A Look At Sony's Crazy 2000's PDAs! 

I will forever love the designs of the Sony PDAs. They will always look futuristic to me

As a poor teenager in the early 00's, technology like this was unavailable for me, i only dream about having my own laptop or a powerful mobile device like those Sony PDA's. Late 90's early 00's, what a time to be alive!!!

This is really interesting from a Brazilian's perspective. In 2001 I was just getting a landline. I only saw ONE palmtop in my life, ever and it looked so damn practical I still use pens on my phone when I can. My first notebook in 2008 had a bluetooth and no one I knew had an idea what it was because simply didn't have bluetooth technology available for the common folk. The idea that those things at the same time had wi-fi connection and some would scan code bars is just so fascinating.

I had a Clie back in 2004. I don't remember which model, but it was one that resembled a traditional PDA. It also had a camera, wireless networking, and the proprietary Sony memory. I believe I still have it somewhere. I always liked it.

OMG this is a video I wish had been put on RU-vid earlier! I obsessed over these crazy things in the early 2000s and always wanted one with a color screen so badly. All those HP, Compaq, Sharp, etc. devices were WILD.

I have owned many Clié devices over the years. PalmOS changed my actual handwriting over 20 years ago. I still write my letters according to their stroke constraints! I am somewhat envious of your Sony UX model as I never had one and still think they are awesome. The eBay prices, however, are nuts. It was only a little more expensive when it was new as it is now.

Just FYI, Bluetooth and wifi weren’t limited to the Cliés. The Palm Tungsten T models were probably the closest competitors (high res screen, Bluetooth, expansion slot) and could do things like check mail and surf the web when tethered over Bluetooth. They also had wireless syncing.

The NX80 has just unbelievable styling. Between the pop-out CF slot and the gamepad that's meant to cover half the screen, it looks like a Gameboy equivalent someone would pull out in a Neon Genesis Evangelion movie. "The larger hinge for the screen allowed for a bigger camera module" is THE most 2000s Sony sentence in existence.

While iPhones and Androids are cool and work well there is something I miss about the old days of a Palm or Windows Mobile PDA and using my Nokia 6310i with bluetooth and GPRS to check my email on the go. Manually working out your PPP connection settings. Ahh good times! I remember my wife saying I was a geek with my Sony Clie TH55, I told her in a decade everyone would basically use a similar device once they were more integrated and easier to use. I was right :)

Classic Sony, these are really cool devices. For a PDA class device, these really have a lot of extras included! 2000s Sony devices always seem futuristic in a way, premium build quality and great designs!

Hi! I was a teenager around the PDA era, and always loved these devices despite being way too poor to ever even see one. It's so cool to see these action! Anyway, thank you for the videos and I hope your trembling hands are nothing serious!

The nostalgia on this episode hit especially hard. I would have died to have a clio back in the day. I really wish Sony had a bigger presence in the US phone market. These overblown "flagship " phones have no justification for a 4 digit price tag.

I feel so lucky to have found this channel.. Keep up the good work!

This takes me back in time! Love it! I'd love to see you make a video about the Psion's line of PDA's. Cheers!

Awesome video, I think these are an often overlooked part of early smartphone history. Before Windows Mobile and Symbian smartphones really took off, these were bleeding edge. Playing with these in stores like Circuit City was like a glimpse into the future. Was always cool to see these all over TechTV back in the day, too (Fresh Gear anyone?)

I just recently acquired the top of the line PEG-NZ90 as I always wanted one as teenager. Sadly new batteries are super rare and the camera is dead due to a failed image sensor still tho, one of my fave items in my collection ❤

Very cool devices that I would still love to have today. I don't remember exactly where or when but I remember being awestruck as a kid when I first saw someone pull out their PDA, I'm pretty sure was a Sony, which seemed so futuristic and then a few years later seeing someone with what seemed like a huge smartphone. Looking back I'm pretty sure that's what started my love of gadgets and tech. :)

I had forgotten about the Clié line. IIRC I made the move from a Palm IIIx to an iPAQ H3800 around that time. Later I had one of the last new PDAs, a Nokia N800 which when paired with a folding Bluetooth keyboard and using free WiFi or tethered to my phone was my Linux sysadmin mobile on-call setup. The N800, a device from 2007,had the same issue about charging, only doing so from an adapter with a barrel plug and not via the mini-USB port.

