NEXIAN NEXIPAK EXPANSION SLEEVE

       As more and more add-on options become available to Pocket PC users, the need for expansion packs becomes increasingly important. Many of the popular handheld options today lack compact flash slots, which will make expansion sleeves more important to many users looking for expandability options such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPRS and GPS. Nexian has an expansion solution called the Nexipak, that we had a look at to determine whether or not it was a viable option.

         The first thing that struck me as I took out the Nexipak's sleeve was it's size. The expansion pack is quite large and the thought of how this would look on my sleek Ipaq 5450 disturbed me. Now I knew this was going to involve a trade off on the size of the device to add the expansion options, it just turned out to be a little too much of a trade off for my initial liking. To try and give you an idea, I would say it doubles the depth of the device when it is added. Now in all fairness, it not only has 2 compact flash slot's, but also a rechargeable Lithium Polymer battery. These are some much needed additions to any heavy duty Pocket PC user, so you have to decide if the trade off in size is worth it to you.

         When you look at the design of the unit, it actually looks like a pretty good job was done incorporating both the CF slots and removable battery into the unit. The only wasted space is a recessed area (shown in the picture above) that sits above the compact flash slots, that is about the size of a compact flash card. Now I am not an expert on any of this, so I am just stating my layman's observations. I will work on the assumption that there was not any way to utilise this space in order to try and make the pack a little thinner, even if it meant sacrificing a bit of the battery power.

         The next step was to pop the expansion pack onto my device, where it was immediately recognized. I then checked and both the extra power as well as the the extra memory from the CF card showed in the settings panels on the device. There is really nothing to getting it to work. Just pop it on, it is immediately recognized and ready for use.

        Now I did not have any expansion CF cards to try out, but for memory it worked just fine. Also, the battery is said to double the current battery power of the Ipaq. To many users this in itself may be more of a feature than the CF slots, as the current battery capacity on the Ipaqs just does not currently suffice for heavy duty usage. As well, the battery is removable meaning if you want to purchase an additional battery, you can really stretch out the life of this thing when charging options are not available.

      All in all the product performs exactly as advertised. If the expandability options are more important to you than maintaining a sleek , pocket sized device, then this will more than do the trick. Personally, I am not sure I could ever carry around a unit that is the size of an Ipaq with this expansion pack on. It just takes away too much of the portability which in my mind has really been the best feature of Pocket PC devices. That being said, it is a trade off that each individual user will have to decide whether or not they are prepared to make.

(Rating System 0-5 with 0 being worst, 5 being best)

Overall Rating-    (3.5)