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We finally got our hands on the Vaio P for a week and a half to play with and we loved it. But is it enough to justify its hefty price tag? If you’ve already read my first impressions article, nothing much has changed, though performance did seem to be better, perhaps due to a fresh reformat. But do read my conclusion for the Vaio P at the end of the review.

The Vaio P we played with is powered by a 1.6 Ghz Intel Atom processor and 2GB of RAM and is running on Windows Vista Home Premium.

Related Content: Gear65 #14 video, Vaio P unboxing video, Vaio P launch impressions

The Good
I loved how Sony mentioned during their official release of the Vaio P in Singapore that their primary focus wasn’t in making a cheap machine, but in making an ultra portable device. In many ways, the Vaio P is certainly not your average netbook, and they have easily justified their higher-than-average-netbooks price tag.

Design
The Vaio P is probably one of the most wonderfully designed machines I’ve ever had the opportunity to us on a daily basis. It’s small enough for you to hold it with one hand while typing with the other, and when you have it in your bag, it’s so light that it’s almost as if it was never there. The quality of the materials used in this device are also very high. They used anodized magnesium as well as carbon fibre (?!) for its body to reduce the weight and increase the durability. I think we’ve already said enough about the design on episode 14 of Gear65, which I highly recommend you go watch.

The USB ports are also well placed. Even though the Vaio P only has 2 USB ports, the ports are well placed with one on each side. I especially like the fact that the USB port on the right is near the end of the machine. Most computers these days seem to like to place the USB port that’s on the right side towards the front of the machine. If you’re right handed and you use a mouse, having the port close to the front makes the cable from the mouse obstructive, which, thankfully, the Vaio P does not do.

Despite the size of the computer, the Vaio P’s keyboard has been quite comfortable for me. I haven’t had any major typing errors due to the keyboard, which I still tend to have on some other netbooks on the market. I do, however, tend to mistake the right function key as the shift key. Of course, your mileage may vary, so do go try it for yourself before you make a decision. Like we mentioned on Gear65, we were surprised that Sony, not Lenovo, was the first company to produce a netbook an ultraportable with a trackpoint instead of a touch pad. Getting rid of the touchpad allowed Sony to drastically reduce the size of the computer. Ironically, the lack of a palm-rest does cause your hands to feel tired easily if you’re typing with one hand while holding it with the other. This trackpoint also allows you to tap on it to click, just like you would on a touchpad. Some people love the trackpoint, while others hate it. It’s really up to you to decide if it’s for you.

Windows Vista
Yes, I’m actually putting this under the “Good” section. When I first played with the Vaio P during its launch a few months ago, I said that Windows Vista would be its downfall. After using it for several days, I realised that I was wrong. Not because the Vaio P ran as smooth as butter with Vista on it, but given the tasks you would carry out with Windows Vista, which is to do simple stuff and perhaps surf the net with it on the go, you wouldn’t strain the machine enough to cause it to be unusable.

With that aside, you can actually take advantage of its strengths (yes, there ARE strengths). One of them is the mobility software features Vista comes with. An example is how easy it is to pair and use a 3G enabled mobile phone to connect your Vaio P to the internet. I never tried it with Vista before the Vaio P, and now that I had a chance, I thought it was really awesome. You don’t need to know your username, password or number to dial (they’re usually preset in your phone. Until today I still don’t know what they are), Vista knows them already. Of course, a video speaks a thousand words 30 times per second:

Instant Boot
This is another great feature in the Vaio P that I think all netbooks should have. If you push the “Cross Media Bar” button while the Vaio P is off, it boots up to this special software in 17 seconds. This software basically lets you access all your music, photos and videos using the familiar Cross Media Bar user interface made famous on the Sony Playstation Portable. It also has Firefox and Pidgin built in for web-browsing as well as instant messaging and voice-over-IP capabilities. Unfortunately, you can only use WiFi to connect to the internet, so you’re stuck to having to find a hotspot if you want to surf the net in an instant.

The advantage of having this Instant-boot software? Really fast boot up plus drastically longer battery life.

Software
Here’s another part where Sony certainly didn’t save on. Unlike most netbooks, the Vaio P is filled with applications. While some may consider them as “crapware”, I actually think they are pretty useful.

Let me start with the Vaio Control Center. It’s basically Windows Vista’s Mobility Centre on steroids. You can change almost every setting from screen resolution to power management settings. Then there’s the Vaio Updater. How would you like if Sony helps you keep your Vaio P’s drivers and software up to date? And how can you have a Sony entertainment device without its cross media bar? Oh, and it also comes with some fun web cam applications to make your video conferences alot more entertaining.

Of all the applications it comes with, I especially love the Recovery Centre and the Restore Centre. The Recovery Centre is basically a backup application, none too different from Lenovo’s recovery application in its S10 netbook. The Restore Centre on the other hand allows you to restore the machine to the same state it was when you first got it. It’s especially useful since the Vaio P doesn’t come with any optical disk drive, like every other netbook. You can also choose to just restore drive C (if you partitioned the drive) or just restore the extra Vaio applications should you “accidentally” removed them. And if you do have a DVD writer, you can also create restore disks should you really mess the Vaio up.

Another good thing (I’m thinking from the perspective of Sony’s target audience here) they packaged into the Vaio P is the free Mcafee Anti Virus and a 60 day trial of Microsoft Office 2007. Basically, out of the box you would already have everything from hardware to software that you would need on this machine.

