We got our hands on an early sample of the all-new Sony VAIO X-Series at Sony’s pre-IFA show, and to say it looks an impressive feat of engineering completely understates matters.

Let’s get the facts out of the way first. This is the world’s lightest ever laptop, weighing less even than the Sony VAIO P-Series – and that weighed in at 640g.

Hold the X-Series in your hands and it feels breathtakingly light. Once you pick it up, you don’t want to put it down.

It’s also thin: just 14mm at its thickest point. Position the screen side-on and you can barely see it. In fact, Sony has had to fit retractable feet simply to give enough room for the Ethernet port.

The screen itself is an LED affair and measures 11.1in diagonally across. We expected there to be a sacrifice in terms of image quality, but under the hall lights it appeared bright and sharp.

Inevitably the keyboard doesn’t have much give. There’s barely more than a millimetre in travel, which makes it feel like you’re typing on rock.

Despite this, we found it easy to hammer out a few sentences in quick time – the only problem being the German keyboard on our test sample.

It’s early days for the X-Series, so we’ve no confirmation on pricing or specification. At this point, Sony wouldn’t even confirm which processor family would be inside.

Nevertheless, as a feat of engineering – and as a halo-effect product to sit at the top of the VAIO range – the X-Series already looks like it’s going to be a classic.

UPDATE Further to this hands-on, I had the opportunity to speak to a VAIO “specialist” within Sony and can confirm that the X-Series will come with either a 128GB or 256GB solid-state drive inside, but the processor has yet to be confirmed.

The screen will be 1,366 x 768. As can be seen from the photos above, it’s incredibly slim, which is the reason why Sony reinforced the carbon fibre usually used for such lids with extra layers of plastic (the rest of chassis is made from carbon fibre alone). This adds rigidity without adding too much weight, and Sony claims the X-Series’ lid can withstand 150kg of pressure .

The price, I’ve been assured, won’t be more than 2,000 euros. Sony hopes to produce a model at around the 1,500 euro mark.

It also looks like the X-Series will go on sale at the end of October to tie in with the launch of Windows 7 – and Sony has confirmed that the OS of choice will be Windows 7 Professional.

Perhaps most impressive of all, the Sony spokesperson I spoke to – who’s been using a sample of the VAIO X-Series for the past two months – claims that he gets around five hours of use from the slim, six-cell battery that is likely to come as standard.

Sony will also be selling an incredible 18-cell battery to slot onto the underside of the X-Series, and it aims to get between 18 and 20 hours of life from this.