Hands-on with the Sony VAIO P Series

The sea of people at the Sony’s CES stand meant that we weren’t able to spend too much time with the new VAIO P Series ultraportable, but we were able to correct this yesterday at the European launch. We took a bunch of photos to show you just how small this Intel Atom-powered portable really is, and shot a hands-on video to talk you through its main features. All this, and our first impressions of the VAIO P Series, after the cut.

Photos really don’t show how small the VAIO P Series is, and it’s only when you hold it in your hand that you can marvel at its compactness. It feels more like one of those PVC wallets designed to hold business cards than a laptop, but that’s not to knock its build quality – the case is plastic the top panel of the Vaio P is aluminum alloy, the middle is plastic and the bottom panel is carbon fibre (according to Endgadget Chinese).

The P Series isn’t quite small enough to slip into a pocket without poking out, but it is light enough (around 640g) to carry around in a coat pocket or handbag without weighing you down. Better still, it’s small and discreet enough to whip out for a spot of work without feeling like a poseur on public transport, although you’ll probably attract a small crowd in the process. The only catch is that if anything, the P Series is too small and there’s simply no way to use it comfortably on your lap.

There isn’t much to see on the outside – just a couple of USB ports. a socket for a port replicator and a pair of memory card slots (MemoryStick and SD Card). There’s no catch to keep the clamshell case closed, but the hinges are stiff enough to keep the lightweight lid tightly clamped.

The P Series will be available in four colours – black, white, red and green – and the colour covers both the top and bottom of the case, though not the battery. That said, only two colours are listed on the Sony Style at the moment – black and red.

Input options

The VAIO P Series’ unusual long, thin shape means there’s room inside for a good size keyboard without a big desktop footprint. The keys are Sony’s usual Scrabble tile and while small, are well-spaced.

They’re comfortable to type on too, although they do feel a little spongy and lack feedback. They fine for long spells of typing though, and in fact the bulk of this article was written on a P Series while sitting on a train.

There’s no wrist rest, but that’s hardly a problem for a laptop this thin – resting your wrists on the desktop works just as well. The mouse buttons sit on the front edge of the base, but while these are large and clicky, you do tend to bump your thumb against them when typing. It’s hard to click one accidentally, so this is really more of an annoyance than a problem.

And no wrist rest means no touchpad and the VAIO P Series instead uses a trackpoint joystick. We know not everyone gets on with these, but we rather liked it once the sensitivity was turned right down and its press-to-click feature disabled.

8in screen, 1600 x 768…

A laptop this size doesn’t have much room for a screen, but so wide is the P Series’ that its 8in display still has an unsightly strip of thick black bezel at either side. There’s no knocking its resolution, though – an incredible 1600 x 768. This is by far the highest of any laptop this size, but it’s not all good news.

The screen is crisp and bright (even at 50% brightness), but the high pixel density makes on-screen elements rather tiny. Even people with 20/20 vision will need to peer closely at times, although upping Vista’s dpi setting from 96dpi to 120dpi makes a big difference.

This extra-wide screen is great for displaying two windows side-by-side and the VAIO P Series even has a dedicated button that automatically tiles/untiles all open windows. This doesn’t do anything that a right-click on the Taskbar can’t, but it’s a handy shortcut.

Performance

Much has been made of the VAIO P Series’ specification, but there’s simply no way that Sony could equip a laptop this size with anything more than an Intel Atom processor. That said, the decision to pair an Atom Z520 chip with Windows Vista is an odd one and the P Series feels pretty pedestrian in use and it’ll be interesting to see how it fares with a streamlined Windows XP installation.

We carried out some informal timings and the P Series takes a full 5 minutes and 30 seconds to boot from cold – the Vista Desktop appears after a minute and a half, but it takes another four minutes before the hard disk stops being accessed. Hibernation takes around a minute; battery life is reckoned by Sony to be a so-so three hours, or five with a high-capacity battery.

Er, how much!?

And, of course, there’s the price. In the US, the VAIO P Series starts at $900, or a mere £617 at the current crappy exchange rate (£1/$1.46). But for reasons best known to itself, Sony has decided that UK buyers must stump up a whopping £849 for the same model – that's an exchange rate of almost one dollar to the pound. Nice one, Sony.

There will be three VAIO P Series models available, with prices starting from £849 inc VAT for the VAIO VGNP11Z/R. This has a 1.3GHZ Atom Z520 processor, 2Gb RAM and 60Gb hard disk, but no onboard 3G – that'll cost you another £120 for the otherwise-identical VGNP19WN (which also comes with a port replicator and a second high-capacity battery). The top-of-the-range VGNP19VN adds a 128Gb SSD and a 1.6GHz processor, but will set you back a £1,368.99. The full specifications of all three models are below.

There’s no getting away from the fact that the VAIO P Series is a stunning laptop and Sony really should be commended for coming up with such a dazzling display of mobile technology. Unfortunately, it should also kicked up the backside for its outrageous UK pricing. And the fact that Sony doesn't even have a backside just makes it even more outrageous. Grr. Here’s our hands-on video. 

[ Sony VAIO P Series]