Battery performance

The Psion 3a boasts a month’s battery life between battery swaps and many months of safe storage thanks to the backup battery cleverly hidden under one of the flash memory slots. This level of performance is unprecedented in 2026 albeit with the need to swap out the 2 AA batteries every 4 weeks or so. This will cost you approximately £8 over a year (pack of 20 from Amazon) and I for one believe this to be a better solution than charging my iPhone every single day.

Data input

A real keyboard feels like a joy to use compared to the thumb screen typing you get on almost all mobile devices today. The keys are admittedly not the best, see the Psion 5MX for a solution which has never been beaten, but there is something special about seeing a full keyboard in a mobile device that is landscape. It truly does feel like a miniature computer in use which cannot be said for almost any other device.

Apps

You get everything you need to stay organised on the 3a; a calendar with alarms, spreadsheets, clock and alarms, word processor, contacts, world clock, calculator, a programmable language and a voice recorder. This is genuinely all you need when you think about it. The basics are covered and looking for more is mere clutter that you can live without. Apps can be downloaded from the internet and installed with a huge range of games, productivity solutions and other tools to ensure you can expand your Psion to suit you. It does require a physical connection to a PC, but it’s not like you can send apps over the air magically so that makes sense.

Design

The design is amazing with a very clever hinge mechanism that swivels out a centre bar with app icons which you can press to access your choice instantly. It’s a revolutionary feeling when you first use it and the novelty never wears off. Everything about the 3a feels smooth, pocketable and professional.

Build quality

Superb. It feels rock solid and I would expect it to work perfectly for many years. Let’s hope that those clever hinges don’t crack or fail consistently in a decade or two because this really does look like a weak spot with too much load in too small a space.

Screen

The monochrome LCD screen boasts a clean 480 × 160 pixel resolution and is a huge 5.2″ in size. This gives you all of the space you need for word document creation and organising your days with ease. It would be nice to see a backlight, but maybe this will come in a future upgrade which I would call the Psion 3c just because.

Conclusion

The Psion 3a really does feel like a computer in the pocket. It is easy to carry around, intuitive to use, expandable in terms of memory and apps, and extremely reliable. With computers only just starting to become commonplace, this device proves that mobile computing is possible in the early stages of what will become a tech revolution and I look forward to whatever will come next.

Looking back (2026)

Looking back a third of a century, it felt strange to have lost my Psion 3a somewhere which caused me to spend a huge £25 on eBay to replace it. Every feeling came back as though the past 33 years didn’t happen, but the main sensation I noticed was that it is truly a useable device in 2026. No connectivity, no camera, no media etc really does not matter because it is still a highly productive device that is more than capable, and foldable devices are back at the forefront of mobile tech as well. It’s just a shame that finding one with decent hinges is becoming harder and harder as time passes.

Categories: Product Reviews, Retro