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O2 Joggler family organiser
More PMP than parental PDA
The Joggler's connection ports reflect the fact that it is aimed at the technically illiterate. All you get is an Ethernet port, 3.5mm audio out, power socket and a USB port. The USB port is simply for plugging in media loaded onto memory sticks and not for hooking up the Joggler to a PC. When we tried to connect the Joggler to a Windows PC, it didn't even appear as a USB storage device. One thing we would have liked to see is an SD card slot – having a USB stick dangling out of the side is not particularly elegant.
Handles most content and replays streaming media
The two small stereo speakers at the back of the Joggler sound tinny, sharp and generally unpleasant. They just about suffice for watching a movie, but you wouldn't want to listen to music through them for any length of time and we suspect most users will connect their Joggler to some powered speakers via the 3.5mm socket.
The Joggler's capacitive screen supports a very good touch interface. That's not good as in 'good but not Apple good', but good – period. Commands can only be imputed by taps, rather than swipes or multi-touch gestures, but both the reaction time and sensitivity are excellent, as is the virtual keyboard design. The UI's performance is helped by the fact that the Joggler's Linux-based operating system is powered by a pretty manly chip – an Intel Atom clocked at 1.1Ghz, to be exact.
In the absence of a comprehensive spec sheet we tried an assemblage of media files on the Joggler and found that it supports MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis and WAV audio files though not FLAC or AAC. On the video front we had luck with WMV, H.264, MPEG-4 and Xvid/DivX files, along with JPEG images. The Joggler can cope with video resolutions well beyond its native screen resolution - while it struggled with a 1080i DivX file, a 1280x720 example played faultlessly, as did 960x720 H.264 and WMV files.
As far as video playback is concerned the Joggler is right up there alongside the Archos 7 in terms of clarity, colour and definition. While it may lack many of the finer settings and tweaks you find on dedicated PMPs, it nevertheless managed to play every video we tried in the correct aspect ratio with a simple tap taking the image to full screen.
The fridge magnet alternative
Though we can't prove it, from the looks of things we suspect that the screen supports a 16m colour palette. Sadly there's no DRM support though, so you won't be able to watch your iPlayer downloads.