Palm Tungsten C Provides Best WiFi Throughput in Tom’s Networking Test of PDAs

Need a WiFi-enabled PDA? Tom’s Networking compared four popular WiFi-enabled models:

• the Dell Axim X3 Advanced and
• the
  HP IPAQ H2210 Pocket PC

both of which require an SD WiFi card. The
SanDisk Connect SD WiFi Card was the one used for the test.

Two PDAs with built in WiFi were also tested:

• the Asus MyPal A716 and
• the PalmOne Tungsten C.

The findings of this Need To Know yielded a surprise. The author says: “…some of the PXA255-based PDAs that I tested yielded WLAN transfer rates far below what you’d expect for such relatively fast raw bus speeds. So it would appear that there are some software or other issues at play that limit wireless throughput.” The palmOne Tungsten C had the best throughput as measured by an FTP test, with 3 to 9 times the network performance of the other models.

I respect the findings of Tom’s Networking. Related websites like Tom’s Hardware have proven reliable over the long term.

So, if you are buying a WiFi-enabled PDA and your priority is high throughput, it appears that the palmOne Tungsten C is your best bet at this time.