The new Zire 72 is powered by a Bulverde XScale PXA270 processor which runs at 312Mhz  which is accompanied by a jump to 32mb of on board RAM, on the back of the stylish case is a 1.2 mega pixel camera and after much wailing by previous Zire users we finally get Bluetooth.

The attractive metallic blue finish adds a touch of class to this new PalmOne Zire 72 and the rear is a kind of polished aluminium look, gone is the camera slider instead the lens looks out much like the now popular camera phones, the screen is a 320 x 320 resolution TFT 65k colour affair which performs well even with video.

The storage of a multimedia device is important and out of the 32mb on board memory 24mb are available to the user but this can be supplemented as with most PDA's with external memory, the Zire supports SD, SIDO and MMC cards which give it the capability to exceed half a gig of capacity. You can of course use the SIDO slot to give you wifi with a product from SanDisk and no doubt many other SIDO based application cards over the next 12 months.

Battery life was good with the Zire 71 compared to its competition and the 72 carries on with this tradition, with Bluetooth switched off we managed to get a good 4 days worth of ad hoc use form a single change, use of Bluetooth dents this by about one day and as always you should turn off networking on any PDA if you don't need it enabled. A concern is the fact that this Zire has non user replaceable batteries which gives us echoes of the Ipod shambles, lets just hope that the Zire batteries fare better than the Apple ones.

The user experience is a good one, the now familiar Zire controls remain with a five way directional keypad and 4 application shortcut keys which give quick access to programmes like Real Player and the PIM (personal information manager) software. The software bundle is good for this price point with Palm one messages and versa mail 2.7 as standard along with documents to go 6 which allows the palm OS to open and work with both MS word and Excel. We were impressed with the integration of Real Player for decoding 192kbit MP3 files which played smoothly even when accessing other functions, likewise the image viewer which can support Windows Media formats and MPEG4 was capable of full screen video playback with little or no interruptions.

The contact manger is the strong point of this machine it is further enhanced from that of the outgoing Zire 71 and now has a windows look and fell with a today screen and full MS outlook sync capability, networking via Bluetooth to a mobile phone allows the full use of this powerful suite of communication tools.

Having used the Palm OS more and more we are becoming fans of this "garnet" version which seems to deliver very good performance when paired with the PXA270 processor our tests are not scientific but basic comparisons like opening the same document on a 400Mhz Ipaq show the Palm Zire 72 winning by a good few seconds.

Overall its a good package, we can't help but begrudge the removal of a cradle from the box compared to the Zire 71, instead we get a sync cable which connects to the mini USB at the base of the unit, sure HP may offer its base Ipaq's in this way but does that mean that the palm Zire must follow suit?

Its fair to say that the PalmOne Zire72 PDA  is pitched as a domestic user multimedia tool with a strong video replay ability and MP3 playback, it does lack WiFi which is a shame and lets the Sony TJ37 steel a march with many business users as the Bluetooth connectivity is not considered a serious networking tool. That said at £200 this is a good package which will find favour with Palm fans and those who want a fully featured PDA but don't require full WiFi support.

More PDA Reviews -

[ Sony Clie TH55 ] [ iMate Pocket PC and Phone ] [ HP 2210 Ipaq ] [ PalmOne Zire 72 PDA ] [ Palm Zire 31 ] [ Tungsten T5 Review ] [ Acer N30 PDA ] [ Tungsten E2 Review ] [ Dell Axim X50 ] [ Fossil Abacus Review ] [ PalmOne TX Review ] [ Nokia N800 Review ] [ Dell Axim X30 ] [ Sony Clie TJ35 ] [ Dell Axim X3i PDA ] [ Lifedrive Review ] [ HP 4150 PDA ] [ Palm Tungsten E ]