This weekend we got our paws on the Sony Clie TJ35 and we had big hopes for it after testing its big brother earlier in the month and also noticing the proliferation of this Clie units at LP's place of work. The Sony Clie TJ35 is basically a slimmed down version of the TH55 and it comes with a shrinking price of £150 to match, but does that mean that all the useful features have been extracted leaving you with something that has all the Sony style but none of the techno go?

First glances say that the style is still there, finished in the now familiar Sony silver the unit fits well in the hand and the newer roller and button layout works well Sony having ditched its jog wheel design from all new products. The screen gives 320 x 320 pixel resolution and 65k colours which is about par for this price point although the colours are no where near as vibrant as we would have liked especially when on full brightness.

The Sony Clie TJ35 runs on the Palm operating system and while that means it faces the might of the Microsoft powered Pocket PC systems it also makes for a more stable operating system if at the expense of having as many readily available programmes. You can use all the usual palm goodies for importing word and excel documents plus interfacing with your MS outlook, so no need to worry about being left out in the cold, perhaps Sony could have stretched to providing the USB cable needed to hot sync the TJ35 but this is just a sign of the penny pinching that is evident throughout the package.

For storage the TJ35 makes do with 32mb of internal RAM of which about 23mb is available to the user, this can be extended by... you guessed it a memory stick, now this is good news as you can go up to 512mb with memory sticks sadly this is also one of the most expensive forms of removable memory (if you buy Sony branded). Of course being the "entry level model" we get a little reminder here from Sony as the TJ35 does not ship with any memory stick media not even a 16mb one!

Now to LP's biggest beef, having not supplied any USB cable we at least expected some form of wireless connectivity, wrong again there is a lack of WiFi which is fair enough at this price, but also no Bluetooth. For a PDA that claims to be multimedia enabled (they bundle a media player with the TJ35) it seems that the only way to get media on or off is on a memory stick (still not supplied) or the USB connection (see lack of cable). There is even a model below this one (the TJ25) that removes the headphone socket thank go we didn't give that one to LP to test or we may of had to brace for an explosion.

Sorry if we are starting to sound a bit miffed but the Clie TJ35 promised so much but for £13 more we can get a Dell Axim X3 which comes with a cable and more memory plus has a SIDO expansion slot for adding cheap wifi cards!

If you can look at the Clie TJ35 as just a filofax replacement then maybe its ok for keeping your contacts in, but Sony push it as being a multimedia device, you can use it as an MP3 player (if you buy your own headphones and memory stick). Sure its nicely styled, reliable and weighs just 140 grams but we demand a lot more from PDA's and this one isn't even cheap enough to justify the lack of features, this is all very strange as we loved the Clie TH55 but something has gone a bit wrong here.

So what's the score well as far as the TJ35 goes its Sony 0 -  Dell and HP 1, if it were our money it would be the Dell Axim or perhaps save up a little longer and get the fantastic HP Ipaq 2210, unless you must have Sony (and we know you do exist) please pass by quietly.

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 ]