Sony VAIO VGN-S1XP

Unlike every other manufacturer in the world, you never know quite what you're going to get when Sony launches a new notebook. While companies such as Dell, HP and IBM tend to stick to the same basic chassis design for years on end, each new VAIO must, it seems, improve upon its predecessor. While this makes keeping up with the Joneses something of a nightmare, we doubt anyone will be complaining when the end result is the VAIO S1XP.

Why? Well, it weighs 1.9kg yet provides up to six hours of battery life. It weighs 1.9kg, yet includes a full-size keyboard. It weighs 1.9kg, yet includes a DVD writer. It weighs 1.9kg, yet squeezes in a 13.3in widescreen TFT. Sharper readers will have noticed a certain fixation with the weight, but it's for good reason. You see, this notebook weighs just 1.9kg without making a single notable sacrifice.

Sony has shaved off a few grams by using a plastic lid rather than metal one, but the widescreen TFT is still protected from accidental damage. The overall design is eye-catching too, with a black lid complemented by a gunmetal grey finish on the rest of the chassis. It's a classy combination.

The other benefit of Sony's design is that the keyboard is full width. All the keys are easy to hit and the overall typing experience is roughly the same as with a normal keyboard; the only sacrifice is the shortened function and cursor keys. Those with larger hands might feel that there isn't much space beneath the keyboard to rest their palms, and we occasionally missed having a trackpoint to accompany the responsive touchpad, but these are just minor criticisms.

One thing we could hardly fault was the screen. In everyday use, its rich colours, bright backlight and impressive viewing angles make it a joy to look at. When playing games, it boasts a good enough response time that you'll barely ever experience lag. And even when watching movies, any faults you'll see are likely to be a consequence of DVD compression, not the panel. The only point to bear in mind is its high-gloss reflective finish, which some may find annoying.

Some people might also wish for a higher resolution than 1,280 x 800, but in practice we found this to be the ideal choice for the size of the TFT. Individual pixels don't look too small, so you don't have to strain to read system text, yet it's still possible to have two windows open side by side.

The screen's excellence is matched by the power of the graphics too. ATi's most powerful mobile chip, the Mobility Radeon 9700, pushed the VAIO to scores of 17fps in Halo at 1,280 x 1,024 and 40fps in Unreal Tournament 2004 at the same resolution. Few games will phase this machine.

We can't imagine many people complaining about 2D speed either. The 1.7GHz Pentium M processor, based on the Dothan core, coupled with 512MB of memory helped the S1XP to a score of 1.68 in our benchmarks. We probably wouldn't choose this machine for rendering, but other than that there's not a lot that it won't speed through.

The only core component we can fault is the 60GB hard disk, which doesn't seem quite big enough when you're paying this amount of money. Fortunately, there's a DVD writer capable of burning DVD-R discs at 2x and to DVD-RAM at the same speed, so if you do ever need to find space then it's possible to archive large chunks of data reasonably quickly.

As you'd expect from a new VAIO, there's a Memory Stick Pro slot (which is backwards compatible with normal Memory Sticks) built into the chassis, while a mini-FireWire port, or i.Link 400 in Sony's terminology, and two USB 2 ports hide behind a flap on the right-hand side. This flap proved a little annoying in practice, as it gets in the way when you're trying to slot in the cables, but at least it protects the ports from dust.