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There’s no denying that Sony makes great looking products and the Clie TJ25 is no exception. Sony has been licensing the Palm operating system for a few years now, and has produced a great many models of Clie during that time. The latest Clie UX-50 seen in our PDA group test is one of the most fully featured and most expensive PDAs on the market today. The TJ25 on the other hand, occupies the complete opposite end of the market.

Without a doubt, the most amazing thing about this little beauty from Sony is the price. At under £130 including VAT on the street, the TJ25 looks like an absolute bargain, but what kind of compromises has Sony had to make to achieve this price point?

Looking at the TJ25 it’s hard to imagine that any compromises have been made. It looks superb, finished in brushed silver it looks every bit the modern style icon. It fits snugly into the hand and isn’t too big making it uncomfortable, or so small that you’re scared of dropping it.

Below the screen area are four shortcut buttons which will take you to the Calendar, Address Book, To Do and Memo functions. If the device is switched off, pressing one of these buttons will power it on and take you to the corresponding application. If you’re worried that these buttons could be accidentally pressed while the device is in your pocket, don’t. There’s a ‘hold’ switch that will stop anything other than the actual power switch from turning the device on.

Nestling between the two pairs of shortcut buttons is a jog dial. Sony loves jog dials and tries to implement them on almost every device it produces. I used to use a Sony Z1 mobile phone which used a jog dial for navigation and I thought it was great. Strangely, many other people who used that phone had no end of trouble trying to use the jog dial and Sony removed it on subsequent models. Thankfully, the jog dial is still alive and well on the Clie and, in my opinion anyway, it makes navigation on the device a breeze.

The jog dial looks like a little barrel that rolls either up or down. Using this you can scroll through menu lists, then when you’ve found what you want you simply push the jog dial and the option will be selected. There are also buttons on either side of the jog dial which allow you to move horizontally through menus as well as up and down.

The right hand side of the casing holds the power switch. Sliding this switch downwards will activate the unit and doing the same when it’s powered on will switch the Clie off. Sliding the power switch upwards will activate the ‘hold’ state and disable the shortcut buttons.

At the rear is the battery compartment. The battery is removable and can be replaced, but you’ll need a tiny screwdriver to open it, so you’re not likely to want to carry a spare battery around with you. That said, it still means that you can buy a new battery when the supplied one dies completely, rather than having to send the unit back to Sony. Also at the rear is the reset button.