Accessories
Sony is obviously trying very hard to please. Even their accessories are amazing. Their ultra-portable power adapter with the snap-on VGA + Ethernet adapter is just tiny and light, making it super easy to carry around. Oh, I should mention that the VGA+Ethernet adapter (or break out box) was a brilliant idea. If you’re going to complain about it, think about this: which are the two thickest ports you would find on a notebook? If Sony left the VGA and ethernet port on the Vaio P, I can guarantee  you that it would be twice as thick. Plus they let you combine it with the power adapter so that you only have to carry around one extra item!

The Vaio P I recieved also comes with noise-cancelling earphones. You read that right: Noise Cancelling, not Noise Isolation! These earphones come with microphones that allow the Vaio P to do some computer magic to cancel out ambiant noise. Since all the processing happens on the Vaio P itself, it also means that you can’t just plug these earphones into any other audio source. The cancellation is so effective that it even works when the Vaio P isn’t playing any audio. All it needs is to be on. Oh, and you can adjust the microphone’s sensitivity using software in the Vaio P itself.

Battery Life
The battery life on this machine is quite similar to what you would find on most netbooks today. When connected to the internet via bluetooth on my mobile phone, I was able to squeeze out 2 hours of battery life on medium brightness. That’s impressive considering the size of the battery combined with the heavy use of bluetooth.

The Bad
With so much good things said about the Vaio P, it’s going to be hard to not want one, right? Following are the reasons why you wouldn’t want one, in order of severity. You’ll also notice that these are things that Sony tried too hard.

Performance
As I have mentioned during the Vaio P’s launch, I thought Sony made a bad decision to combine Windows Vista with an Intel Atom processor. Now that I’ve used it for more than a week, I realised it’s not that bad even with all that extra background applications running thanks to its bundled software. It still can’t do too much at the same time, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Boot up time, however, is still really slow. To counter that, I would either put the machine to hibernate or sleep.

However, don’t expect to do too many things on this machine at once. Despite the fact that Sony claims to have built a hardware encoder for HD video, playing HD videos on the Vaio P was still really choppy.

That said, if you’re only going to use it to connect you to the internet on the go, it shouldn’t frustrate you too much.

One more thing to note though: Windows has a tendency to get slower as you use it more. Well, good thing you can reformat it easily, right?

Display
If you haven’t already noticed, I have yet to mention the display. That’s because I don’t really like it. I’m fine with the width of the display. More screen real-estate is always better for me. It’s the resolution that kills me. It’s way too high!! In my opinion, the optimal resolution for an 8 inch display is to have a width of 1024 pixels. This display squeezes 1600 pixels into the width!! How bad is it? One of the iconic features of Windows Vista is its giant start button. On the Vaio P, that start button is just a tiny circle! The font on that machine is even smaller, and I have seen small fonts! The worse part is that you can’t reduce the resolution of the display without causing the image to distort because all its other settings are designed for normal non-wide display, and using that on an ULTRA wide display is just a mess. I tried boosting the DPI on Windows Vista to 150% percent, but that caused problems because the text in applications would force the buttons at the bottom to get pushed beyond the window’s border, causing them to disappear completely. Even with my perfect eye sight I actually had headaches after reading text on that display for too long, and I certainly didn’t enjoy that.

Sure, you get an ultra-sharp display, but at the cost of usability, I would rather not have it. Besides, it can’t play HD videos properly anyway.

Cost
All the above mentioned flaws on the device all have work arounds. Don’t run too many applications at once, and boost the DPI setting as well as the Zoom setting in your browsers as much as possible without breaking the application or webpage design.

However, there is one flaw that I believe is a killer feature for the Vaio P. Killer as in kill the Vaio P’s chance of selling units!

To enjoy all the features I mentioned, including the noise cancelling earphones, in-box VGA+Ethernet adapter, 1.66Ghz Intel Atom chip (the other model is only 1.33 Ghz), Windows Vista Home Premium (instead of Home Basic on the other model) etc, you have to shell out close to S$1700!! Even if you’re willing to forfeit the faster Intel Atom chip and the VGA+Ethernet adapter, it would still cost you S$1300+. In todays “thriving” economy, that’s really not a smart thing to do.

In Conclusion (Should you get the Vaio P?)
The Vaio P is one of the most amazing devices I’ve ever used as a second computer. However, it doesn’t make any practical sense to buy it! At less than half the price, I can get an Asus EeePC 1000H with better performance (thanks to Windows XP)! To me, the extra value that the Vaio P gives me (The amazing earphones, the functional extra software, the drastically smaller size, the high quality materials used) does not justify me having to shell out 100% more than machines on the market today that have the same or even better power. I’m willing to pay 50% more (S$1200 for the 1.66Ghz model is actually justifiable), but not 100%.

Besides, the flaws I mentioned above are flaws that you have to bear with every time you use them! The extra features, as good and as cool as they are, are just that: extra features. They don’t improve the way I use a computer drastically. And the expensive materials? My colleague says is best: “It doesn’t matter what it’s made of. Once you drop it, it breaks the same as any other machine.” Besides, some of the netbooks in the market today such as the HP Mini 1000 and the Acer Aspire One don’t look all that bad anymore.

Sony has to either convince me with more substantial features on why I should shell out S$900 more for their machine by putting better hardware and maybe even Windows 7 on it, or they have to reduce the price, even if it means getting rid of some the the features and expensive material. You don’t need magnesium and carbon fiber to make a computer ultraportable.

To me what defines a netbook is its performance and power, and the Vaio P is just a netbook in an ultra-portable’s clothing, no matter what Sony says. And not many people are going to buy a netbook in an ultraportable’s price range.

So who should buy this? People who have too much money to spare. Don’t get me wrong, this really is an amazing machine. It’s just not worth the amount it costs.