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Cassiopeia E-200

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By Ernest Khoo
Dec 6, 2001

Although Casio brought the 16-bit (65,536) color screen into the world of Pocket PCs with their Cassiopeia EM-500, E-115 and E-125, they've never quite matched Compaq's iPaq in terms of design. Also, their screens don't quite work as well in every lighting condition as iPaq's less-colorful 14-bit (4,096) screen. With the new E-200, Casio manages to give its 206MHz StrongARM-powered PDA a clear and crisp reflective screen that's readable both indoors and outdoors and a few additional features that'll give the iPaq a run for its money.

Shiny, Blocky PDA
Compared to older Cassiopeias, the form of the E-200 hasn't changed that much. Although it has almost the same dimensions as the iPaq, the 190g E-200 still looks rectangular and feels blocky due to the lack of curvy edges that make the iPaq much more comfortable to hold in your palm.

Casio has also changed the buttons layout such that the directional pad is now centered below the screen with the application buttons on the left and right sides of the pad. There's also a jog-dial on the left side of the device for easy navigation. Like the iPaq H3600 and H3700 series, the speaker is hidden behind the pad. The good news for gamers is that the E-200 supports simultaneous button presses so there's no problem when you need to press two buttons to move and fire while playing your games. However, the bad news is that the directional pad lacks tactile feedback so it's rather difficult to use it for diagonal movements.

The color of the case is rather unique with the sides having a dark, almost bronze finish and the rest of handheld is in matt silver. However, the area around the screen is in shiny silver and seems to attract fingerprint smudges.

Two Expansion Slots, Twice The Fun
In addition to the 64MB RAM and 32MB flashable ROM on this device, the best thing about the E-200 has to be the number of expansion slots available. Casio has given the device not one, but two expansion slots--one for a Secure Digital (SD) card and another for a Compact Flash (CF) Type II card. This means that you can have expanded storage space using a SD card and leave the CF slot free for something else, like a wireless LAN card.

Inserting a CF card is pretty standard. You remove the dummy card from the top of the device and place your card into the slot. Inserting a SD card, however, involves poking the stylus in a hole that'll push open the cover of the SD card slot. Although it's a good idea to provide a cover for the slot, the construction is a little filmsy and closing the cover requires a little pushing and shoving before you close it properly.

Casio has spared a thought for mobile professionals by giving this Cassiopeia a removable and rechargable battery. In addition to the main battery that Casio claims can last you for 10 hours, a backup lithium battery is also provided to make sure that you won't lose your data when your main battery runs out of juice. A switch on the back of the handheld also allows you to lock the covers of both batteries.

What's On The Menu?
While the Cassiopeia has some impressive hardware features, we were a little underwhelmed by the bundled software. On the CD-ROM, all you get are a few demo games, Audible Manager to listen to audio books, the ActiveSky Media Player and PacketVideo Player for you to play multimedia content from the Internet, utilities to backup your files to your CF or SD card, and a program launcher called Menu. Of these software, the most useful app is Menu. This utility not only adds a launcher interface for you to quickly launch your programs, it also adds a Menu Bar to the top of your screen. This Menu Bar has icons that show you your battery capacity, free memory on the PDA and on the storage cards, and an icon for you to task to any apps you're running.

Like the rest of the new Pocket PC offerings from other manufacturers, the E-200 allows you to backup your crucial information to this space Casio called the Built-in Storage. This is essentially the unused flash ROM the handheld.

Conclusion
For S$999 (US$599), the Cassiopeia E-200, with its two built-in expansion slots, is a worthy choice for someone who loves the idea of having various expansion options without the need of bulky expansion sleeves. Although the form of the handheld itself could be improved and Casio could have bundled more useful apps with the device, it's hard to find any really major flaws with this handheld, which makes it a compelling buy.