Palm Zire 71 Review
By William | Reporter
Date: 05/2003

Palm users will be a lot more satisfied with the impressive Zire 71, which has a sweet screen, a built-in camera, MP3 support, and a Secure Digital (SD) expansion slot, all for a reasonable $299.

Want a camera with that PDA?

The Zire 71's back slides down to unveil a low-resolution 640x480 (0.3 megapixel) digital camera. The lens is on the back, the shutter button on the front, and the corresponding software application automatically launches. Images aren't high quality enough to print and place over the fireplace, but if you're into sharing memories over email or on the Web the Zire 71 will do the job.

Pictures taken with the camera can be a set to a minimum resolution of 160 x 120 pixels, or as high as the max resolution of 640 x 480. The picture quality is on par with the old Kodak PalmPix cameras, or the Sony NR-70V. The idea here is that you'll always have a camera with you for all those often missed photo opportunities.

Palm adds a Palm Photos section to the Palm Desktop, the personal information manager (PIM) for your computer. Your pictures are automatically synched along with all your other information. No special applications to open, it's all done in one step.





In my opinion, there is one disappointing aspect to the display though the Zire 71 is marketed as a multimedia PDA, but it lacks a full sized display (virtual graffiti area) like the Sony CLIE NR, NX and NZ series PDAs. Why is that? 320 x 320 just isn't big enough for comfortable image viewing and is definitely too small for watching movies.

Power to play audio and video

The Zire 71 runs the latest Palm OS, 5.2.1 and includes the usual suite of organizational applications. With OS 5 supporting more powerful processors, the Zire 71 can play digital audio and video.

Loading MP3s is simple. Select all the tracks you want to transfer by using the new Quick Install button in Palm Desktop, and it's done the next time you HotSync. Palm also includes RealOne for the desktop, but RealOne Mobile Player is the digital music player of choice for the Zire 71. Our only complaint is that audio just isn't loud enough.

For video, Kinoma Producer for Palm and the corresponding player are included. Kinoma converts QuickTime and MPEG files into a lightweight format that allows you to watch video. The beauty is the simplicity of the desktop application. Simply select the file, select the size, choose where to store it, and the file is converted and sent. We converted a 100MB "Matrix Reloaded" trailer into a file less than 9MB, and it looked pretty good.