We spent this morning playing with the Sony VAIO P. Despite giving the word ‘netbook’ a wide berth, there’s no mistaking this is a true ultra-portable and destined to kick some life into the stale netbook market.
We’ve rounded up our first impressions, as well as a ton of stats and photos after the jump.
We took an instant shine to the Vaio P at CES, and now we’ve spent some quality time with it we’re absolutely smitten.
Its 8 inch shell is very dainty, but in no way feels frail. It makes the likes of the MSI Wind and Asus Eee PC look positively chubby, and really is slim enough to slip into a jacket pocket, just as Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer did during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas earlier this month.
We spent some time with the top of the range Vaio P, packing a 1.6Ghz Atom processor, 2GB of RAM and a 128 GB Solid State Drive. Our first impressions are that it’s speedy. More so than we expected, and easy to use too. OK, so Windows’ taskbars, close and minimise buttons are a bit on the titchy side, but not too hard to use.
The keyboard too is comfy, and while there’s no trackpad, Sony’s track-stick provides a capable replacement.
There’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and even 3G is all inside too, with the latter working through a SIM card slotted in under the batter cover.
Picking it up, we were surprised to hear it weighs 1.4 pounds – it actually feels even lighter. It’s not out until next month, although you can pre-order one, but you can take a peek at the P19VN/Q business model we played with ahead of launch in the picture avalanche below. Get clicking!
Out February 2009 | £varies | Sony
