Sony PEG-UX50

The Sony CLIÉ UX50 is a great little PDA. Even in 2008 I find it more useful than a mobile phone-PDA. The UX50 has WiFi-B and Bluetooth, so it can link to a WiFi network, or sync with your computer, car, phone, or any BT device, including headsets. You can use a variety of software and games, plus organizer functions. The keyboard and graffiti features make it easy to input data. Other nice features are brighter screen, headphone jack to plug in portable speakers, headphones, or connect to a stereo. Memory Stick for removable storage, infrared to beam data between older PDAs, scroll wheel to navigate and built-in speaker for real sounds.

My main negative is that the screen orientation is wide and cannot be changed to vertical if you wanted to. This makes the actual screen smaller and thus the text is microscopic and very difficult to read. I am legally blind-low vision and i have to use a magnifier to see what i am doing in certain programs (mostly NetFront web browser and sometimes AvantGo browser). The camera is only 640x480 resolution and very grainy but if you need to take good photos, bring a good digital camera or try using your phone's camera to shoot with.

I use mine to track and manage my diabetes (separate software) surf the web, listen to music, and play a few brain games while in waiting rooms. My wife uses hers as her alarm clock, calendar, notes, lists, games, music, and web. We think this is the best PDA Sony has ever made and I am glad my wife and I bought them to replace our CLIÉ SJ22s.

I own a number of PDAs Toshiba e830, Loox 720, Sharp 1000, Treo 700p &c. The UX50 is nearly their equal and includes both bluetooth and WiFi, both of which allow synch and which can be set to auto-start when browsing. It does require the addition of 3d party software to allow full-screen and portrait use (CoreDiver and Portrait).

A Major problem is battery life. I installed a new battery and can read books for about 6 hours but browsing is another matter; about 2 hours max. Netfront, the OEM browser, is very poor but other browsers work quite well, including Xiino, WebPro and Universe3.

As with other palm devices a 3d party launcher and file manager are essential. Launcher X and Resco Explorer work well. Also HiLauncher to somewhat emulate multi-tasking--a serious shortfall of all Palm devices.

Processor speed is perfectly adequate but apparently because it has a proprietary (Sony) processor, Java will not install and I have been unable to try the latest iteration of Opera mini.

Music sounds fine. I use a 3d party player, Pocket tunes, and transfer mp3s to a 1GB memory stick. Streaming audio is perfect even at high bitrates, indicating a fast processor. The OEM email program works fine.

All in all I am very pleased with the UX 50

Bought used, in excellent condition. I've had everything from the old palm handhelds, treo 650, motorola a, nokia n810. But I can't get away from the touch screen and easy configuration of a palm. The sony could use some more free main memory. It has 30mb of "media memory" but unfortunately many of my programs won't run. Overall if sony made a new one, palm version, I'd buy it. I like the treo..but typically I need to use the programs while taking calls so a separate phone and pda is nice. It would be nice if the wireless was updated, can run w/ my new router and enhanced security.

I can see where the Clie would be useful for a business person, but for the average joe it is useless.The internet use is very lame.You can't view or listen to online media and are relegated to mobile websites.You can transfer music and videos from your pc but there are much better devices on the market today that will do a much better job.Some games can be played on the Clie but they are lame.You can get better games on a mobile phone.The built-in camera and video recorder on the device are terrible.Nothing you would want to post on the internet.So you are really left with a very expensive "to do list" organizer.I owned mine for 2 month's, explored all it could do, and sold it.Very dissappointed.

I love these little things!! they are just what the doctor ordered if you like to have a new gadget that is like a miniature laptop!! these things with wifi, bluetooth, camera, video recorder, also makes into a small tablet with touch screen...wow!! it does it all!!!! everything a full scale laptop would do but in miniture version. granted it does us the palm os...but you can find tons of stuff to put on these. if you are in the minature stuff here is your cutie of a laptop/palm combo that probably will never be duplicated again. so grab one while they are still out there and impress your friends...just don't tell them you washed your laptop and it shrank..LOL