I remember these Sony PDAs being sold at Verizon and Sprint stores, even though I didn’t buy their PDA, it was cool to see the features and demo the device!

I remember these when shopping for my first and only PDA. Was always impressed by the screen quality, blew the competition away. I ended up with a much cheaper Casio BE-300, which, while not high end, had amazing potential with screwing around with the software. Had SO much fun putting a custom OS on it which opened up so much possibility for it.

Love your videos, wish you had more time to create and post, I've already binged your whole channel!

Dude, your videos are GREAT! Not too short, not too long, and very interesting!

Graffiti was an astonishing breakthrough. It was fast, easy to learn, and very accurate. It changed everything.

Great video as always, thanks Colin. Love my UX50, on it's 3rd battery now. The keyboard with it's raised bump rows is quite usable. Never got mine new, but wanted it when new. I think I got it around 2006. Super cool tech. I believe Sony made their own SOC for these. My favourite thing to do on there circa 2006 was to load on flash videos, since it had a flash player. All the fun flash animations from the early 2000's in your pocket, and they took up little space unlike videos at the time. Badger Badger Badger Mushroom Mushroom.

It's so hilarious to me that as a child I thought these were incredibly high tech. Which they were for the time but now a days, we all have tiny personal computers in our hands.

Another great video! I thought feature rich PDA's were incredible at that time... I had no use for one, but I wanted one. It was a fast era though, with blackberry growing in popularity right when PDA's got cool features like cameras, video playback, web browser, and decent color screens.

I love early 2000s pda’s. Had a real soft spot for the Sony Ericsson P series phones. Loved scouring home brew forums and repositories for software and tweaks to get just that little bit extra functionality.

I had a ipaq h3650 for so long. Used it for so many things including emulation, video playback, music play back, note taking, file transfers it was very useful.

Oh the Clie devices. I used to have one at college for daily use, also a Tungsten E. They are in a box somewhere. Great devices and great memories.

Oh cool! I own a UX50! It's in storage but I'm gonna go look for it now. To this day I think it's one of the most BEAUTIFUL pieces of tech ever created. That metal case, the LED's, the shape, the curves between the rows of keys - and I actually got quite good at fast thumb-typing on that keyboard too btw. From the moment I first saw it on display at Best Buy, I was absolutely in love! I used to use it for everything - Email, daily alarm clock, GPS, MP3 player (with 1GB memory stick installed), I even purchased a Doom-like 3D game for it! It's been packed away for about ten years now but thanks for reminding me about it!

I had a similar model to the NX-80. Taking photos and listening to music on the go in 2003 was awesome.

Such memories.. My fondest one was Comdex 98 where I saw the Sony booth featuring a theatre with the short film a whole world on a stick of gum.

Excellent video, very informative, cheers! It's fun to look back.

2:32 I LOVE tiny PC-looking things like this. Most recently I even bought an older iPad mini with a keyboard case and turned it into a micro-PC for DOS emulation. Not exactly super useful, but awesome nonetheless.

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I wish companies still made products like this.

A friend of mine bought the PDA-sized Clie our senior year of high school, while it was kind of a technological dead-end it was crazy futuristic at the time.

Great Review. I have one of the PEG-NX70V's I got in 2002. I fell in love with the aesthetic. I came from a ipaq background, and in comparison, the clie was not as friendly. I hated it, and gave up using it. late 2002 I switched to the Jornada 928WDA. Now that was a phone! People said I looked stupid making calls on that PDA phone back then. Looks at us all now!

Great video! Brings back memories. I still have the PEG-50 my wife got back in 2003 to replace her HP100LX. She was pretty happy with it for a couple of years. I always preferred the HP handhelds myself, until I picked up a Treo (300?) and never looked back.

My Gosh this is very nostalgic!! I hope you would do so many other revisited especially from Nokia or Sony Ericsson line up.. the walkman series were great and so were Nokia's N series

I remember being a just a small lad, late 90s early 00s Collecting cellphone and tech folders and magazines. Dreaming of PDA's or mini pocket laptops which you could play your favourite games on and use as multi media and cell phone.

The Clie TH-55 remains my favorite mobile device ever. Its design and capabilities were amazing for the time. Wish I had it back.

