ShackNews have thrown up their 3 page review of Tapwave's Zodiac which is a Palm based handheld games console.
The key thing to remember about this device is that it?s billed as a gaming portable first, productivity handheld second. This is a gaming site, therefore our focus is on whether or not the Zodiac is a premier player in this growing handheld gaming market. With that said, let?s take a look at the Zodiac hardware piece by piece.
The guts of the Zodiac come in two flavors with the only difference being memory size (32MB or 128MB). It sports a Motorola ARM9 200MHz processor, ATI Imageon W4200 graphics accelerator with 8MB dedicated SDRAM, and built-in force feedback. As for the screen; it?s beautiful. It is just plain beautiful. Bright, sharp, colorful, clean, and most importantly, highly resistant to scratches (trust me, I tried). It is a 3.8 inch transflective, 480x320 res, backlit, 16-bit color display. Graphics are clean and text is clear; what more could you ask for? The cost difference of the two models is $100 ($299 for 32MB vs. $399 for 128MB).
Tapwave Zodiac Review
The key thing to remember about this device is that it?s billed as a gaming portable first, productivity handheld second. This is a gaming site, therefore our focus is on whether or not the Zodiac is a premier player in this growing handheld gaming market. With that said, let?s take a look at the Zodiac hardware piece by piece.
The guts of the Zodiac come in two flavors with the only difference being memory size (32MB or 128MB). It sports a Motorola ARM9 200MHz processor, ATI Imageon W4200 graphics accelerator with 8MB dedicated SDRAM, and built-in force feedback. As for the screen; it?s beautiful. It is just plain beautiful. Bright, sharp, colorful, clean, and most importantly, highly resistant to scratches (trust me, I tried). It is a 3.8 inch transflective, 480x320 res, backlit, 16-bit color display. Graphics are clean and text is clear; what more could you ask for? The cost difference of the two models is $100 ($299 for 32MB vs. $399 for 128MB).
Tapwave Zodiac Review
