The VAIO P Series is a fascinating notebook. And Sony is going to tremendous pains to make it clear that it’s no netbook – even though I heard a couple of its employees making the Freudian slip of calling it a netbook, before quickly correcting themselves.

What immediately sets it apart is its size. The P Series can literally slip into a jacket pocket – I know because I’ve done it. It’s also incredibly light, just 638g. Even the lightest netbooks tend to tip the scales over 1kg.

It’s partially a sign of the netbook form factor’s impact then that we consider the price of £849 inc VAT expensive, but what really hurts is that in the US the same model will cost $900 (before sales tax). Sony puts the blame for the high price squarely on the strength of the dollar and yen compared to the weak pound, but it will certainly limit the notebook’s appeal.

Then again, two years ago our jaws would have been dropping to the floor that Sony had created such an innovative product for less than a grand. There are a number of technologies inside to help justify the price too. You get a built-in 3G modem, plus draft-n wireless, Bluetooth and GPS. And unlike netbooks, which almost all use the cheaper N270 Atom, the P Series includes a higher-cost (albeit lower speed) 1.33GHz Z520.

Together with 2GB of RAM, this proved sufficient to run the supplied Vista Home Premium at a decent pace. It’s fine for word processing and web browsing, but we certainly wouldn’t want to use the P Series as our main PC.

Another reason why it’s no PC substitute is the keyboard. It looks great, but we struggled to get used to it when typing. For instance, we found it difficult to hit the tiny Shift key on the right hand side, and also kept on accidentally hitting the wrong key when aiming for the spacebar. Before we write the P Series off, though, we’ll wait until we can get a system in for a full review, as it could just need a slight adjustment to typing style.

There’s no room for a trackpad, so Sony opts for a trackpoint instead. Although this proved accurate and responsive, hitting system dialog buttons did prove a pain – we’d be tempted to adjust the display settings to make system dialog boxes bigger.

When admiring photographs or fiddling with spreadsheets, there’s no denying the 1,600 x 768 screen is fantastic. Considering that it measures just 8in diagonally across, it’s something of a coup just to squeeze that much detail in there.

When you pick it up, this also feels like a bit of luxury. Compared to the PC Pro A-Listed Samsung NC10, which is undoubtedly one of the best built netbooks around, with the P Series it’s clear you’re holding something of real quality.

Sony claims a battery life of 4hrs from the standard battery (though one Sony spokesperson we spoke to said 3hrs), and this can be doubled by buying an extended battery. While not groundbreaking, that’s still good enough battery life for almost all-day use.

So we have mixed feelings about the P Series. It’s undoubtedly a fine piece of engineering and it looks great, but – judging from our limited time with it so far – it’s not the most usable of laptops. And at this price, it could struggle to gain mass appeal.

What sets it apart, though, is its superb range of wireless connections, its style, its build quality, and the fact you can slip it into a pocket – or handbag – so easily. We’ll bring you a full review later this month, which will be just in time to buy it as the P Series goes on sale in the UK in early February.