Everyone knows I love Sony gadgets. Last week, I got my Sony Mylo device. I finally got it connected last night, so now I can write about it. “Mylo� stands for My Life Online. Mylo is the new WiFi communicator from Sony. Here are some pictures of what you get out of the box for $349.

First of all, the hardware is impressively small and sexy. The industrial design is very appealing and they pack a lot of stuff into a tiny package. Sony hardware engineers did an impressive job. The Mylo can play videos and MP3s, show pictures, and includes Opera web browser, Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, and more. It is an 802.11b device. The Mylo is multi-tasking so you can listen to music while you do other things, and you can keep all the communications apps running simultaneously. I found the device quite responsive.

The controls except the keyboard are well designed, and the device is fairly intuitive to use for a proprietary device. The battery life seems good. The device is lightweight, and the rechargeable battery is removable like most cellphones so you can carry a spare. It comes with some nice headphones. The device has 1GB of internal RAM plus expansion which is pretty good. You can buy it in black or white which is nice.

While the Mylo definately is a cool device, I thought some things could use improvement.

Even though I have relatively small hands, I found the keyboard a little too small and the repeat rate on the keys is not good. It doesn’t have a good feel. Worse however, is that the keyboard is not backlit so I cannot use the device without good lighting. That is a pity because the screen is otherwise quite bright.

I have two WiFi access points, and I could only get it to connect to one. A third public access point in my neighborhood (yes, we have free WiFi in my Silicon Valley neighborhood) it kind of connects to but not really and it fails. And if you don’t have WiFi, the device is cute but not so useful. The process for connecting to WiFi access points while not bad, could use some improvement and robustness. It would be good if the device also supported Bluetooth (for connecting through a cellphone), or 802.11g. All the devices at my house are 802.11g so I had to switch my router back to mixed from “g-only� to get the Mylo to work. Otherwise, I would have been 0 for 3.

Since the Mylo is all about being online, I expected to see more of an online portal and wireless services for the device. When you register for your Mylo ID, you don’t get too much more than 3 offers from third parties. Moreover, this device is supposed to be targetted at young people from the “Myspace generation.” I tried browsing to myspace.com but the experience is not so good–I could not navigate the site. If the mylo could be used with myspace, I imagine my daughters would want one! And youtube.com videos I couldn’t see either because the browser lacks Flash.

The Mylo is only being promoted and sold online. That kind of makes sense to me. What I didn’t get is the campaign “Rush Myloâ€? which is some “Animal Houseâ€?–esque spoof on fraternities. I know I am not in the target market for Mylo anymore, but I was in fraternity in college and I found the campaign bizarre and somewhat offensive. I don’t see how it would appeal to the vast majority of students who are not interested in fraternities at all either. I hope I am either wrong, or they come up with a better marketing campaign.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.