Sony Vaio P Series Hands On

The Sony Vaio P could be considered a netbook as it is the smallest and lightest 8-inch display laptop available. It is definitely smaller than any other netbook and you could actually believe those advertisements that you see with it fitting a rear pocket. We received the black colour Vaio P and the top and bottom of it are in a glossy black colour. On the left side of the laptop is a charging port, a USB port and a 3.5-mm headphone jack.

On the right side, is another USB port and an extension port. By connecting this extender to the port you can now get two additional ports — a VGA-out port and an Ethernet port. The front of the device has two card reader slots, one for SD and the other for MS Pro Duo memory cards and a Wi-Fi ON/OFF switch. The front is also where the power slider is found, and unlike a simple button, Sony has used a slider similar to that on its PSP.

When you open the lid of the Vaio P you are greeted with a glossy display and a full QWERTY keyboard in silver. This notebook does not have a trackpad as it would have increased the size. Instead, Sony has gone the trackpoint way and has done a pretty good job with the trackpoint that is provided. You can also use the trackpoint with mouse click functions. The keyboard is slightly recessed and has smaller keys, but is very well designed as there is also spacing between the keys. The edge of the notebook is where the actual mouse buttons are present. A slight flaw we noticed is that when you are typing something and hit the Spacebar, you tend also to hit the mouse buttons.

The native resolution of this screen is quite odd — 1600x768. Using such a high resolution on a small screen means the text will be very tiny and you will need to strain your eyes for these tasks. The display is definitely bright, but the viewing angles of this notebook are just bad. The screen gets totally washed by viewing it from any angle other than straight in front of you.

It did not match up to any of the other netbooks that we have tested and forget about playing any games on this at all. The only good thing when it comes to performance is the 64 GB SSD that it comes with, as the scores in that category were very high.

One thing to be noted is that the base of the Vaio P gets exceptionally hot while charging and also during usage, which we feel is definitely not a good thing.

The Vaio P can’t be used for business, nor for gaming. The only option left is for movies, but there is no optical drive and you also have to consider bad viewing angles. This netbook is just average and really is nothing but a style statement. Nevertheless, it is a lot smaller than any other netbook, so that is a bonus.

To check out Sony Laptops visit http://www.consumermate.com

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