Reviewed: Sony Ericsson M600i

We’ve been eyeing up the official images of the Sony Ericsson M600i for months, and now we’ve got the real thing to test.

It is, if you remember, soon to get a sister in the form of the Walkman-branded W950i, with its 4GB of storage. This, however, is the business-orientated version. It comes in black or white with blue highlights, and has a solid build quality that belies its 112g weight. It has no camera.

The unique keyboard is designed for taking full advantage of push email and 3G internet. Each key has two letters, depending on what side of the key you press.

Fortunately, the keys have a positive action so this is easier than it sounds. That said, perhaps it is just our alcohol-addled brains but we couldn’t relax into a decent Qwerty typing speed. Only occasionally did we manage a flow of letters speedy enough to threaten a well-used predictive text system (which, of course, the W950i will have when it arrives). We recommend trying the M600i out before you buy if you plan to write essays.

Further compounding the amount of concentration required to type is the M600i’s plethora of input types. As well as the keyboard, it has a touch screen and, on the left hand side, a clicky jog wheel and ‘back’ button. Surely one too many? The OS doesn’t help matters. It’s the same Symbian/UIQ mix as seen on the P990 – pleasantly styled, but a little rough and clunky.

When the business day is over, the M600i makes a decent multimedia device. It has a large, bright 2.6-inch screen with QVGA resolution, 30fps video playback and A2DP stereo Bluetooth support. A bundled golf game shows off the M600i’s 3D gaming abilities too.

Shame it doesn’t have the W950i’s 4GB storage; it uses Sony M2 memory cards which come in at about £36 per gigabyte.

So, the M600i. It works, but not in a way that’ll have us foaming at the mouth and calling up the trophy-making man. We’d be inclined to wait for the W950i.

Sony Ericsson M600i

Price: £free with contract, £310 without

On sale: Now

Contact: Sony Ericsson

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Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home