HP iPAQ H2210 Pocket PC (English)

Whilst a lot of PDA's in the market are hideously ugly, the design of the H2210 is nothing short of outstanding, it's a very small and slim device, it has grip on each side and fit's in your hand perfectly. You can ignore the saying, "Never judge a book by its cover" because it's appearance is nothing compared to the pda itself.

After a day with my H2210, I realised... why would anyone want to buy an mp3 player, or a portable dvd player when you can buy one of these. I loaded an episode of the Simpsons onto a compact flash disk, and played it with my H2210. It was very smooth, and the video & audio quality was outstanding. I also tried playing a few MP3's.. they also played with no problem.
One of the great features of the H2210, is its expandibility. It accepts SecureDigital and CompactFlash cards. What does this mean? It means you can hook it up to almost any electrical device - be it a Digital Camera, MP3 Player, Digital Camcorder and a range of other devices.

Also included, is it's bluetooth capability. I had it connected up with my SonyEricsson T610 with ease. I could send pictures i'd taken with my camera phone, ringtones, screensavers e.t.c
I also had no problem sending files back to my phone.
And it also has "the old" infared port. However, It comes with an application which turns your pda into a remote control. You can set it to control almost anything - dvd players, televisions, video machines e.t.c. While I was testing this great app, I realised the InfaRed port had a rather "long" range... To put it simply, My nextdoor neighbour was slightly confused as to why his television had a mind of its own.

Although the PDA doesn't have a built in wireless networking card, you can buy a compact-flash adaptor for it, and although I haven't got one myself - I've been told they're easy to setup and use.

It's powered by the fastest mobile processor currently available, a 400MHZ XSCALE CPU. It runs games with ease and with great performance. It also comes with PocketPC 2003 Premium edition and WindowsMedia Player 9, the most upto date OS available. It also comes with a USB Cradle for easy charging.

It's worth every penny - and no matter who you are, you will find a use from this. The only other PDA to look at is the BigDaddy Ipaq (the H2210's brother), the H5550. However, unless you really think you need a biometric fingerprint scanner stick with this model.
You don't need to look any further than this.

I was seriously torn between getting this and the Palm Tungsten T3. I chose the 2210 in the end, because it has a user replacable battery (unlike the T3). I did have a Psion Revo, which worked fine until the battery started playing up. It wasn't worth paying £100 for Psion to fix it for me.

I'm very pleased with my purchase. The battery life stated, is a fair estimate. It will last me about a week of normal use (Calender, Contacts a few games and reading e-books). The screen is excellent and very bright. I have it on the very lowest setting, which is fine except for very bright sunlight.

Bluetooth is reliable and I paired it with my T68i mobile no probs. It did take a while to setup Activesync via Bluetooth with my laptop, but once setup works every time.

It's nice and small - a good compromise between form and function (the 5450 is way too big IMHO). The case it comes with is pretty good - I've dropped it twice :-( with only a scratch on one of the corners which isn't covered (could have been the end).

Small, solid, feature packed and a good price - well worth it - buy one!!!

The rubber side grips haven't fallen off mine and seem ok, maybe i'm lucky but i do take good care of it

If you purchase, download the ROM update from HP as it sorts out some irritating peculiarities with the Bluetooth

If wanting the internet on it, I advise a SD wireless LAN adaptor or via Bluetooth, a CF adaptor drains the battery very quickly

A free converter to turn MS Word documents into MS Reader files for easy viewing on an iPaq is available from microsoft

The games Hexen and Doom are available for the iPaq identical to the originals, great for long train rides

I've never had any problems with the H2210, the HUGE selection of software and it's PC compatability puts it way ahead of it's PalmOS rivals