Asus MyPal A730

Asus has come a long way from its history of plain-vanilla units. Its new MyPal A730 includes a stylish design and plenty of high-end extras. It includes a speedy Intel 530-MHz processor, 64MB of RAM, a bright, 3.7-inch high-resolution VGA touchscreen, and Bluetooth. With its extra-high resolution, the screen makes fonts and images smoother, clearer, and easier to view.

While the latest MyPal is bit on the bulky side, at 6 ounces and 4.6 x 2.9 x .6 inches, it has a sophisticated, chic design that actually reminds us of some of our favorite Palm OS units. It shares the wraparound bottom shell of the Zire 31 and uses a sparkly metallic blue-gray plastic that's similar to the purplish hues of many Sony VAIO devices.

Controls are standard, including the usual scroll pad and four launch buttons on its front and a power switch and additional programmable control (which is best used for taking pictures) on the left-hand side. The only odd touch was the stylus, which peeks out from the bottom of the unit.

The A730's built-in 1.3-megapixel camera takes full advantage of the unit's fast processor and diverse storage options. It takes both still photos at resolutions up to 1280 x 960, and MPEG-4 videos at up to 352 x 288. Unlike most other PDA cameras, the A730 includes a small flash that can be used for video as well as stills; you can also record audio with your videos. However, the flash wasn't particularly bright, although photos in well-lit areas looked fine. The A730's included software relies heavily on cryptic buttons, making it hard to operate, but the sharp screen and good integration of the landscape view gave us a great look at the shots we took. You can even do some basic editing with the included software.

Less impressive were the A730's results in our performance tests. It turned in a floating-point performance score of 12.65 and an integer performance score of 34.75 in the VOBenchmark test-lower than our previous tests of a Dell Axim X30 with a 312-MHz processor. The A730 took 13 seconds to sync our database of 1,000 contacts, which is essentially on par with the Axim X5 at 13.2 seconds. The battery life was also around what you'd expect for a unit in this class: approximately 3 hours, which included some use of the energy-draining camera and flash features.

With its high-resolution screen and fancy photo features, the A730 has the most to offer for people who are interested in taking, viewing, and editing photos and video clips on the fly. Unfortunately, that's a pretty small niche. For the vast majority of people, Wi-Fi Web surfing would be a much more compelling application for that advanced screen.