Sony CLIÉ PEG-UX50

Performance of Sony CLIÉ PEG-UX50

Design: 9 Features: 9 Performance: 7

The PEG-UX50 runs Sony's new Handheld Engine processor. The proprietary Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Management (DVFM) technology is supposed to throttle the chip's operating frequency from as low as 8MHz to as high as 123MHz, thus saving precious clock cycles and battery power, depending on the demands of individual applications. Intel's XScale processors operate on a similar system but have a top speed of 400MHz. Then again, speed ratings usually don't tell the full story, and practically speaking, we had no complaints about performance. Our test movie clips and games--trial versions of GTS (a car-racing game) and Zap2016--not only looked good but played smoothly on the sharp, bright, 65,536-color, 480x320-pixel display.

Battery life was respectable but not stellar. With Bluetooth active and screen brightness set at the halfway point, the UX50 was able to run a looping video clip for 2 hours, 50 minutes. With Bluetooth turned off, the loop ran 3 hours even. While Bluetooth activation didn't seem to adversely affect those tests, when we accidentally left it active for a full 24 hours, we came back to find the battery almost completely drained. In other words, activate it only when you need it.

A short note about the 300,000-pixel camera: It's the same imaging system that's in the NX73V--that is, a VGA camera that takes passable 640x480 images suitable for e-mailing and viewing on the device. It's a small step up from a camera phone. As one might expect, since the UX50 doesn't have a flash, it does best in well-lit environments. The video is decent, but again, we're talking Webcam--not camcorder--quality.