turned on.
I’ve included some screenshots from the Loox and from the 2215 for comparison purposes. It’s difficult to set a level playing field with the screenshots, because the capture utilities capture the images at their native resolution. So the 2215 has smaller 320 x 240 screenshots, while the Loox has much larger 640 x 480 screenshots. Scaling the large screenshots down with graphics software doesn’t do them justice, so I included the shots as captured. Just imagine an image as crisp as the larger images, but in a smaller format on a Pocket PC screen. You really have to see it.
The screen takes a very light touch. If you press hard, you’ll find a bit of what I call “shadowing” that follows the tip of the stylus. It disappears instantly when you lift the stylus. I’ve seen comments from hx4700 owners about a similar phenomenon, so it may be the nature of the beast. It doesn’t bother me at all, but some people might have an issue with it.
Memory and Storage Space
In his recent review of the Dell X50, Jason stated that he didn’t feel that any Pocket PC needed 128 MB of RAM, because he was able to install nearly all of his programs in the Dell’s Flash ROM. Be that as it may, my viewpoint on this topic differs from his for other reasons.
The memory configuration was one area that greatly affected my purchase decision. My current workhorse unit, the 2215, has pretty close to the same kind of memory configuration as the hx4700 and X50v… a large SD card stands in for the standard flash ROM of the newer units. I keep lots of PIM information and e-mail on my Pocket PC and, because of the location of the databases on the Pocket PC, this data can be stored only in RAM. As a result, I was bumping into the limit of the RAM on the 2215 all the time, and I came to the decision that my next Pocket PC would have more RAM.
Other folks have noted that with other RAM intensive processes such as using GPS software with large maps or playing large media files such as converted DVDs (as noted by Jason himself) may also prove to be a challenge for 64 MB of RAM. So although the total available storage is fairly similar on all of the new VGA units, I place more value on more RAM than on more Flash ROM, which gives the Loox a significant advantage in this area over the HP and the Dell, at least for my usage.
So since there are still some Pocket PC functions that require lots of RAM, I have to say that I’m much more comfortable with 128 MB of RAM than with 64 MB of RAM and lots of Flash ROM. Pocket PC Techs seems to agree, since they’ve already released an upgrade to 128 MB of RAM for the hx4700.
Battery Life
The large battery that comes standard on the Loox is a big advantage as well. With as much as I used my 2215 at work, I have a pretty good sense for how long I can go before the battery is starting to get low enough to need a charge. I’ve worked for a comparable period of time with the Loox, to find that the battery was still at the 70% full range. This would be about when the 2215 would be at 35 – 45%. I have to say that this is the first Pocket PC with which I’ve actually stopped being concerned about the battery charge level.
I didn’t run the battery benchmarks, but when using Spb Benchmark’s most strenuous test (maximum backlight, video playback), firstloox.org found that the 720 lasted for an impressive 6 hours 8 minutes. Suffice it to say that the 720 is among the very best performers in battery life of any Pocket PC currently available.