Nice to see a UX50. These always looked a bit oddly shaped in photos. Seeing one in HD video they look really nice, thanks! Early 2000's USB was rarely used for charging, until USB 2.0 became widespread. It was an odd period for charging devices.

I had the Sony NZ-90 which took some really great photos at the time and was very useful with WiFi and the the built in keyboard for web browsing and sending messages/ emails. I bought it in my last year of high school as I wanted something portable that could access the internet. I wanted smartphones before they were the smartphones we know today with internet capabilities.

The CF card slot caught me by surprise. How freaking cool! On the one hand, sure, there were a lot of proprietary connectors, but on the other hand, you get devices like this that were built like digital swiss-army knives. These days manufacturers want to sell you a sealed piece of glass with no extendability.

I’ve always loved Sony products, even I couldn’t afford them as a child or even any PDA 😂 Great video by the way!

I found a used Palm M100 in early 05, along with a keyboard attachment complete in the box at my local Goodwill, and I loved it for taking notes in work meetings before I could afford a proper laptop, and smartphone, but yeah having sync it before the batteries went dead was always a pain, so I would really loved a Sony PDA for sure. These days I think something like a decent Android Tablet, and a bluetooth keyboard is the new PDA being able to do so much of what a laptop can do only with a smaller screen.

Found randomly, enjoyed your video

I still have my UX-50 although I haven't used it in a couple years. It was great for taking notes and playing music/videos. Enjoyed it a lot more back in the day.

Another great video. Thank you!

This exact device was the stuff of dreams when I was a gadget obsessed 12 year old. The entire Palm software ecosystem was really vibrant. Games, media, and web browsing were all possible. For the PDA faithful back then I’d like to think it was our collective yearning that manifested the smartphone into existence.

My dad had the little laptop looking one, and upgraded to something else, so I played around with it when I was young, I absolutely loved it. Super neat, and still have it today.

I had several versions of the Palm. I sorta miss them. What I liked most was you could get a legit metal clam shell, which protected the unit. I never used the Sony's, for the price reasons you mention

I remember in seventh grade I was going to college in the summer and I was so intrigued by this kid that was there with me and he had one of the early Sony PDAs. I remember having a cassette player cd player, and early days mp3 player in my backpack.

Great devices, perfect video. Keep up the good work!

Sony was basically apple before apple. They often came with proprietary memory card, head phone and charger connectors. However, they would often leave options to connect 3rd party devices. My favorite device from Sony was the K750i phone. It was a very mod friendly phone allowing me to install Camera mods with manual focus, flash the rom with Walkman series OS, etc.

I miss being asked how it's going at the beginning of every video. I was torn between on of these or the Zire 72 in 2004. I ultimately went with the Zire 72 and used it a ton. I bought it as a HS graduation gift to myself.

Another video that takes me down memory lane. Had a NX73v in 03/04 and had so much fun with it. While it lacked wifi, it had BT which made it also useful as a music player with a large enough memory stick card, and also enabled it to check emails and send instant messages using YM when thethered over BT to a phone using GPRS/EDGE. Back then, this was so rad! It wasn't just the screen and industrial design that made Clié devices premium. They also had the specs to match relative to other PalmOS devices or even PocketPCs, with a 200MHz XScale and 16MBs of RAM. Other Palm devices at the time run TI OMAPs that run barely above 100MHz

I lusted over that PEG UX50 for ages!

I still have mine, a T615C, which I used it for games and as an ereader until the early 2010s (so until I finally bought a smartphone). I really miss the jog dial and loved the built-in IR remote feature, was great for clowning around

I remembered getting a Palm Pilot from my wife on one of my birthday around 2000. Was excited to get the Clie NX 80 from my friend at half price for $300. It was neat and still had it. The thing with Palms were that it was mainly black and white so 4 AA batteries would last it over 3 months while the Clie is color so it needs to charge every 2 to 3 days similar to today's mobile devices. Life seems so much simplier back then :).

I've had good luck swapping old Sony stuff over to microSD with memory stick adapters. Although it's kind of hit or miss what devices can natively format the adapted cards, but if you can get them formatted another way they still work.

