Sony's Elegant, Upscale Vaio X Netbook

The mini-laptop offers understated elegance and good performance for its size, but beware the hefty price tag

By Cliff Edwards

Editor's Rating:

The Good: Long battery life, integrated wireless, and GPS

The Bad: Expensive, cramped keyboard; requires an add-on battery to be truly effective

The Bottom Line: A handy business tool for on-the-go professionals

Reader Reviews

Although the red-hot netbook minicomputer market has cooled considerably in the past few months, PC manufacturers say they're committed to churning out new designs this spring and summer, ahead of the important back-to-school shopping period.

Sony's (SNE) Vaio X netbook attempts to reach a different class of customer than do most netbooks, which are inexpensive and tend to underwhelm on performance. With a starting price of $1,299, Sony is aiming the Vaio X (formally called the VPCX115KX/B) at mobile professionals looking for an ultra-lightweight computer with a physical keyboard and a battery that will last maybe half a workday without needing to be recharged. It's a great machine if you have no problem with sticker shock in a category wherein many netbooks sell for $300.

Sony's upscale netbook is sturdier than it looks. When I first took the Vaio X out of its box, it seemed thin and fragile. The laptop measures a little more than 11 in. wide, 7.3 in. deep, and just 0.6 in. thick. It appears too delicate to absorb much manhandling. After using one for a month, I've come to appreciate the strength of the machine's carbon fiber lid and magnesium alloy chassis.

The Vaio X is designed for business people on the go. It weighs just 1.4 lbs., making it one of the lightest netbooks on the market (the power adapter weighs an additional third of a pound).

There's an understated elegance to this high-end mini. My model offered a silver lid and top chassis, with a bronze bottom. (Sony also offers the same configuration with a black lid.) The somewhat-cramped keyboard (it's 88% the size of keyboards on standard notebook computers) offers sufficient spacing between the keys to enable most users to learn to operate it.

streams video well, if not perfectly

The netbook sports an 11-in., 1366 x 768-resolution LED screen, low-power Intel (INTC) Atom Z processor, and the option to upgrade its 64-gigabyte solid-state flash-memory drive to 128 GB for an additional $200. Sony also includes built-in mobile broadband from Verizon Wireless and integrated GPS with Microsoft (MSFT) Streets & Trips 2009 for navigation. There's no option to substitute Verizon's broadband for other 3G options.

The Vaio X runs Microsoft's Windows 7 Home Premium edition, and I found it a fine machine for typical business productivity tasks such as e-mail and word processing. It also outperformed other netbooks that run Microsoft's Windows XP operating system at watching videos from sites such as Hulu and YouTube (GOOG).

Users shouldn't expect flawless video. It took a few seconds before the jerky picture smoothed out when watching NBC's 30 Rock and the Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino. But at least the images didn't continually freeze, as they have on other netbooks I've tested.

I encountered a bigger problem with the Vaio's touchpad. At about half the size of normal touchpads, it isn't much bigger than a matchbook. The left and right mouse-click buttons are nearly flush with the chassis. I had to press the buttons very hard when the computer wasn't sitting on a table or desk. It bothered me so much that I was willing to sacrifice one of the machine's two USB ports to connect a wireless mouse.

built-in Webcam, no HDMI port

The laptop comes with two interchangeable batteries: a standard one that lasts about 3.5 hours and a larger, heavier, battery-and-stand combination that stretches the charge to slightly less than 15 hours. Unfortunately, the add-on battery also increases the Vaio's overall weight to 2.2 lbs.

There's a switch above the keyboard to turn wireless Internet access off to save battery power and a small power button that glows green when the machine is turned on. The Vaio X includes a built-in Webcam (basic VGA quality) for users who want to make Skype video calls or use other teleconferencing software.

Just underneath the front lip are an SD Card reader and a Sony Memory Stick slot. Some rival machines include an HDMI port to output video to a television monitor; the Vaio X does not. As with most netbooks, there's no built-in DVD optical drive.

Sony includes pretty much the same software array it's offered for years, including a trial version of Intuit's (INTU) QuickBooks money management software. It also comes with Microsoft Works, a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, a 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security (SYMC), and Sony's bundle of multimedia editing tools.

The Vaio X is made to compete with other machines that are geared toward the glitterati, including Apple's (AAPL) MacBook Air and Dell's (DELL) Adamo line. It won't be for everyone. Then again, Sony isn't expecting it to be.

Edwards is a correspondent in Bloomberg Businessweek's San Francisco bureau.

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