Sony VAIO X Gets Reviewed: Engineering Marvel, Pricing Madness

Say what you like about Sony – their machines might be expensive and their customer service might throw the occasional wobbly, depending on who you speak to – but they certainly know how to put together a slick, appealing notebook.  The Sony VAIO X has fallen lightly into the hands of T3, and they've been putting the carbon-fiber marvel through its paces.

In the sub-800g machines favor is, well, its incredible size: at 16mm thick it's thinner than a MacBook Air, and yet by soldering the ports directly to the motherboard Sony have managed to outfit the ultraportable with more connectivity than Apple's machine.  You get two USB 2.0, VGA and an ethernet port, though you'll need to make use of the flap-down legs if you actually want to squeeze a wired network connection into the socket.

Less impressive is the flexible body, which – despite the exotic materials – bends "alarmingly under light pressure", and the short-travel of the keyboard.  You're also getting a mere 2GB of RAM and a 2GHz Atom processor, neither of which are exactly stellar, although the 256GB of SSD storage do at least maintain the premium message.  In the end, though, unless you're seriously unwilling to carry any more weight around, T3 reckon the MacBook Air or Sony's own Z-series VAIO are better bets.