Dell Axim X51v Review

Good Points
The display is great for the size of the device.
Price is fair for the functionality.
The screen resolution plus the portrait layout make for a good experience with Sat Nav.

Bad Points
Hangs
Very slow
Lousy battery life
Flaky WI-FI
Dell support is terrible

General Comments
I have owned my X51V for about 18 months. Main aims were GPS mapping, to get some limited MS office type functionality and pick up emails.



I have managed to achieve my goals in varying degrees, but the experience whilst getting there has not been good. I have lost track of the number of issues I had with this unit but a few follow.

1. As shipped the WI-FI functionality barely operated.

2. It was shipped with a bug which made the unit run incredibly slowly when a CF card was used (A patch for this was eventually released)

3. The general speed of the device is poor. Switch on from cold takes about 60 seconds. If a large application like TOM TOM is loaded switching between applications is also slow

4. Despite lots of fiddling, connecting to WI-FI sources is very problematic.

5. Battery life with WI-FI and Bluetooth off is about adequate for a day in the office if you do not use it much. WI-FI or Sat Nav is really only practical on external power.

6. The supplied software, especially the browser fails to take advantage of the screen resolution.

To end on a positive note, the included terminal services client is amazingly good.