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Asus a730 Review by Matt Keys - Page 4

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Asus a620	Asus a730	Hewlett Packard 1910

As I stated earlier in this review, Asus has really gone in a different direction with this new line of PocketPC's. The a730 looks more like a PocketPC that you might expect to come from HP. The button styling and curves of the unit are very reminiscent of the HP 1945 series. As you can see above, the a730 is not much taller or wider than the HP 1910 (the smallest PocketPC I have ever owned).When compared to the a620, the a730 is both shorter and less wide. In my opinion, the a730 is both a perfect size and shape. It has curves in the right places to make it both appealing and very comfortable in your hand.

In the image above you see from top to bottom: HP 1910, Asus a730, Asus a620. The a730 is thicker than both the 1910 and the a620. However I have no complaints in this area, in fact I am amazed Asus was able to put what they did in so small of a device.

Built in Camera

The a730 comes with a built in 1.3 megapixel camera. It is capable of taking pictures at a maximum resolution of 1280x960 pixels. The a730's camera is also capable of recording video at a maximum resolution of 352x288. In record mode you have the option of High Medium or Low quality sound and video. Video can be saved as either an *.AVI file, or as a *.3gp file. I have never heard of a *.3gp file, but apparently it is an mpeg4 standard used mostly in phones. Recording in *.3gp lets you record at a higher framerate (25-30fps) than with a *.AVI.

The software itself that is used for recording and capturing pictures leaves much to be desired. It is not limited in features, but unfortunately it is laid out in a way that makes it difficult to operate and is not very "user friendly". But my biggest complaint is that the software is extremely slow. Just opening up the Asus Camera program takes a full 8-9 seconds to come up.

Asus Camera Menu
Record/Capture Mode		Video Record Settings

As a test I took a video at highest quality and highest resolution in normal indoor lighting.

Test Video Taken with a730
(Right click and choose "save target as")

As you can see from the video, the quality is not exactly very impressive. Even though the kitchen was very well lit, the video is very dark and it is hard to make out much detail. That was an Apple Pie I was getting from the fridge by the way ;). Also right around when I took the pie out of the fridge, the video seemed to mess up and go scrambled with different colors. I saw this behavior a couple more times in low light conditions.

The pictures on the other hand I had some better luck with. I still had problems with getting proper lighting. It seems to me that this camera is really only useful outdoors in daylight. With that said, I was able to get some decent looking pictures with it. The pictures you see below are all thumbnailed, and can be clicked to see the originals.

I took some similar shots to these with my cell phones' digital camera, which is also a 1.3 megapixel. I found that the a730's camera took sharper, less grainy photos with much better color accuracy. I put together a comparison of the two cameras below. The shot on the left was taken with my 1.3 MP Toshiba VM4050 camera phone at its highest quality. The shot on the right was taken with the a730, also on its highest quality.

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