One of the major announcements for CES 2009, the Sony VAIO P has been hailed by some as the ultimate netbook, and by others as a folly of “what Sony can do” rather than “what Sony should do”. SlashGear has been using the VAIO P for near enough the past two weeks; we shared our first-impressions back during the show, now it’s time for the full review.
Build quality – and bear in mind this is not a final production model – is high, with a few notable exceptions. Despite being all plastic, the casing feels expensive and shows little twist. The gloss finish is obviously a fingerprint magnet, but we’ve a feeling that VAIO P buyers will be regularly tending to their ultraportables with a microfiber cloth. However the hinges on our demo unit seemed a little on the weak side, flexing when the display is pushed back further than its allowed travel, plus the trackpoint stick displayed a tendency to drift to the left if you hold the VAIO P at an angle. We’d not expect to see these issues in production versions.
Part of the pay-off for a casing so compact is that you sacrifice user-accessible parts. There are no handy upgrade panels on the base of the VAIO P, primarily because there’s nothing really for a user to upgrade. The 2GB of RAM is soldered to the mainboard, and there’s no approved way to switch out the EV-DO Rev.A card. Undoubtedly we’ll see hacks of the notebook shortly after general release, but for most owners the VAIO P won’t see any hardware changes in its lifetime.
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https://www.slashgear.com/sony-vaio-p-slashgear-review-2031218/
