The original Palm Zire was aimed directly at the first time user, with just 2MB of memory and a monochrome screen. However, the Zire 71 is a completely different animal; fast, with an excellent colour screen and packed with features, it offers a good alternative to either the mid-range Sony Clié or a Pocket PC equipped PDA.

It uses the same basic specification as Palm's Tungsten T; 144MHz Texas Instruments OMAP processor and 16MB of on board memory (only 13MB of which can be used for applications or data). So the Zire 71 may not be the fastest Palm-based unit out there, but it's still fast enough for everyday use.

The one thing that left the early colour Palms lagging behind the Clié, the screen, has been rectified. The Zire 71 comes with a beautifully crisp 320 x 320 pixel, 16-bit colour screen. Being transflective it is very bright indoors and can be used in direct sunlight.

Sliding open the blue part of the stylish cover reveals the shutter release for the integrated 640 x 480 digital camera - the lens is built into the rear of the unit. Ideal for spur of the moment snaps to view on screen or send by e-mail, the camera takes a bit of getting use to as it doesn't take kindly to movement, either from you or from your subject. If you have nothing else installed in the memory, it can hold up to 200 photos, but in reality it would be better to invest in a memory card.

Despite the presence of the camera, the Zire 71 is a compact unit measuring 7.4 x 11.4 x 1.7cm and weighs in at a respectable 150g, giving a nice solid feel in the hand. It has an SD slot built into the top, a stereo headphone jack and a mono speaker. Unlike the Tungsten T it doesn't have Bluetooth built in, but should you need it there is an SD Bluetooth card available as an option.

Gone is the old style navigation button; in its place is a joystick-like button, which takes a bit of getting used to, but on the plus side there are no control buttons on the side of the Zire 71, so there's no fear of accidentally pressing one.

The Zire 71 comes with Palm OS 5.2.1 installed and along with all the usual Palm utilities there are some useful additional ones. There is Graffiti 2, Palm Photos, Palm Reader, and Adobe Acrobat Reader for Palm. If you want to use your Zire 71 as a multimedia platform, you get RealOne Mobile Player for music files and Kinoma Video Player and Producer for video with sound, although the latter isn't the full version so some advanced video compression options aren't available.

A CD supplied with the unit contains the latest versions of Audible Player and VersaMail, which requires a subscription before you can listen to audiobooks, newspapers etc.

With a 900mAh Lithium Polymer battery, battery life was reasonable, especially for a coloured screen PDA. Tested playing a video with screen brightness set to half-way, the Zire 71 had a battery life of just over five hours, which increased to just over ten with the backlight turned off, playing MP3s.

With a great screen, built in camera, MP3 support and an SD slot, Palm's Zire 71 is more than a match for the current range of mid-price Sony PDAs and offers a good alternative to those who want to stick to the Palm OS rather than migrating to Pocket PC.