At a product meeting years ago, a Palm representative told us that $300 was an important price point because it's the dividing line between when a shopper will buy a gadget on impulse and when he or she needs to check with a spouse. We're not sure if that was in their mind with the TX, but it's certainly nicely affordable for what it offers.

You'll get Bluetooth (1.1) and Wi-Fi (802.11b), a decently fast 312-MHz Intel processor, and 128MB of storage.


                     Front View

Palm is once again renaming its handhelds, and we hope it sticks with this system for a while. It's dropping the Tungsten and Zire titles and going with initials. That makes this the successor to the Tungsten T5 (see palmOne’s Bold Guess), which currently costs $50 more and offers more storage (256 MB to the TX's 128 MB) and a faster processor (416 MHz). But the T5 doesn't have built-in WiFi, which is a huge shortcoming.

Odds are that you'll rarely run processor-intensive apps on your Palm and that you'll never fill it up (and if you did, you could buy a storage expansion card). But checking e-mail is something you'll want to do daily.


                     Rear View

Looking Good

A row of buttons along the bottom of the TX lets you call up the Home screen (press it to switch between icon and list views), calendar, contacts, and the Web browser. A 5-way navigation button in the middle lets you move around or select items.

The TX comes with a flip screen cover, which you attach to a slot on the left-side of the handheld. It's nice to have, although we wish the TX came with a fuller case with a belt clip.

The top of the TX holds the power button, 3.5mm stereo audio jack, Multimedia/SD/SDIO expansion card slot, and stylus. The stylus is elegant and silver, but isn't spring-loaded, like with other higher-priced models. The dock connector is on the bottom.


                     Palm TX with Stylus

We're surprised that this unit doesn't have a voice recorder. Perhaps that was one of the concessions Palm made to keep the unit so trim (it measures 4.76 x 3.08 x 0.61 inches and weighs only 5.25 ounces). We don't miss it, but if you frequently take voice notes, you'll want a different handheld. Palm saves voice recording for its higher-end models: Zire 72, Tungsten C, and LifeDrive Mobile Manager.

Another concession is that this Palm doesn't come with a cradle. It might be a small point, but we'd rather have the Palm standing at attention by our computer, rather that lying down on the job. The TX simply comes with a USB sync cable.


                     Palm TX with Charging Cable

Performance Plus

Wi-Fi
Palm handhelds have always been known for ease-of-use, and the TX doesn't disappoint. We love how easy it is to find a wireless connection with the TX's software, for example. From the row of on-screen buttons along the bottom of the screen, select the Wi-Fi button (it looks like three signal strength bars).

When the Wi-Fi control panel comes up, click the Scan/Setup button to see all the wireless networks available to you. The results show the signal strength of each network as well as whether or not they're secured (by WEP or WPA). That makes fast work for a traveler to find a strong, open connection—much easier than with a Windows Mobile device.

Software
Software includes the Blazer Web client, which rendered pages quickly in our testing. We especially like its bookmarking controls, which give you large buttons to click for each bookmark, so that you won't accidentally select the wrong one.


                     Blazer

The TX also comes with the Versa 3.1 mail client, which is easy to use and includes a short cut wizard that makes it quick to set up accounts for all the popular e-mail systems.

The software bundle also includes PTunes (for listening to your MP3s), a media player for viewing pictures (even slideshows) and movies, the professional edition of DataViz Documents To Go 7 (for viewing and editing Office documents), an SMS application, a world clock, and Palm's usual excellent bundle of calendar, contact, memo, and to-do apps. It runs on the Palm OS 5.4 (called Garnet).

Landscape Mode

Excel

We admire how well the operating system does at making controls easy to find. The on-screen row of buttons on the bottom of the screen gives access not only to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but also lets you change the screen orientation between portrait and landscape, access pulldown menus, and hide the on-screen text input area to get more viewing area.

Power
Battery life isn't as good with the TX as we'd like. If you're a heavy user, you'll need to charge it every night. In standard use, we got between 4 and 4 1/2 hours, but with Wi-Fi on we only got half that. Like other Palm, the TX warranty covers the hardware for one year and the OS and software for 90 days.

Conclusion
With the inclusion of Wi-Fi into a mid-range handheld, Palm has made the TX into a great all-around performer. It's small and light enough to carry in a shirt pocket, yet it has enough processing power and storage space to keep even a dedicated user happy.

People looking for a Palm that doubles as a music player will want the LifeDrive and people who want a phone built-in should look to Palm's highly successful Treo line. The TX doesn't have a built-in camera, as the Zire 72 does, and it lacks the Tungsten C's voice recorder and QWERTY keyboard. But if you can do without those, we think the TX is an excellent choice.