Prime Notebook Computer Review

Sleek, sexy, and slim, the Sony VAIO X Series is the perfect netbook for the stylish, executive jet-setter. While this machine is smaller than most netbooks  and measures just 0.55 inch thick, it packs a bit more gusto–and, starting at $1299 (our unit sells for $1499, as of 11/10/09), it carries an over-the-top price tag that screams, “CEO only!”

I quickly fell for the golden, brushed-aluminum body and the matching widely spaced keys. (Not feeling flashy enough for the limited-edition gold version, like the one we received? The X Series also comes in black.) Measuring 10.95 by 7.29 by 0.55 inches and weighing 1.6 pounds, the X Series out-smalls the MacBook Air and gives the upcoming Dell Adamo XPS a run for its money.

The X Series boasts an 11.1-inch screen that measures merely 0.125 inch thick. The laptop comes with two interchangeable batteries: a standard (3.5-hour) battery and a larger, heavier, battery-and-stand combo that supposedly lasts for up to 14 hours, according to Sony spokespeople. They were wrong. It lasts just a few minutes under 15 hours — that’s easily the longest running laptop we’ve tested to date.

Design
It’s hard to overstate just how light and tiny Sony’s new Wunderkind truly is. It measures half an inch thick, and weighs 1.5 pounds. This is a notebook you can flip around like a magazine, lift from the corner with a thumb and two fingers, and probably send into the stratosphere with a dozen or so balloons. If the MacBook Air can cut a cake, the Vaio X can probably perform minor surgery.

Don’t take that to mean that the Vaio X feels insubstantial. Sony has called upon the wonder of carbon fiber to give the notebook stiffness and rigidity totally out of proportion to its weight. We were able to wring a bit of flex out of it by intentionally grabbing two corners and giving it a twist, but the small size of the machine and impossibly light weight means that it never really encounters this sort of stress during every day handling. We only batted an eye when adjusting the screen with one hand from the side, which made us wish it had a little more reinforcement. Fond as Sony is of glossy paintjobs, our carbon-fiber review unit came decked out in stealthy matte black from head to toe – an arrangement we much prefer. Although it doesn’t offer the durable rubbery feel of say, a ThinkPad, it shakes off fingerprints and other marring all the same.

Keyboard
The thing that I like most design wise (apart from the fact I could successfully balance it on its corner in the palm of my hand like they do in adverts. Not that I tried of course because that would just be irresponsible is the well spaced keyboard. My big issue with laptops is that they’re a devil to type on, but this one genuinely does accommodate fat fingers and overly eager typers! And Sony seems to love putting that tiny right Shift key on all its ultraportable keyboards. Multitouch comes turned on by default, which makes a hard-to-use trackpad almost impossible to use since moving your finger often results in some flavor of zooming, scrolling, or whatever else they’ve baked into it. I turned off all that stuff within a few minutes – even vertical scrolling. After that, it worked well enough to not have to carry a Bluetooth mouse. I have rather large hands but even normal or small hands will seem big when typing or using the trackpad. You do get used to things after a while, though.

Ports
When you’re designing a notebook as thin as some of the connectors that will plug into it, you have to get a little creative. Sony engineers rose to the occasion. The VGA connector on the right, for instance, matches the height of the notebook almost identically, and therefore isn’t even shielded in from all sides: The bottom edge has been left bare and sits flush with the bottom of the notebook. Along the same lines, the right-hand Ethernet port literally snaps open like a jaw to accommodate the standard connector, which would be too fat to fit without this python-like adaptation. Sony also provides two USB ports, a headphone jack, and a power jack on the left-hand side. We really wish Sony had managed to move one of the USB jacks to the right; both to accommodate for right-handed travel mice, and to prevent the overlapping problems you might encounter when connecting oversized accessories like thumb drives or mini camcorders. Up front, you’ll find both an SD card reader and a slot for Sony’s Memory Stick Duo cards.

Display and Audio
sony_vaio_x_sh3.jpgAs befitting a netbook that costs $1,500, the VAIO X’s 11.1-inch screen has a higher-than-usual resolution of 1366 x 768; we’ve only seen this standard on the Gigabyte Touchnote T1028X. This is becoming a more common option, however, such as on theHP Mini 110. While this resolution tends to make icons too small on 10-inch netbooks, we didn’t mind it as much on an 11-inch screen. When watching content streamed over the Web or played off the VAIO X’s hard drive, we were impressed with the crispness and wide viewing angles of the display; we could turn it nearly 90 degrees to either side without seeing image reversal or egregious reflections. Being as thin as it is, we’re not surprised at the lack of audio quality in the VAIO X. Songs were thin and tinny; the bass line in Aerosmith’s “Dream On” streamed over Pandora was nonexistent, and the speakers could barely fill a small office with sound.

Performance

The Vaio X is a beautiful piece of machinery. Downright gorgeous, in fact. But can it perform any better than a $400 netbook? Yes and no. On one hand, the 2.0GHz processor seems to give it that little extra bit of spring in its step. It handles Windows 7 just fine, minus the flashy Aero bits (they come turned off by default). It snaps open browser windows in a split second, breezes through photos, and boots to the Windows desktop in 55 seconds. Not bad.

Sony X Series ReviewBut the same walls that bind your $400 netbook still apply to the Vaio X. It will handle YouTube, but has trouble scaling even standard-def content to fill its 1366 x 768 pixels in full screen mode. Hulu bumps it against the same wall. (Incidentally, shifting resolution to 1024 x 768 for the sake of testing fixes the problem, explaining why many lesser netbooks pull this trick just fine.) And don’t even try any gaming. The Vaio X suffers from the same handicaps as a netbook, but it’s worth noting that experientially, it doesn’t feel like a netbook. By virtue of running Windows 7 and offering a bright WXGA screen, we’re dealing with a whole different level of refinement from the dime-a-dozen XP machines with half as many pixels to drive. When you play within the boundaries, it doesn’t announce them to you.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the Vaio X’s performance cropped up when we fired up music on the built-in speakers. The single down-firing speaker – which hides behind a grille no bigger than half a keyboard key – emits barely a whisper. With the built-in battery, which sits flush to the bottom, Sony’s three-hour battery life estimate proved closer to two hours for us. However, Sony includes an extended-life battery with every unit. Although significantly bulkier, it delivered a clean 10 hours at full brightness – not all that far from Sony’s 12-hour claim.