[This review is taken from Your Computer, June 1982.]

The new Sinclair has arrived at last – a book-sized micro-computer with colour and sound and an extended version of ZX Basic. It came through its test well ahead of the competition but, as Tim Hartnell found, even Sinclair Research cannot work miracles.

LAUNCHING THE SPECTRUM, Clive Sinclair confessed that there had been considerable disagreement within his organisation over the name of the new computer. “At one point”, he said, “we thought of calling it `Not the BBC Micro’”. In March last year, Sinclair unleashed an angry tirade against the BBC for giving Acorn the right to make the computer for the TV series, saying that he had told the BBC he could produce a computer – within their specifications – for just over 100. The ZX Spectrum is the fulfilment of that promise.

The Spectrum has eight colours, a built-in sound generator and loudspeaker, and the closest Sinclair Research has come to a “real” keyboard. Its specifications exceed those of the Model A BBC machine, and come close to the Model B in many areas. At just 125 for the 16K model, the Spectrum is the same price as a ZX-81 with 16K pack when first launched. With 48K the Spectrum costs 175.

The Spectrum uses a “superset” of ZX-81 Basic, and any ZX-81 program can be typed in with the minimum of changes; ZX-81 tapes cannot be loaded into the Spectrum. The new computer loads and saves much more quickly than does the ZX-81, at 1,500 baud as against around 250, and the upward compatibility of listings should mean a lot to organisations like Muse which are building up a library of educational ZX software. Publishers of ZX literature or ZX software breathed a sigh of relief on hearing that ZX-81 listings could be entered directly.

The Spectrum works in upper- and lower-case letters, and does so like a typewriter: capital letters appear only when you use the shift key. The computer does not differentiate between upper and lower case when naming variables – so A$ is the same as a$ – and will ignore spaces in variable names.

The range of characters is standard, and symbols such as ! and # are available on a ZX machine for the first time. There is a range of three different curly brackets and a cute little  copyright sign.

The  sign, and the words “Sinclair Research Ltd” appear on the screen in black letters on a white ground when you first turn it on. Pressing New LList or Copy produces some remarkable flashing-border displays, and in Save and Load you are treated to a lollypop-striped screen in reds, blues and yellows.

The error codes are fascinating, and in English rather than the odd little numbers and letters of the ZX-80 and ZX-81. If all goes well in a Load, a Save, a program execution or whatever, the computer prints “OK” at the bottom of the screen. If you manage to make it swallow an incorrect line or parameter – which is difficult to do, because all lines are checked for syntax before being accepted into the main body of the program – the computer prints the delightful line

Nonsense in BASIC.

Whoever wrote the ROM had a sense of humour.

There is much in Spectrum Basic to tempt you to enhance your programs. It includes Beep, a single-channel “music” command with both duration and pitch under user control, Ink to determine the colour of the Print output and Paper for the background colour. The Border command allows the area round the main display to be independently coloured and changed, Flash sets all Printed material flashing into its inverse colour, and Bright intensifies the colour of selected pixels.