There are two crucially important points to consider when choosing a connected (SIM-carrying) PDA. Are you prepared to use it all the time (i.e. is it small enough or effective enough to carry around on the occasions when you need to travel light)? And does it offer enough features to be the PDA you need? The K-JAM from i-mate might not have a lot going for it in the product name department, but it does score well on those two points.

For all their data capabilities, a lot of voice calls are made on connected PDAs and in most cases connected Pocket PCs are large. True, you can use a Bluetooth headset, but it's likely that at least some of the time you will be holding an (approximately) 12 x 8 cm block to your ear. The K-JAM is smaller at 6 x 10cm (well, 58 x 108mm to be precise); in fact not much bigger than a conventional mobile phone.

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On the features side of things the K-JAM packs plenty in. The core software is Windows Mobile 5.0, the very latest version. It has non-volatile memory, so if you experience a battery rundown your data remains intact, and there is 69MB free with a miniSD card slot for you to add more. It can handle native Word and Excel documents and there are phone-like soft menus which provide basic context options within different applications.

But what really draws us to this device is its keyboard. PDAs with keyboards aren't exactly rare. The one we looked at most recently was O2's XDA Exec, with its swivel screen and relatively large keyboard. But smaller is sometimes better and where the XDA Exec's keyboard promised much it delivered less (touch typing was impossible).

The K-JAM's keyboard, which slides out from one of the long edges, is smaller but has well spaced keys that are ideal for pretty fast tapping with two thumbs when holding the hardware between both palms. Better yet, when you slide the keyboard out the screen twists itself into landscape format, and when you push the keyboard away it reverts to portrait mode.

Yes there is a camera built in (1.3 megapixels), yes it has a flash unit, and yes there are other extras like voice control for applications, voice dialling, a PDF reader and the usual Windows Mobile fare like Internet Explorer, SMS, MMS and e-mail, and diary management.

Bluetooth is present, and speed-freaks will like the support for 802.11g as well as 802.11b, though frankly 'b' is all you need to use the built-in Skype Voice-over-IP software. With what is quite probably the loudest speaker we've ever heard on a PDA, having a conversation using the speakerphone mode is not a problem.

Actually there are two speakers on the K-JAM casing, catering for stereo output. But their output quality isn't high enough for us to consider this as a mobile music machine for shared listening, though you do get better delivery through the provided stereo headphones.

The battery shouldn't let you down provided you keep it pretty well charged. We tested it by forcing the screen to stay on and playing music continuously. It worked for a shade under seven hours; anything over six hours is very good in our book. The bad news is that the first low power warning, which comes on when the battery is at 20 percent of charge, gave us just nine minute to find mains power before our K-JAM went off for good. Ouch!

The K-JAM is both feature-packed and ergonomic. It's a good size for carrying around on the off-chance that you might need it, and the keyboard should make SMS and e-mail easier and faster than on a normal mobile phone. The only problem is that low battery warning issue; you'll need to keep an eye on the gauge on the Today Screen to avoid being caught unprepared.