Buyer's Guide

Spend it like Beckham

Charles Mclellan ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 18 Jun 2003

Mobile phone

No self-respecting footballer would be seen dead without his mobile phone. After all, a hotline to a player's agent is as vital a part of the modern game as a cunning change of pace or the ability to bend a free-kick like, well, Beckham. But which one to buy?

The 'feature' phone of the moment has to be Sony Ericsson's all-singing, all-dancing P800. Its extensive feature set includes tri-band GSM, GPRS, HSCSD, Bluetooth, Symbian-based PDA functionality, a built-in digital camera and a Memory Stick Duo slot.

Feature phone: Sony Ericsson P800.

The P800 is a bit bulky though, and if Becks just wants a stylish mobile that won't disturb the cut of his Armani jacket, we recommend another Sony Ericsson model, the dinky T68i. Another tri-band GSM, GPRS, Bluetooth unit, the T68i weighs just 85g compared to the P800's 158g.

Compact GPRS/Bluetooth phone: Sony Ericsson T68i.
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Handheld

If the mobile phone is the nippy striker of team gadget, then the handheld computer is the midfield general -- more versatile, blessed with greater vision (a bigger screen), but generally heavier. Should Becks want to keep a reasonably detailed contacts database (dossiers on opposing players, perhaps), track his (or his wife's) spending, sketch out tactical ideas on a virtual 'Big Ron's Chalkboard' or do a bit of email/Web browsing on the move, then he'll need a handheld.

Top of the Pocket PC heap -- both in terms of features and price -- at the moment is Toshiba's Pocket PC e750. With built-in Wi-Fi (great for convenient surfing should the Real Madrid dressing room or players' lounge become a 'hot-spot'), 96MB of storage, CompactFlash and SD/MMC slots, and a high-quality transflective screen, the e750 is a veritable Ferrari among handhelds and therefore a natural for the Beckham shopping list.

Top-end Pocket PC handheld: Toshiba Pocket PC e750.
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But perhaps Becks is more of a Palm kind of guy than a Pocket PC merchant. In which case, we recommend the Palm Tungsten C. As well as built-in Wi-Fi, 64MB of RAM and a high-resolution screen, the Tungsten C has a usable thumb keyboard -- so Becks won't have to use Graffiti to enter text. Also, compared to Toshiba's e750, the Tungsten C's software bundle is positively groaning with goodies.

Top-end Palm OS handheld: Palm Tungsten C.
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In football, the 'utility player' can be a great asset to a team (old-timers, think Paul Madeley from Don Revie's Leeds; fresher faces, think Man U's Phil Neville); in the handheld world, we're talking hybrid devices that combine a PDA with a digital camera or a mobile phone.

Palm's Zire 71 incorporates a VGA-resolution camera using a neat sliding mechanism that reveals the shutter release button. Another (more premium-priced) camera-equipped handheld is Sony's feature-packed CLIE PEG-NZ90, which provides a 2-megapixel camera along with a fast processor, a thumb keyboard and Bluetooth (but no Wi-Fi). In the handheld/phone hybrid category, we'd recommend the O2 xda in the Pocket PC camp, and Palm's Tungsten W (with reservations) for Palm OS fans.

Notebook PC

If El Becks is going to run any serious applications over in Spain (FIFA 2003 perhaps, or -- in an attempt to beat ex-boss Alex Ferguson at his own game -- Championship Manager 4), then he'll need a 'proper' computer. We think a notebook would best suit the dynamic midfielder's mobile lifestyle, so here's the cream of the crop.

Style is clearly important to our boy, so he'll undoubtedly be interested in a highly portable Sony notebook. The 2.1kg Pentium M/Centrino-based VAIO PCG-Z1SP is one of the most stylish notebooks around, and it performs pretty well too, but we were disappointed with its three-hour battery life. It'll be worth keeping an eye out for the upcoming VAIO PCG-TR1, though; this is a smaller 1.4kg Centrino system that promises better battery life thanks to its ultra-low-voltage Pentium M chip.

However, neither of these Sony systems is designed to deliver decent 3D graphics acceleration, which is essential for playing games, so we recommend IBM's excellent 1.5GHz Pentium M-based ThinkPad T40. It's perfectly portable at about 2.3kg, performs well enough, and delivers excellent battery life -- four hours with the standard battery and around seven with the optional high-capacity unit. The T40 is no slouch in the design department either, although its black-clad livery and red pointing stick might bring back uncomfortable referee-related memories for Becks, should he go for it.

