The serious student of Chinese has always had a difficult choice when it comes to a good dictionary.
The best ones are huge and bulky items to carry.
Oxford has a handy little red dictionary that almost fits in a pocket without creating much of a bulge. 'Is that a Chinese dictionary in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?' Mae West might have said.
Oxford's Concise English-Chinese, Chinese-English Dictionary is not bad but it is showing its age (it goes back to 1985), and it is after all merely a dictionary. So what is the alternative? Enter the Golden Atom, or rather its CA7-11 electronic dictionary.
This device is more than just a dictionary. It allows you to write the characters on screen or enter them using pinyin for Putonghua, stroke count, Cantonese pronunciation, Cangjie or even radicals.
Writing them on screen with the special pen provided is easy if you can write Chinese. It takes a while to look up the characters, however.