Toshiba’s latest slimline handheld is sleek and sexy, but looks aren't all that matter. Anthony Newman takes a closer look.
Toshiba’s recent product refresh has brought us the first Pocket PC with a VGA screen, the e800. Almost lost in the shadows was the e400, a svelte entry-level handheld to replace the aging e350 and bring the line up-to-date with a new design. Does it offer enough bang for the buck to beat the new kids on the block?
 | Toshiba's new e400 Pocket PC is sleek and svelte
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Design
In terms of design, we think it does. At just a shade over a centimetre thick and at 137 g, the e400 needs to include little bulges in the back just to fit in an SD slot and a headphone jack. It is incredibly thin - quite possibly the thinnest Pocket PC to date, even including the HP h1940 and the Viewsonic V35. However, as it is constructed of gorgeous midnight-blue aluminium, it feels incredibly solid and exhibits no creaking whatsoever.
However, Toshiba are continuing their old design trend of favouring thin yet wide handhelds, and the e400 is no exception - it feels a little wide given its paper-thin profile, although not uncomfortably so.
The front face of the device holds the 3.5", 16-bit transflective display common to most Pocket PCs. This one holds its own as both bright and clear, and it also shares the automatic brightness control of its big brother, the e800. The touchscreen is a little bit spongy, and the awful telescopic stylus, identical to that provided with the e800, doesn’t help this.
Thankfully the buttons are fairly decent, with the lower part of the face occupied by a solid silver block comprised of the D-pad, central enter button and the four application buttons. These were easy to use and comfortable throughout our tests. The tiny power button is squeezed onto a practically non-existent top edge, while the record button and typical spongy jog rocker have their own protuberance on the left side. Down at the bottom of the left side a black hold switch sits next to the IR port, completing the assortment of buttons.
All notifications are provided by a multi-function LED on the fascia of the device, just to the left of the buttons.
The audio of the e400 is a mixed bag. The output from the 3.5mm headphone jack, which sits on top of the unit, is great: loud and clear. The speaker suffers from the same problem as the e800, as it is quite tinny and shrill. The aluminium case must help a little, though, as it didn’t strike us as quite so bad. It might be that our expectations are lower of such a tiny unit, however.
Recordings produced by the inbuilt microphone were, whichever setting used, largely composed of static: perfectly acceptable for voice note-taking but nothing more important.
Connectivity
The e400 follows Toshiba’s typical lightweight approach to expansion: no wireless technologies are included, leaving just the old IR port to supplement the SDIO-capable SD / MMC Card expansion slot, which resides on the top of the unit.
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