HP iPAQ H2210 Pocket PC (English)

Firstly, the bad. Two known faults with this device are:
-the joystick breaks. You can buy spares for about £6.50 online, and it doesn't prevent normal use of the unit anyway.
-the rubber grips on the side fall apart. The latest revision is a little better - they fall off instead! :-s Again, this doesn't stop you making full use of the PDA, and excellent metal sidegrips are available, if a litle pricey, if you look around.

So, with these two physical failings, why am i so keen on the device?

-It's very compact but with a decent size screen
-It's very attractively designed
-The screen is pretty good
-It's fast
-it makes a great mp3 player
-It doesn't suffer from any major software issues. Many PDAs do. There are updates for a couple of issues you might come across.
-Several good external keyboards are available for this pda.
-Great built in software like HP Backup and Nevo universal remote control.

The unit, like all PDAs, is rather slow when accessing flash memory. If you get good software (eg SPB imageer) then it's useable for looking at the pictures from your high-res digital camera. Otherwise, it's just too slow.

Mine has had heavy use since the day I bought it, and i've been very pleased with it. I think mine may have been damaged when i accidentally plugged it into an incompatible keyboard, as now it sometimes crashes, which it very rarely did before. I'm looking for an identical unit to replace it, even if it means going second hand. I reckon that's quite a recommendation for this model.

I recommend SPB pocket plus for this ipaq. It improves the software considerably. (no, i have no connection with SPB except for being a pleased customer!)

I feel it necessary to correct a statement made in another review. There *IS* a backup battery that keeps your data when you switch batteries. It's only intended to last about 10 minutes, but how long does it take to switch a battery over? You should be making regular use of the excellent supplied "HP Backup" utility anyway, so it shouldn't be the end of the world if you have to restore a backup. It's quick and easy.


Long term use   February 8, 2006
Phil Dickinson (Blackpool, Lancs United Kingdom)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

I have been using my HP2110, bought from Amazon, for about 2 yrs. And found it extremely valuable in both my work and leisure activities, once I learned it's weaknesses & strong points.

First thing I learned was never remove the battery, or let it run down, there is no sepearate backup battery so U lose all your system settings & everything else stored in Ipaq memory (second thing I learned was to backup to a seperate disk). Also it is useful to undertake a soft reset on a regular basis as programmes do not release memory after U have closed them (I considered this as refreshing the memory)and things start to get slow.

In day to day use I have few problems. I use Agenda fusion (much nicer interface than the Ipaqs own agenda\contact manager) and Tom Tom Navigator (bluetooth gps) in my day to day work and they have proven invaluable. In my area of work Lakes & Lanc's full postcode search facilities have proved a real time saver much more use than street names & numbers (because often there aren't any just house/farm names.

My leisure interests include hill walking & offshore sailing and I use Memory Map OS maps and Offshore Naviagator Charts both are excellent but a tad expensive. I bought a bombproof case for the PDA (survived the roughest weather on board the boat and still useable pretty much as normal, though it is a bit of a monster).

The maps take up quite a bit of space and to this end I have everything installed on a combination of 2gb compact flash plus 1 gb sd memory.

I struggled at first with the combination of Tom Tom and other mapping software with the Tom Toms bluetooth gps.

All in all a great bit of kit, which has proved itself to be very robust. How would I improve it? Add a backup battery HP! Change those daft rubber side grips (there are some tasty ones available in machined and coloured alloy).