8. Luminance

Battery Life

Test Results Details

Because pocket PCs are furnished with almost identical hardware components, the results are relatively uniform. There are slight differences in the quality of the displays, audio characteristics and the GUI.

All the Pocket PCs from the 2002 generation are based on the 206 MHz processor Intel StrongARM SA1110, which explains why the PDAs got very similar performance scores. For instance, results from the floating unit test are identical up to the second decimal place. Synchronizing 1600 addresses took anywhere between 33.8 (Casio) and 37.1 seconds (Toshiba). The difference in battery life was also minimal - the top dog in this discipline was Hewlett-Packard, with 10:35 hours. The Casio Cassiopeia had the shortest battery life, with 8:55 hours.

Unlike the last crop of models, this group of Windows handhelds uses only reflective TFT color displays with 65,536 colors. Because this type of monitor uses ambient light, the display in brightly lit rooms is better than on conventional TFT monitors. Compaq provides the highest degree of luminosity and the largest display surface, giving it an edge over the other PDAs in the display rating.