Long term hardware impressions – Sony VAIO P

Design and Build Quality

Sony is often said to make quality hardware, though it unfortunately often comes with a high price attached. Sony has definitely put some time into the VAIO P and made it feel quite firm as expected. The unit that I’m reviewing is black and has a glossy sparkling metallic finish which can be see if you look at it under the right light, like that of the Vye S41 [Portal page]. The aesthetic design is quite simple. The lid is black (or one of the other available colors) and so is the bottom of the unit. Sandwiched between these two regions of black is a silver lining that goes all the way around the VAIO P and touches the hinges on the back and lights them up with the same silver color. When you lift the VAIO P’s screne you see that the entire keyboard is also doused in this silver color. It is as if you’ve made a silver keyboard sandwich using two pieces of black bread. The wireless radio switch, power slider and LED indicators on the front are right in line with the silver lining, and all ports on the unit are below it, creating a consistent and simple look.

The battery has no wiggle at all, which is often a good indicator of build quality. They did an interesting thing with the battery; which is building the latches into the battery instead of the unit itself, which is different from most mobile computers which hold the battery in place with latches that are built into the body of the device. I would imagine that this is a space saving decision.

The VAIO P is really light. It weighs just 1.4 pounds, and spread out over the 243x120mm footprint, it feels even lighter. The unit feels quite solid all together, but some of the smaller pieces are somewhat less fortified. Both of the sliding switches on the front (wireless radio switch and power slider) have a certain wiggle to them. They feel as though they are fixed by just one point to the sliding mechanism instead of being attached all the way up and down to a tiny rail system. I wouldn’t say there is anything particularly wrong with this expect it just has a less appealing feeling than if they were really solid. If you put your finger on them and shake it around just a bit, you can hear plastic hitting against other plastic as they shake. Though fortunately they are very easy to slide. They have a few protruding dots on them so that you finger can grip them and they are able to slide with ease. This is contrary to the sliding switches on a unit like the HP Mini 1000 which had sliding switches that were so spring loaded that you needed a good fingernail to slide them. The mouse keys share the same feeling of lack of reinforcement; more detail about the mouse keys below in the Keyboard and Mouse section.

The A/C adapter on the VAIO P is extremely small, the smallest I’ve seen from a laptop computer; its footprint is about 1 inchx2 inch. On the end of the plug that goes into the A/C slot on the VAIO P, there is a green LED to let you know that power is getting to the end of the plug, which is a nice little notification to have. For some reason though, on the end of that plug, the VAIO logo is upside down relative to the user. I suppose they wanted it to match the VAIO logo on the lid which would also be upside down to the user if they were to close the lid, but it looks a bit odd none the less.

(continue reading on page 3…)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5