The market for pocket-sized GPS devices grows daily, while that for Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) continues to shrink, so it could be quite a clever move of HP to combine the two functions, as it has with the iPAQ rx5900 Travel Companion.

This is a Windows Mobile PDA with a full implementation of TomTom Navigator 6, a GPS receiver and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth transceivers. It's designed to lead you to your destination, entertain you while you're away and keep you in touch with home, or at least with your e-mail.

There are a lot of bits and pieces in the iPAQ rx5900 box. As well as the PDA itself, there's a windscreen mount, power supplies from mains and 12V cigar lighter, USB cables and a slip-sleeve to protect the unit. There's a copy of Windows Mobile 5 software, too, so the device can be linked to a PC to synchronise with it.

The smoothly curved, silver and copper-coloured case includes an 89mm touch-screen, which can be used with a fingertip or the supplied stylus. As well as the touch panel, there's a five-way control pad on the front of the device, plus two buttons to return to the Windows front screen and to close a running application. On the sides are specific buttons for the quick-launch screen, TomTom, Windows Media Player and a screen flip, so you can view in any of four orientations.

Along the top of the device is a record button for the internal microphone and an SD card slot, where you can add to the 2GB of internal memory supplied as standard. The iPAQ rx5900 needs this much to hold the full Western Europe map set, which covers most of Europe and Scandinavia except the newly-joined Eastern European EU countries.

Most people will buy the iPAQ rx5900 for its navigation capabilities. The full version of TomTom, with its high-quality spoken instructions, proved accurate and easy to use, even though this isn't a dedicated GPS device. It clips into its mount and connects to a car's cigar lighter to save its battery (so many gadgets plug into this type of socket, it should probably be relabelled an 'internal power jack').

As the iPAQ rx5900 is a fully working Windows Mobile 5.0 device, you get Pocket versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint and, with the Wi-Fi abilities of the hardware, you can both browse the Web and check your e-mail as soon as you have access to a hotspot.

Verdict
There are two arguments about the way handheld devices are going to go: one says we'll want individual units for each of the functions we need on the move, while the other says there will be increased integration all the way down the line. The iPAQ rx5900 has definitely gone along the integration route and handles GPS, PDA and media player functions comfortably, within one sleek case.

Company: HP

Contact: 0845 270 4222

Tags: ipaq global positioning system tomtom windows mobile personal digital assistant gps navigation device microsoft windows gps