It's been a year since Asus introduced its first PDA, the Mypal A600, which represents a high performance curve for Taiwanese manufacturer's Mypal A620 to beat.

Asus caused a sensation with the original Mypal A600, marketed in the US by Zayotech as the Zayo. This was not just because of its high build quality and attractive design: the MyPal/Zayo A600 was the first PDA equipped with an Xscale CPU (PXA250/400MHz). The nominal speed advantage of the Xscale processor over the Strongarm CPU (206 MHz) was a major selling point at the time, because it made the Mypal/Zayo A600 the fastest PDA on the market.

But it was not only the fastest; it also represented the PDA with the longest battery life with Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002 operating system. Indeed, Asus' "office in you pocket" battery life was over eight hours.

So the new Mypal A620 has a difficult act to follow as we see how Asus' latest offering shapes up on the test bench.