The Cassiopeia EM-500, Casios follow-up to its E-100 series of personal digital assistants, closely mirrors the E-125 but offers a few changes. The biggest change is the move to using MultiMediaCard (MMC) memory over the more standard CompactFlash memory slot. The postage stamp-size MMC cards offer needed memory expandability (as the EM-500 comes with only 16 MB of internal memory, compared to the 32 MB of the E-125), especially if you plan to use the EM-500 as a portable MP3 player--one of its many multimedia capabilities.While MMC over CompactFlash limits the ability of the EM-500 to use many Pocket PC peripherals, it is likely you will be willing to overlook that once you get a peek at the EM-500s gorgeous TFT screen. This very bright, very colourful (65,536 colours, to be exact) display shines beautifully when you are playing games or watching mobile video player clips, which run along at a respectable 15 to 20 frames per second with the EM-500s 150 MHz MIPS processor.
The thick EM-500 (about twice the thickness of the Palm Vx) offers standard Casio programmable buttons to bring up the menu, calendar and contacts, as well as a navigational D-pad, which is great for gaming. In addition to functioning as a stereo MP3 player (when using the included headphones), the EM-500 also works as a voice recorder, allowing you to dictate reminders for yourself or voice messages to send with e-mail. Casio promises six hours of battery life, but we often were able to get seven or more as long as we left the backlight on medium brightness.
With its IrDA port, the EM-500 can communicate with wireless devices, and its USB connection provides speedy data transfer--even installing programs larger than a megabyte takes only a few seconds.
Despite the limited memory and the lack of CompactFlash support, the powerful processor, excellent display and long battery life make the EM-500 a competitive entry into the Pocket PC market. --J. Curtis