I've been testing the Fujitsu-Siemens N560...
...and am very pleased with the results so far.
Fujitsu-Siemens indeed set a standard with the Pocket Loox 720, the high-end WM2003SE VGA device in the Pocket Loox series. It had the most numerous features, a great screen, a loud built-in speaker, Consumer Infrared, a jog dial. Therefore, judging the N560, the current (WM5) high-end Fujitsu-Siemens VGA PDA, most Pocket Loox 720 (PL720 for short) users were pretty disappointed.
Fortunately, the device is still much better than I've thought. What it does is pretty OK and most of the weak points of the PL720 have been fixed:
- the two biggest problems with the (otherwise) great screen have been fixed
- the yellowish screen (also causing problems to HP iPAQ hx4700 users): now, whites are really white. The screen is, in my opinion, even better than that of the HP iPAQ hx4700 / PL720, color saturation-wise and really incomparable to the, in the opinion of many Pocket PC freaks, far worse Dell Axim x50v/x51v screens
- the minimal backlight level has been considerably lowered from the PL720. It's still a bit higher than that of the hx4700, however; still, the PDA is definitely better suited for night-time e-book reading or Web browsing than the PL720.
- the stylus is much better than that of the PL720 - it's much bigger and doesn't seem to be prone to breaking
Of course, the weight/size of the device is far better than that of the PL720 too. I dislike its plastic feeling though - the PL720 (and, of course, the hx4700) is definitely better in this respect. It, however, has no creaks and other problems common with plastic-cased PDA's.
The N560 in the following areas, albeit indeed worse, but are not considerably worse than the PL720:
- the speaker (which is behind the D-pad) is definitely not as loud as that of the PL720. It's still much louder than that of the N560 or the absolute loser in this area, the HP iPAQ hx4700.
The N560 is as bad as the PL720 in, say, the frequency response of the built-in microphone. It's perfectly OK for recording speech, but for music recording, you will want to forget it altogether and either go for an external mike or a PDA with a (slightly) better mike built-in. The Dell Axim x51v, while it fared considerably worse than the N560 in almost all my real-world comparative tests, has a definitely better built-in mike: its frequency response is more linear and, thus, makes it possible to record more trembles.
Compared with the Dell Axim x51v, the N560 is better in almost all measurable (non-subjective) respects. It has far faster-for-write and for file creation built-in storage, it has considerably lower power consumption (and, therefore, better battery life) in most areas etc.
Stay tuned - as soon as I finish testing the WM5 iPAQ hx4700 (so that you can compare the numerical results of measurements run on four VGA devices - the x51v, the N560, the WM5 hx4700 and, for comparison, the PL720), I'll publish a lot of comparative data and screenshots - and a brand new, updated version of this post.
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As a longtime owner of the HX 4700, I'll look forward to your comparison. It probably won't correlate exactly to my system (I have decided to stay with WM2003SE) but it will give insight into my future purchases. Thank you for coming back to some of the older (main stream) comparisons, I've missed them in recent months.
Regards, Rubberman.
If GPS is not important, would you buy the N560 or L720?
thanks!
First of all, thanks for your excellent posts on the n560 and the wm5 hx4700!
I want to buy one of these as my first PDA, a main use being word processing in VGA resolution with a BT keyboard. I am therefore attracted by the bigger screen of the hx4700 (4" in stead of 3.5" for the n560), but repelled by all the issues with running wm5 on it (and I really want wm5!). In your opinion, does the bigger screen of the hx4700 outweigh the downside of it not being a native wm5 device? Or does this bigger screen not make that much of a difference in real use (as for readability in VGA resolution)? Or would it be smarter anyway to buy a new n560 in stead of an out-of-production hx4700?
Thanks for any helpful thoughts!
well, it's pretty hard to choose between the two devices. If you can't get the hx4700 for substantially cheaper (as a second-hand device), I'd go for the N560. If you can get the hx4700 for cheap, I'd seriously consider it. The screen size, the somewhat better Wi-Fi range and, in my opinion, the better build quality & materials used (it just seems to be much more professional in the hand, as opposed to the plastic-feeling N560; this won't be an issue, however, if you use a leather case like that of Sena), the somewhat better battery life, the presence of the CF slot, the Widcomm BT stack and the lower minimal backlight level are for the hx4700. Everything else (gaming (incl. D-pad quality), WM5 stability, lack of slowdown problems related to filesys, ability to use the device at its full potential, potential future upgrades etc.) for the N560.
Saundra, I'd go with the N560 as opposed to the 720 mostly because of WM5 and the future upgrades (hope the N560 will receive future OS upgrades - the 720 won't receive any). While many consider WM5 bad, I think it's a significant upgrade to WM003SE and well worth going for.