Best PDAs

Full-featured PDAs can almost replace a laptop

The Palm TX (*Est. $260) has received excellent reviews and remains the top choice among a variety of reviewers despite the fact that it was released in 2005 and Palm hasn't offered an updated standalone PDA model since then. At PC Magazine, where the Palm TX receives an Editors' Choice award as the best mid-range PDA, Sascha Segan writes that the TX is the "paragon of the Palm PDA." One hallmark of the Palm operating system is that it supports the excellent Dataviz Documents To Go, an application that lets you read and edit Word and Excel documents. There's also support for charts in Excel and an Acrobat and PowerPoint reader. You can't edit PowerPoint presentations, but you can view them.

The Palm TX PDA has a 3.8-inch, 320-by-480-pixel color screen, which reviews say is stunning and excellent for web surfing. Despite the large screen, the PDA weighs a light 5.2 ounces. The screen also supports landscape orientation for easier viewing of documents or web pages. The Palm TX has a 312 MHz processor and 128 MB of non-volatile memory (meaning you won't lose data if your battery runs down), along with an SD card slot for adding extra storage space. Its integrated Wi-Fi lets you connect to wireless networks and hot spots, and reviews say the Wi-Fi setup is fast and simple. Like all Palm PDAs, it can be synced with a PC or a Mac computer.

The Palm TX gets the highest rating of any PDA at CNet.com, where Bonnie Cha also comments on the Palm TX's ease of use and "gorgeous" screen. Battery life is good (between four and nine hours, depending on usage). The Palm TX's excellent Versamail 3.1 e-mail application can download mail from up to eight e-mail accounts.

The HP iPAQ 110 (Est. $265), released in 2007, is one of the newest PDAs currently available and boasts several technological advances over older Palm products like the Palm TX. Even PDA Street's Troy Dreier, who calls "pure" PDAs without phone capabilities "museum relics," likes it, saying the "iPAQ 110 reminds us of what we gave up when we let the PDA go." Impressed by iPAQ's broad array of features, mobile tech review senior editor Tong Zhang writes, "For an entry level PDA, this iPAQ is pretty maxed-out."

The iPAQ 110 (also sold directly through HP as the iPAQ 111) has a speedy 624 MHz Marvell PXA310 processor; generous memory with 64 MB for running programs and 256 MB available for files, plus an SD card slot. It's loaded with the latest Windows Mobile 6 operating system and pocket versions of Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word. The IPAQ has a large 3.5-inch color touchscreen with 240-by-320-pixel resolution -- less resolution than the screen on the Palm TX. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are included. The iPAQ PDA weighs less than the Palm TX at 3.68 ounces. As with the Palm TX, you can view and edit Word and Excel documents; you can read, but not edit, PowerPoint presentations.

Business users might be interested in the higher-end HP iPAQ 210 (*Est. $396), also sold directly through HP as the iPAQ 211. This PDA has a larger 4-inch touchscreen and a few extras that might appeal to enterprise uses such as the ability to plug in bar-code readers. There's more internal memory and a higher-capacity battery. It's also compatible with VoIP applications like Skype, so you could use it to make Internet calls. Although it weighs a "hefty" 6.8 ounces, Brighthand reviewer Adama Brown says the iPAQ 210/211 doesn't feel heavy.

There are some criticisms of the iPAQ 210 and iPAQ 211. Brighthand's Brown complains that the print function works with HP printers only and the speaker volume is inadequate. PC Magazine's Jamie Lendino has problems using the touchscreen and finds that the stylus requires several taps to register.

Brown adds "the iPAQ is hard to beat...; provides more power and flexibility than pretty much anything else its size, and it does so with style. Although Brown acknowledges it's possible to purchase an ultra mini notebook for less than the cost of the iPAQ 210/211, she notes that "what you can't do with them is slip them in your pocket."