I had big expectations while waiting for my Pandora to arrive, because I have been reading a lot about all the nice things it can do, but I was also worried about various issues that are discussed on the forums. I'm happy to say that my expectations are met. Here are my first impressions:
- The Pandora is small, very small. When you look at YouTube movies of people playing games or doing other stuff on the Pandora, it seems like the screen is bigger (probably just because I'm watching the movies on a big screen or even on a projector). Of course it is nice that it is small, because I can carry it in my pocket and hold it in my hands very comfortably (unlike, say, my Vaio P series mini-laptop, which is small and has a very, very nice keyboard, but you have to put it on a table).
- The build quality is very nice in my opinion. It feels solid and sturdy; maybe the hinge will get looser over time but I'm mostly using the Pandora with the lid completely open or completely closed anyway. My left trigger button is a bit loose, but it's not like it's going to fall off or anything, and it works just fine. The screen is very slightly non-horizontal: at the top of the screen, the distance to the frame is a fraction of a milimeter bigger on the right than on the left. This is not noticable unless you have bright colors at the screen edges and look at it very carefully. Again, not a big deal at all. Other than these two very minor things, the build quality is very professional. I actually like the plastic, it feels warmer than metal cases, allows a better grip (metal can become a bit slippery when sweating), and no visible fingerprints is nice - if you have an iPad or similar device, you'll appreciate that.
- The screen quality is great. Obviously in direct sunlight on a sunny day it is not going to be very usable, but in normal lighting conditions, the screen looks great, even with low backlight settings. After calibration, the touch screen works very well and precise; I can actually draw stuff on it. In comparison, drawing on an iPad is like fingerpainting with very thick fingers. For web browsing, being able to click on a link without having to zoom in first to make sure that you're not clicking the wrong thing is obviously nice.
- The sound quality is great. The analog volume knob is great - I hate those digital volume buttons that jump right from silence to too loud and depend on software to actually do anything (meaning slight delays between button presses and actual volume change, and not working at all if for some reason the OS does not catch the button event). It is nice to have a standard headphone jack (this should be a no-brainer, but Apple thinks otherwise, which means I still cannot use any of my headphones with my iPad).
- I'm no expert (never owned any game controllers except joysticks for the C64), but the dpad, action buttons and nubs feel very good.
- The keyboard is great. Thumb-typing works well after just a little practice; left trigger being SHIFT helps a lot. If you're used to using lots of shortcuts like CTRL-SHIFT-T to open a new terminal tab or CTRL-PAGEUP/DOWN to switch between terminal tabs: some of these are easier to do on the Pandora than on a real keyboard! Some combinations are tricky though, especially those involving ALT and the function-keys, e.g. ALT-F4 is not very convenient, and neither is ALT-TAB. But most shortcuts can be configured anyway. No keyboard backlight means it is hard to code in the dark, and the shiny buttons are a bit annoying in direct sunlight. Other than that, great keyboard given the space constraints.
- The general quality of the software is very high: of course everything can always be more polished, but if you're used to GNU/Linux like me, things are very user-friendly. The PND Manager is great, it should be included in the next firmware release - or alternatively, some set of "recommended PND's" or "starter's kit SD card image" should be put somewhere visible to new Pandora owners, and the PND Manager should be in it, along with things like the community codecs. The only thing I wish was added is an easy way to upgrade the firmware without losing your settings; at least it could back up /home/* to the SD card and put it back, but I would also like to be able to upgrade the system I'm booting from SD card without losing everything I've installed there.
- I've seen many complaints about wireless not working or being slow. Mine works very well; I easily get download speeds of 500MB/sec which is more than enough for me. The antenna range seems to be about the same as on my laptops, which is nice because I think my laptops throw more power at it. Only minor issue: the wifi enable/disable toggle should be integrated into the wifi connection applet, so this takes up less space (I'm using a vertical task bar so space counts!).
- So far, I've not had to overclock at all. At the default cpu speed, everything I tried works well enough. I've been compiling some large projects on the Pandora itself (e.g. SWI-Prolog; does anyone want me to package this in a PND by the way? It just compiles out of the box (after installing the dependencies, which are simple opkg installs), which is a quite cpu intensive task, and it is fast enough for me, comparable to doing it on a PC or big laptop. I suspect that it is fast because reading many relatively small files from an SD card could be faster than reading them from a rotating hard disk (which add seek times).
- Battery life is excellent! I'm getting something like 10 hours when downloading stuff while keeping the CPU busy (doing big compiles) and with the screen backlight on an intermediate value. Without wifi and with a less bright screen, it's more like 14 hours. With the lid closed, just playing music, I'm getting >20 hours. This is really a very strong point of the Pandora. I only wish there was something like powertop (which is a power monitoring/tweaking tool, specific for intel) for the Pandora, so I can figure out how to get even more out of it. Also, I hope there soon will be a music player that uses the DSP so it uses even less power. Also, spare batteries are quite cheap and small (compared to laptops), so if needed, I could put one or a few spare batteries in my pocket (maybe I have abnormally large pockets, but I could fit about 6-8 Pandoras in the pockets of my current pants (I would need a belt though because that would be quite some weight), so I could in theory carry 20 or so spare batteries with my Pandora). Anyway, just on one battery the battery life is quite nice, certainly enough to get me through the day without needing to think about the power plug.