King of the thin-and-lights: IBM ThinkPad T40.
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For a no-holds-barred desktop replacement notebook, there's really only one contender: Dell's 4kg Inspiron 8500. It has a 15.4in. wide-aspect screen (great for watching DVD movies), top-class 3D acceleration, dual-band wireless antennae, a massive hard disk, a DVD/CD-RW combo drive -- you name it, it's almost certainly there. You can even get an array of snap-on lid covers in different colours and designs, which should appeal to the chameleon-like Beckham.

No-holds-barred desktop replacement: Dell Inspiron 8500.
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If it's pure ostentation Becks is after (and let's face it, that's not unlikely), then there are a couple of 17in.-screened behemoths available: Apple's PowerBook G4 and Acer's Aspire 1700. The relatively slimline, 3.1kg PowerBook G4 is less behemoth-like than the gargantuan Aspire 1700, which at over 7kg is likely to require a burly minder or the back of a hefty SUV to get it from A to B. These are definitely the hulking centre-halves of the notebook world.

Digital camera

Cameras feature heavily, and often intrusively, in the Beckhams' lives, but that's not to say they won't be interested in photography themselves. Digital cameras, like footballers, come in many shapes and sizes, but we reckon a couple of models will see the main bases covered.

For a point-and-shoot-style camera, we recommend Canon's PowerShot S45, which, with a 4 megapixel CCD, a 3X zoom lens and plenty of advanced features, delivers top-notch image quality in a compact package.

Point and shoot with Canon's PowerShot S45.
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Shooting, of course, is Beckham's forte, and a thoroughbred shooter such as David is going require a state-of-the-art camera should he become serious about digital photography. At the moment, the state of the digital camera art is very much embodied in Canon's 11-megapixel EOS 1Ds, and although this professional-level SLR's £6,000-plus price tag would put most of us off, we can safely assume that this won't prove a problem for the £120,000-a-week Becks.

State of the art digital SLR: Canon EOS 1Ds.
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Perhaps the EOS 1Ds's only weakness is its continuous shooting speed, which is a somewhat sluggish 3 frames per second. This, ironically enough, makes it less than ideal for photojournalism and sports photography. Becks will be fine with the 1Ds if he sticks to high-quality images of the Spanish landscape or fashion shots -- and let's face it, he's unlikely to want to pull a poacher-turned-gamekeeper act and join the paparazzi.

Camcorder

Most families with growing children will want to record their offspring's progress in home movies, and the Beckhams are unlikely to be any different. So a MiniDV camcorder (or two) has definitely got to be on the shopping list.

Starting at the top of the market, Canon's 3-CCD DM-XM2E is pretty much the best MiniDV camcorder that money (around £2,000 of it) can buy. With superb image quality, comprehensive manual controls and optical image stabilisation, our boy could produce Becks: The Movie on this beauty if he were so minded.

The best MiniDV camcorder money can buy: Canon DM-XM2E.
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Back in more portable territory (the XM2 is bulky and weighs a hefty 1.25kg), we recommend the Sony DCR-TRV60E. This single-CCD (2.1 megapixel) camcorder weighs a manageable 640g, has a 10X optical zoom lens, supports a true 16:9 wide-screen mode and has a very usable touch-screen LCD. It's not big on manual controls, but if you want your camcorder to take care of image settings for you, it's a great choice.

Single-CCD camcorder choice: Sony DCR-TRV60E.
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Gadgets

As our football-themed technology roundup heads for time added on, we come to the gadgets section. Having the right accessories has always been important for an iconic figure such as Becks, and the same definitely holds true when it comes to technology.

Gadgets don't come much more iconic than Apple's 30GB iPod MP3 player. We love almost everything about this beautifully designed player, although the battery life could be longer: it has a superb design and interface, with touch-sensitive backlit buttons, excellent playlist features, clean and configurable sound and smooth synchronisation with both Windows PCs and Macintoshes. If Becks doesn't have one already, he should shell out immediately -- it's even decked out in Real Madrid's colours!

The iconc 30GB iPod MP3 player.
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Going beyond the music-only iPod, we come to the new category of Personal Video Players (PVPs), effectively created last year by Archos with its 20GB Jukebox Multimedia 20. The company's latest PVP, the AV320 Video Recorder, features a 3.8in. LCD screen that's big enough to be viewed comfortably from about a metre and a much-improved interface. This cutting-edge gadget has everything needed for portable multimedia: analogue and digital audio in and out; live audio and voice memo capture; video in via a VCR/DVD/TV connection; you can even capture still images via an upcoming camera attachment. A gadget to drool (or perhaps, in the present context, dribble) over.

Archos AV320 Video Recorder: a PVP to drool over.

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