Digital Trends

Sony CLIE PEG NX80V

August 17th, 2003 | by Brandon King

Upgradeability Continued...

The Clie NX80V is compatible with the newly introduced PEGA-CC5 Car cradle.  The $299 cradle sports built in GPS, FM transmission (for playing MP3s on your car stereo), and charger dock.  An excellent option for mobile professionals not available on most other Clies, including the newer UX series.

What still amazes us is the amount of built in memory.  The reviewer was able to install Documents To Go (Microsoft Office document editing program, not included with the unit), Epocrates, and Vindigo (with three locations stored).  And that was it.  With Pocket PC options running as high as 128MB, and most sporting 64MBs, the 16 MB NX80V looks miniscule.  Some applications can be run off of Memory Stick media, and Sony packs a nice file manager with the NX80V, which makes it easier to juggle data, but takes away from available MP3/ATRAC and camera storage and is not compatible with many applications.  In particular, medical professionals using programs like All Scipts and EPocrates, will easily run through this memory before installing any other third party software.  Consider a Memory Stick a required accessory.

The Hardware

We had only two hardware gripes.  The power switch is almost impossible to get to when the unit is in the cradle, and awkward to use one handed.  And the stylus is far too thin to be useable.

Buttons include a quick access voice recorder, photo capture button, and application buttons on both the keyboard AND tablet halves.  Previous units made access to the standard Palm Date book, Contacts, To Do, and Notes applications impossible when using the unit in tablet mode.  Not so with this model.  The keyboard is backlit, which is a nice feature when in dimly lit areas, but the alternate key tags are not visible, and very difficult to see even in well lit situations (these are the labels for the symbol produced when a modifier key is pushed). 

The 1.3M Pixel (max resolution 1280x960) camera has a built in light source, an ND filter for taking pictures in bright settings, and supports 2x zoom.  Files are saved as standard jpegs, and the overall quality was excellent, especially when you consider they are coming from a PDA.  As if that isn't enough, the NX80V can record movies in MPEG-4 format at 160x112 with a maximum time of one hour.  Movie playback was completely smooth, and picture load times averaged 2-3 seconds. Click on the performance tab above this review and the performance link below this review to view sample images taken with the NX80's camera.

The most striking improvement appearing in this Clie is the new, more readable display.  The NX80V has a transreflective display, capable of 320x480 resolution.  Rather than a purely backlit TFT display which loses readability when the light striking the screen from outside is brighter than the backlights on the inside, the transreflective technology reflects external light back through the display, essentially boosting the backlight in proportion to the environment.  The result is the most readable display we have seen yet under any conditions.