Picture the scene – before netbooks were even a distant, cheeky glint in Asus’ eye, Sony furnished us with a ground-breaking business ultraportable that weighed in at a frankly, unbelievable 1.2kg. Its svelte figure was hitherto unmatched by the opposition, and its looks were married with 7+ hour battery life and surprisingly capable performance, courtesy of its low-voltage Intel Core 2 Duo processor. 

Since then we’ve seen the incremental TZ21 and TZ31 refreshes come and go, but now Sony has completely revamped the series. The TZ has evolved into the TT.

It shares much of its predecessors vital statistics, boasting an 11.1in display with a 1,366 x 768 native resolution, and an overall weight of just 1.3kg. But, although it’s not shed enough pounds to rival Toshiba’s 1.1kg Portege R500, it’s an altogether sturdier breed. Sony’s previous TZ-series laptops may have been gorgeous, but with their lightweight and astoundingly slim figures came worryingly flexible lids and slightly plasticky build quality. Not so the TT. 

In our brief time with the laptop, one thing was abundantly clear: thanks to its carbon fibre construction, this is an ultraportable designed to withstand the rigours of regular travel. The supremely bright LED-backlit display is as vibrant as ever, but this time its astoundingly thin profile doesn’t come at the expense of rigidity. The same can be said of the rest of the chassis. Where tugging and twisting the original TZ laptops elicited flex and creak in equal measure, the TT’s chassis feels much stiffer. It still doesn’t quite match Apple’s Macbook Air for sturdiness, but it looks to be a much better balanced portable all round.

Specification wise, the TT comes replete with Intel’s latest Centrino 2 platform, a low-voltage Core 2 Duo processor and integrated Intel GMA X4500 graphics. Sony claim around eight hours battery life for the TT, which given our experience of the recent Z-series sounds entirely believable. And, once the battery has been drained, Sony’s new quick-charge function allows the battery to charge to 50% after only one hour of charging. 

Elsewhere, there’s little to complain about. Embedded 3G is a welcome sight, along with Draft-n and Bluetooth, and casting a keen eye around the chassis reveals plentiful connectivity. A multi-format memory card reader goes hand in hand with VGA and HDMI outputs, two USB ports and a Gigabit Ethernet socket. Security doesn’t go amiss either, as there’s a TPM 1.2 chip and a fingerprint reader nestling between the mouse buttons. 

That familiar scrabble-tile keyboard is  a pleasant a sight as ever, and although its keys are slightly harder and boast shorter travel than the Z-series, they felt perfectly comfortable under the fingers. 

Despite the TT’s business focus, Sony hasn’t neglected its entertainment credentials. A row of media-playback buttons along the TT’s front edge make it easy to skip through or pause music tracks, and unlike some ultraportables the TT doesn’t reach its target weight by doing away with the optical drive, so its easy to kick back with a CD or DVD at the end (or in the middle!) of the working day. Perfect.

With a price tag of roughly £1,500 inc VAT, the TT isn’t going to be rivalling netbooks for value for money, but with a review unit winging its way to us by the end of the week, we’ll make sure to have the definitive verdict before anyone else. And, lest not forget, should the standard specification not match up to your exacting standards, don’t worry – you’ll soon be able to customise your own Sony TT just the way you want it.