Loved this. I still have my Sony CLIE', after watching this I feel like digging it out. I wonder what I can do with it today? Is there new firmware or apps that can run on these devices? (Making them old devices that can run "new-ish" software?!?!? Put a gaming front end on it? --- looks like there were game controllers as peripherals. Maybe an idea for a future video (fingers crossed 🤞🏻)

I had a Sony PDA phone in early 2000s and it was great. Had a touch screen and a little flip thing that covered the bottom half the screen with rubber buttons that pressed the virtual buttons on the screen, had a stylus, it felt so futuristic.

I got the model that preceded the UX80 that has a 1mp camera & a few less features. I was so bummed when I saw the UX80 come out shortly after I got mine. I'm psyched to learn that batteries still exist for these! I thought the coolest feature was the universal TV remote & wish cell phones had that now.

I used a Sony Clie PEG-SJ33 for a couple of years during my MD training years. Quite liked it. In fact I still have it sitting on a shelf on the charging stand. I noticed I still know how to write the PALM shorthand. The battery has since severely degraded. Still looks like a nice device. The little pen was good in it. Played a ton of Bejeweled on it on public transport.

I really loved those photos.. they had alot of character. Something crystal clear modern photos lack even if edited with filters etc

A great look back. Still have my Clie-SJ33 in a box in the garage. I may dig it out to show my kids...

I had the much more basic SJ-22 that I got in 2003 . Simple, but really nice build quality for the price and the colour backlit screen was top notch. I carried mine daily all the way through until 2010 when I got my first smartphone and it held up great with only minor cosmetic wear and tear.

I had a Clie back in the early 2000s and I loved it.

I've still got my Sony UX50 although it hasn't been powered on for a long long time. I found it fun to use back in the day and took it on my travels. I ripped dvds and cds to it to keep myself entertained. It was an impressive device for it's time.

I remember playing around with these as display units at circuit city of all things.

I remember wanting one of those two sooo bad back in the time, but just couldn't afford them. Had a Newton 2100 at the time, which I sold to get the money for a Tungsten T. A move I sorely regretted. Mock the Newton all you want, but the Handwriting recognition of the later models really was not that bad and productivity was amazing for the smart assist features and natural interface. The only thing that came close was the Psion, which were also very pricey and which I only got much later out of curiosity.

I still have a Palm m130 and it still works! It's missing the stylus pen and has a broken corner of the case, but I still have the original SD card with games and a few other apps. Love that thing to bits!

I had several Clie. The first was the S300 and the last was the NX-70.

I had a handspring Visor, Sony Clie, and eventually a Toshiba PocketPC and while the PocketPC was the most versatile by far, the Clie definitely was the easiest and nicest to use.

What a flashback seeing this, at the beginning of the 2000s i receive my Dads old HP jornada 540, then back on 2003 I had a Clie Peg Ux 50 for birthday that acompañes me everyday on middle school, and use alternating with a Peg Nz 90 another great device. Couple years later on high school I used many Palm Treo devices because I really enjoyed PalmOs, I had the 600, 650, 680 and finally the Pro this one with windows mobile and the experience wasn’t the same thing. Maybe this devices aren’t so great for today standards but on that time 20 years a go they were capable to do of most of the task you can do now with any smartphone, when the most advanced and expensive phones of that time could barely reproduce an MP3 or small video file with a very bad quality, because they had a very limited memory space.

as a geeky tween who wasent allowed a cell phone i wanted one of these sooooo bad. Frequesnt trips to Fry's to drool over Clie's. Thanks for making this video and helping me re live some of those beautiful machines!

Growing up we had one of the palm pilot barcode scanners through a service called shop and scan in the UK where you scan what you buy in your weekly shop. Must of had it up until the late 2010’s

Great walk down memory lane. I had a UX-50 back in the early 2000s and one of the first things I bought when I entered the job market. It was quickly overshadowed by Android and the advent of iOS smartphones but it still was such a forward thinking device and it's sad how far Sony has fallen in that department. Thanks for the video!

I actually never had a Palm device but I did have a Cassiopeia and an HP color Windows CE PDA with clamshell form factor. I also had the first HTC Pocket PC Phone edition around 2002. Had the battery backpack on that and it was surprisingly good compared to what everyone else was using, though people thought it was insane that I had something that large in my pocket at all times. I bet they never would have imagined modern smartphone which are even larger except in thickness. Over the years between then and 2011, I went between Windows and Symbian smart phones until I finally went with Android. It was a great time to be alive, and I remember actually being excited about new phones. Now the progress is incremental and I find that I can go 3 years with a flagship smartphone before needed to move on for some reason or another (usually performance or security). Nothing really facinates me now, modern phones are very much like any appliance.

