Palm devices have held the top position in the PDA market for some time, but with the price of Pocket PCs dropping as their features go up and the increasing availability of PDA-enhanced wireless devices Palm has had to introduce some new blood into their line. This new blood includes the Tungsten line, which are intended for the power users and the “corridor warriors” who want a wireless device, and the Zire line, which are aimed at the more traditional Palm user.

The Zire line includes two models, a low-priced, entry level device simply called the Zire, and the higher-priced, full featured version, the Zire 71.

The Zire 71 looks great. It has nice, smooth lines and an attractive brushed metal and hight-tech blue case. It’s a bit larger than the Vx, but not noticeably heavier, and it fits the hand very nicely. The Zire 71 sports 16 Mb of memory, and a 144 MHz ARM processor, so the power is much improved over older Palm devices. But it’s not until you turn it on that you see the real changes in the Zire 71.

The first thing you notice is the screen. The Zire 71 is a full color (65,536 colors), 320x320 TFT display and it is startlingly crisp. Even low resolution color applications designed for older Palm devices look great on the new display, but the high-resolution applications look dramatically better. Everyone I have shown my new Zire to, including Pocket PC users, has remarked on how much they like the display.

Of course the second thing that everyone notices is the built-in camera. Slide the Zire’s case back down, and it exposes a shutter release button on the front and a camera lens on the back. It is takes pictures at 640x480 or lower, so it probably won’t replace a digital camera for wedding pictures or long-anticipated vacations, but it makes a great “always with you” camera for snapshot you might have missed or to take pictures you intend for viewing on your website. It has auto light level and auto white balance that works down to 5 lux, so you can use it reliably indoor or out. It reacts rather slowly to light changes and has a fairly low shutter speed in low light, so it takes a bit of care to get good pictures indoors, but with a little practice you can get quite good photos out of the Zire 71. I was particularly impressed with how well it takes pictures up close. All in all, the camera is a very welcome addition.

Another nice change is the addition of a headphone jack and the Real One player. With the addition of an SD card, which is required to store the music, you can play MP3s. You can even set the player to run in the background while you use the Zire, so you could play games or do work while you listen. It’s even practical to do so, since I’ve listened to music for a couple of hours with only a barely noticeable change on the battery meter.

Included software also allows you to play AudiblePlayer books, articles, etc. and to play video clips on your Palm.

The little up/down rocker of earlier Palms has been replaced with a “5-way Navigator” that lets you operate most functions of the Zire 71 without pulling out the stylus. Of course, it doesn’t handle data entry, but for looking up phone numbers or checking schedules, it now makes using the Palm a one-handed process. If the Zire is turned off, a quick click on the navigator will bring up the World Clock for a couple of seconds, just in case you need to know the time.

Of course it includes conduits to synchronize with Outlook as well as the Palm Desktop, and all of the nice applications of the previous Palm versions: Notepad, Calendar, Contacts, Memo Pad, To Do List, Calculator, and Expenses. It also comes with some nifty bundled software, the best of which is the powerOne calculator, which is a fantastic little calculator that has downloadable add-ons for things like unit conversions, business, and scientific functions.

The Zire 71 also uses Graffiti 2, which uses multiple strokes for characters like “x” and “t” and should be easier for most users to master. It requires a bit of reeducation for those of us who have had a Palm since the Palm Pilot 1000 days, but it’s still really easy to use.

Like other recent models the sync cradle/charger is now USB, is easy to use and has a long enough cord that you aren’t too restricted in where you locate it.

The Zire 71 isn’t without a few flaws, though.

Unlike most recent Palms, there is no flip cover to protect the writing surface which pretty much forces you to keep your Zire in the provided case to protect the screen. It’s not a bad case, but has no belt clip and adds enough thickness to the Zire that it’s really not practical to carry it in a pants pocket. If you’re not a suit-wearin’ sort of guy (or gal), you’re going to have to either buy a case with a belt clip, or do what I did and put one of those stick-on cell phone belt clips on the provided case. However that doesn’t solve the problem that nothing locks out the controls when the Zire is in the case, so a bump may turn it on or activate the controls if you are playing MP3s.

Another quibble is that the mail client that comes with the Zire 71 may be far more flexible than the one on my Palm V, since it allows syncing over the Internet and to a wider variety of mail types, but it also is a lot twitchier to get working. Even when all you want to do is copy the mail that is currently in Outlook to your PDA, it requires setting a lot of mail and IP information (which ultimately is not used) and balks if you enter bad values. After all of that, you still have to customize the mail conduit on your desktop before it will work. The documentation is pretty sparse, making the process even more difficult. Although the settings to get AOL or an POP3 account up and running seems pretty straightforward, getting it to work with an Exchange server or to just sync with Outlook is a major pain – something that was brain-dead simple on the Palm V. This is not the sort of thing to endear the Zire 71 to casual users.

Last, and most picky, the stylus that comes with the Zire 71 is a sad replacement for the nice metal-barreled stylus that came with the Palm V. I felt distinctly underwhelmed by the cheap plastic stylus. It lacks the heft and the feel of precision of my old stylus, and also lacks the nifty ability to unscrew the top and use the pin on it to reset the Palm.

But, these minor complaints aside, the Zire 71 is an extremely high quality, full featured PDA. I would highly recommend it to Palm users looking to upgrade, as well as to the many potential PDA buyers for whom the power and price of a Pocket PC is really more than they need. If you’re in the market for a PDA, stop by your local electronics store and check out the Zire 71.

Click here to buy the Zire 71 on our shopping page

--Tucker Hatfield
Technology Editor

Zire 71
Palm
http://www.palm.com/us/
$299

Specifications
Built-in hidden digital camera
Integrated MP3 player, watch videos
16-bit, 320 x 320 bright transflective TFT color display with brightness controls
Breakthrough design
Ultra-fast ARM processor
SecureDigital (SDIO) card slot; Palm Universal Connector
5-way navigator for one-handed access
4.5 x 2.9 x .67; 5.3 oz.
Rechargeable Lithium Polymer battery