In conclusion, even though I had high expectations, so far the Pandora has not disappointed me in any way! Big thanks to all the hardware and software developers who made this possible!
- The Pandora is small, very small. When you look at YouTube movies of people playing games or doing other stuff on the Pandora, it seems like the screen is bigger (probably just because I'm watching the movies on a big screen or even on a projector). Of course it is nice that it is small, because I can carry it in my pocket and hold it in my hands very comfortably (unlike, say, my Vaio P series mini-laptop, which is small and has a very, very nice keyboard, but you have to put it on a table).
- The build quality is very nice in my opinion. It feels solid and sturdy; maybe the hinge will get looser over time but I'm mostly using the Pandora with the lid completely open or completely closed anyway. My left trigger button is a bit loose, but it's not like it's going to fall off or anything, and it works just fine. The screen is very slightly non-horizontal: at the top of the screen, the distance to the frame is a fraction of a milimeter bigger on the right than on the left. This is not noticable unless you have bright colors at the screen edges and look at it very carefully. Again, not a big deal at all. Other than these two very minor things, the build quality is very professional. I actually like the plastic, it feels warmer than metal cases, allows a better grip (metal can become a bit slippery when sweating), and no visible fingerprints is nice - if you have an iPad or similar device, you'll appreciate that.
- The screen quality is great. Obviously in direct sunlight on a sunny day it is not going to be very usable, but in normal lighting conditions, the screen looks great, even with low backlight settings. After calibration, the touch screen works very well and precise; I can actually draw stuff on it. In comparison, drawing on an iPad is like fingerpainting with very thick fingers. For web browsing, being able to click on a link without having to zoom in first to make sure that you're not clicking the wrong thing is obviously nice.
- The sound quality is great. The analog volume knob is great - I hate those digital volume buttons that jump right from silence to too loud and depend on software to actually do anything (meaning slight delays between button presses and actual volume change, and not working at all if for some reason the OS does not catch the button event). It is nice to have a standard headphone jack (this should be a no-brainer, but Apple thinks otherwise, which means I still cannot use any of my headphones with my iPad).
- I'm no expert (never owned any game controllers except joysticks for the C64), but the dpad, action buttons and nubs feel very good.
- The keyboard is great. Thumb-typing works well after just a little practice; left trigger being SHIFT helps a lot. If you're used to using lots of shortcuts like CTRL-SHIFT-T to open a new terminal tab or CTRL-PAGEUP/DOWN to switch between terminal tabs: some of these are easier to do on the Pandora than on a real keyboard! Some combinations are tricky though, especially those involving ALT and the function-keys, e.g. ALT-F4 is not very convenient, and neither is ALT-TAB. But most shortcuts can be configured anyway. No keyboard backlight means it is hard to code in the dark, and the shiny buttons are a bit annoying in direct sunlight. Other than that, great keyboard given the space constraints.
- The general quality of the software is very high: of course everything can always be more polished, but if you're used to GNU/Linux like me, things are very user-friendly. The PND Manager is great, it should be included in the next firmware release - or alternatively, some set of "recommended PND's" or "starter's kit SD card image" should be put somewhere visible to new Pandora owners, and the PND Manager should be in it, along with things like the community codecs. The only thing I wish was added is an easy way to upgrade the firmware without losing your settings; at least it could back up /home/* to the SD card and put it back, but I would also like to be able to upgrade the system I'm booting from SD card without losing everything I've installed there.
- I've seen many complaints about wireless not working or being slow. Mine works very well; I easily get download speeds of 500MB/sec which is more than enough for me. The antenna range seems to be about the same as on my laptops, which is nice because I think my laptops throw more power at it. Only minor issue: the wifi enable/disable toggle should be integrated into the wifi connection applet, so this takes up less space (I'm using a vertical task bar so space counts!).
- So far, I've not had to overclock at all. At the default cpu speed, everything I tried works well enough. I've been compiling some large projects on the Pandora itself (e.g. SWI-Prolog; does anyone want me to package this in a PND by the way? It just compiles out of the box (after installing the dependencies, which are simple opkg installs), which is a quite cpu intensive task, and it is fast enough for me, comparable to doing it on a PC or big laptop. I suspect that it is fast because reading many relatively small files from an SD card could be faster than reading them from a rotating hard disk (which add seek times).
- Battery life is excellent! I'm getting something like 10 hours when downloading stuff while keeping the CPU busy (doing big compiles) and with the screen backlight on an intermediate value. Without wifi and with a less bright screen, it's more like 14 hours. With the lid closed, just playing music, I'm getting >20 hours. This is really a very strong point of the Pandora. I only wish there was something like powertop (which is a power monitoring/tweaking tool, specific for intel) for the Pandora, so I can figure out how to get even more out of it. Also, I hope there soon will be a music player that uses the DSP so it uses even less power. Also, spare batteries are quite cheap and small (compared to laptops), so if needed, I could put one or a few spare batteries in my pocket (maybe I have abnormally large pockets, but I could fit about 6-8 Pandoras in the pockets of my current pants (I would need a belt though because that would be quite some weight), so I could in theory carry 20 or so spare batteries with my Pandora). Anyway, just on one battery the battery life is quite nice, certainly enough to get me through the day without needing to think about the power plug.
In conclusion, even though I had high expectations, so far the Pandora has not disappointed me in any way! Big thanks to all the hardware and software developers who made this possible!