The Clie is still the way devices should be designed. It had absolutely everything. I had a few of the clamshell ones(continuing my rampant obsession with electronic organizers in the 90s). I also had a SE P910 and a P990. Scroll wheel, stylus, touch screen, modular keyboard, expandable storage, everything.

I had the Sony Ericsson P910 around this time. Similar high end PDA/smart phone hybrid. Felt really futuristic in the days before the iPhone

back in the late 2000's I was doing contract IT support at various bay area companies. I was really surprised to be working at a chip developer and find an executive that was using a 10 year old Palm. I had to explain to them that their new computer had no serial port, and could not connect to the Palm dock. This spiraled into a huge issue and it took us a week to get his stuff migrated off the Palm, and a Blackberry ordered set up, and data migrated.

6:25 I worked for Sony in the early 2000s and was involved with their CLIE handhelds. Sony referred to *all* of its CLIE handhelds as "Personal Entertainment Organizers" from the beginning with the PEG-S300. The "PEG" part of the model number actually was meant to stand for "Personal Entertainment orGanizer" according to Sony's weird internal logic (or because something got lost in translation).

great video thanks colin!

Had these as a teenager in favour of games consoles. Still have a collection of them and they still stack up. Started with the SJ-30, had the NX73V and then the UX-50. Adore them all, they were built to last and still look incredible!

I vaguely remember seeing one of these on display at Frys. Super kewl device.

I've got the SJ-20! So neat to see something I own featured. There's a program for Clies that turns any Memory Stick into an AIBO Memory Stick.

Back then I really wanted a Windows CE device, it was a big dream of mine, specially when HTC was doing stuff with Windows Mobile, I remember falling in love with the interface on the HTC Windows devices, man they looked good.

My first PalmOS device was a Palm m100. I also had a Handspring Visor Deluxe, and a Palm z22.

I always wanted a pda back then but never could get one. For around that time the first closest things were blackberries and Nokia phones. Even today I got a smartphone that do more than a pda could I still looks them as a nice device to have. Great video. I wonder what would you use it for today use.

I really loved PDAs back in the day when I was a kid/teen. It was the closest to ever owning a "computing" device for me at the time!

I still remember George Clooney using a Sony Clie-Peg-NZ90 in the movie "Solaris" (2002) One of my favorite Sci-Fi movies.

Thanks for the video - didn't know those were around back then. Too bad as I likely would have bought one being a big Palm user since their launch. Treo 650 was my last before moving to iPhone. Still love the Palm OS though.

P.D.A in the year 2000 - Personal Digital Assistant P.D.A today - Public Display of Affection

Think I still have a Zire 71 somewhere. It had that slide up to reveal the camera module form factor.

Sony's PDAs were just beautiful design,I had one and it was a very eye catching design

I loved these. I had one of the basic models. It was still rocking. Sony was great at well made products.

In 2005 I had Palms higher end TX model. It was the last gasp of the PDA from what I remember. It didn't have a camera but it had a nice 320x480 color display, Wifi, Bluetooth, IrDA, a 300 mhz processor with 32 megs of ram. 128 megs of flash storage and an SD card slot that could take up to 512 meg SD cards. Those numbers sound low today but they were excellent at the time for a PDA. I also had the optional Tom Tom GPS accessory with an in car dock that allowed me to mount the Palm to my dash and use it as a voice guided NAV (complete with celebrity voices.) There were tons of accessories available like a camera too but I preferred to use the camera in my phone and transfer data between my phone and PDA using bluetooth. The PDA could even use it's dialer program along with it's built in contacts application to dial contacts on my phone using the bluetooth connection. I could keep all my appointments in the calendar application and use the Tom Tom to guide me to the address of the appointment and shortly before arriving use the PDA to dial the stored number of the customer on my Samsung A900 phone to let them know I was almost there. In 2005 it all felt very high tech and futuristic.

I would be interested to see a video where you fix or try to fix the second one