O2 Joggler

The Joggler device from mobile phone network O2 is being billed as the latest way to let busy families keep track of what their nearest and dearest are up to.

The heart of the device, which resembles a touch-sensitive tablet PC or a small but bulky digital picture frame, is the calendar. But it’s a bit of a let-down because in order to use it you have to use O2’s own calendar application.

People who use Outlook or other calendar programs are out of luck: it won’t synchronise with these. But it is able to set different calendars for each family member and then toggle between them. A nice touch for O2 mobile customers are the free text message alerts that can be set up as appointment reminders. A not-so-nice touch, though, is that the Joggler’s screen does not display any kind of appointment reminders itself.

The Joggler also offers so-called ‘live’ features such as TMC traffic information from Trafficmaster, news and weather reports (which we found very addictive), and O2 promises more information in the same vein in the future, such as the ability to listen to internet radio stations, although that’s missing from the product at the moment.

Although it’s a clever product we’re concerned that O2 has tried to include too many features for a small device. While it doubles nicely as a digital picture frame, in what is admittedly a nice touch, the ability to stream music and videos from a PC over the network is overkill: other dedicated devices do this better. Nor do the basic games with which it’s supplied add anything.

The hardware isn’t cheap-looking and the 7in touchscreen was superb to use, being bright and wonderfully responsive. It is easy to set up as well. It can connect using a wired or wireless network and as long as your fixed-line modem has a spare Ethernet connection you will have no problems.

The Joggler is more versatile than having a fridge door full of scribbled notes and we liked the general idea, but it is still some way from being an indispensable household item, not least because of its price.