PocketMatrix

I've recently started looking into purchasing a PPC and at $560 (Australian Dollars) the Dell Axim X5 Basic appears to be both be inexpensive and suit my needs. I'm just wondering why the device appears to be so cheap. I have yet to see a Pocket PC that is anywhere near as cheap as the Axim, so am I looking in the wrong place for a PPC, or is it just simply a good deal?

Have Dell sacrificed quality to make the Axim cheaper? Searching through old topics suggest that the only problem people have had with the Axim is a sticky DPad. Has anybody found a sticky DPad unbearable when playing games?

I just got my Dell Axim ( with new pxa255 processor ) a few days ago. I find the D-Pad to be the only poor part of the Axim. The carrying case is a bit large also but that's not really an issue.

Compared to my iPaq h3650 the D-Pad is poor. Seems to vary from machine to machine going by other posts. On mine I cannot play simple stuff like Tetris as I cannot move the D-Pad accurately enough.

Overall it's great value for money as everything's included and the machine running at 400Mhz is a little faster than my iPaq. Quality seems pretty good & the battery life is superb.

The only bad things about the ive heard about have been , its huge , d-pad problems ,its the slowest 400mhz ppc. But now that it has pxa255 that last problem isn't one. If your just intrested in gaming then you might want to get something like a h1910(or the h1915 which is in euro and has sdio) which is right now the "gamers dream device" and is the around the same price as the dell x5 (its more then the 300mhz but a bit cheaper then the 400mhz). Also the h1910 has the best screen, its the smallest pocket pc , thinnest pocket pc , gets very high benchmarks , can overclock to 300mhz 150mhz bus that makes it become one ( if not the ) of the fastest ppc. Good luck

Dell is a newcomer to the Pocket PC market, and as one of the largest (if not the largest) PC manufacturers in the world, they have the ability to sell hardware very inexpensively to try and get a foothold in a new market. Same type of thing with the Microsoft XBox. They are willing to loose money on the hardware side.

Dan East

I have an axim, and i love it. It is my first PPC, and it works great. The Dpad doesnt seem like that much of problem to me, and i play games a lot. i must have gotten lucky or something. I highly recommend it if you are looking for a basic PPC for a great price.

I have to disagree. The Axim's size is not different from my iPaq 3650 & given the removable battery, SDIO & Compact Flash socket it's acceptable. Battery life is very good & speed wise it's comparable with the best. The iPaq 1910 is titchy. I could not believe how small it was. It's screen is so small that I could not read stuff I can happily make out on the Axim and of course it's rom is 16Mb only so no full OS upgrade.

Update: The 1910's screen just seems small because the unit is very small overall. Actually the screnn seems to be the same size as the Axim. The Axim is nice to hold & has more interfaces & the iPaq 1910 is small & sleek with good features. The only bad things seems to be it's non-standard headphone socket & the lack of support for standard iPaq sleeves.