portable audio via PDA

[karmypolitics]

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[smiryan]

I tried to get by with a PDA as an MP3 player. Gave up in the end.

One of the best would be the IPaq hx4700 because I think it has a hardware EQ whereas the others rely on software. However, the amount of hiss coming out the headphone jack was unacceptable to me.

I personally tried an Ipaq h4515, hx4700, Loox 720, a Toshiba one and an Asus one (forget the model numbers of those two).

My advice would be not to bother. The interface isn't best suited to an mp3 player, battery life is poor and sound quality dismal.

 

[chow_ahbeng]

The Sony Clie TH55 works great. Sound is very good. The MP3 decoding is done via hardware. Battery life with the screen off is about 20 hours.

Only thing is the built-in audio player is rather basic.

 

[DRSpeed85]

The Clie UX50 sounds really nice with Pocket Tunes software. U'd better try it for yourself it sounds very very nice.

 

[firefox360]

Well the main problem is that Sony has stopped producing handhelds. So you're not going to get much support from Sony. Especially in terms of software updates and whatnot.

 

[Vences5]

I have a Palmone Zire 72 for sale. The sound quality is pretty good for a PDA. It also has a 1.2 MP camera, which is another reason I like it.

 

[karmypolitics]

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[Frangible]

Every PDA I've tried has had horrid sound quality, far below that of a $10 CD player.

 

[Oga]

I don't think the PPC's are very good, but when I had a Palm (Tungsten E) i used it as a walkman (with an SD card). The sound from it was very strong and clear, easily matching any flash player out there. And I'm pretty picky.

You can probbaly pick up the Tungsten E pretty cheap right now too.

 

[tgunner]

Almost all of the future PDA's will have internal hard drives, and will be geared more toward portable media; My advice is to wait a couple of months, until these units become more abundent.