Sony VAIO P… The New Eee PC Touch T91… MSI X-Slim 320… Confused by all the impossibly small laptops doing the rounds? Not to worry: we’re breaking down the details of the hottest laptops we saw at CES right here in our stat clash. Find out which one you need after the jump!
Capacity
Why, what’s this? An Eee with a 160GB mechanical hard drive? How innovative. Oh wait, no. Pushing the T91 swiftly aside, we’ve got the VAIO P, offering up to 128GB of SSD in the high end models, and a MacBook Air rip off that’s got to have solid state or be doomed to die, even if MSI hasn’t let slip the specs yet. This one goes to the VAIO P for the either/or choice though.
Winner: Sony VAIO P
Size
The MSI X-Slim 320 may plagiarise Apple’s skinny wonder, but at least that means it’ll fit in a manila envelope too: a full laptop that’s just 1.98cm thick at its widest part, tapering down just 6mm. We’ll take that over having to peck away at a netbook keyboard any day – except for the VAIO P mind, which is so small that Sony CEO Howard Stringer was able to pull one out of his pocket mid press conference. Revolutionary.
Winner: Sony VAIO P
Display
This one’s a toughie. The 13.4 inch screen on the MSI X-Slim 320 is plenty big enough to cope with any applications you’ll need to use, and the 8.9 inch touchscreen tablet display on the T91 will certainly serve several purposes with its gorgeous “Doorways” interface. But we just can’t say no to the VAIO P’s tiny, widescreen 8 inch display. The 1600×768 resolution is sharper than pin sharp, and while it’s unlikely to suit those with troubled eyesight, after getting hands on with the critter, we can say it certainly feels like a mini desktop replacement rather than a netbook.
Winner: Sony VAIO P
Battery
The VAIO P won’t outlast that many netbook rivals (Maxing out around 3-4 hours), unless you opt to double the cells in the battery for more money – and the real trade off – increase thickness on a machine so small. The T91 doesn’t have anything beyond the standard Eee when it comes to juice consumption, which gives the bigger, more toned X-Slim the win here, with the option for an 8 cell battery which will keep yours running cordless for up to 10 hours.
Winner: MSI X-Slim 320
Power
There’s nothing to distinguish between the three when it comes to processing power: every single one is sporting an Intel Atom chip designed specifically for netbooks. We’ll happily take the VAIO P’s 2GB of RAM to be able to open more than one photo at a time, but the X-Slim has the advantage: it’s yet to be confirmed, but rumours say it’ll be the first Atom based computer to work with an NVIDIA graphics chipset, NVIDIA Ion. Gaming on the go? Go for it.
Winner: MSI X-Slim 320
Extras
The VAIO P doesn’t have so many extra features – 3G is starting to become standard – and the USP here is that they’re all in a laptop that darn small. Likewise, the MSI X-Slim 320 is a MacBook Air, only with more USB ports. This one goes to the T91: you can’t rotate the screens of the other two, fold them down and use as a tablet. Unless you want to pay several hundred quid to get them repaired, of course.
Winner: Asus Eee PC Touch T91
Price
Brace yourself: the price tag of the Sony VAIO P weighs more than the lil’ laptop itself, with prices starting at £850 and soaring into the four figures if you fancy some solid state memory onboard. The T91 is sitting this one out with a TBC, and since it’s become increasingly difficult to predict Asus Eee pricing, we’re giving this one to MSI. For a fully blown laptop (Albeit one that’s practically invisible when you look at it side on), the approximate $800 seems like a bargain, especially when compared to the price of an Air.
Winner: MSI X-Slim 320
