Sony Vaio X11 review

Earlier this year Sony launched its Vaio P-series, an incredibly small device that was a cross between a netbook and a PDA. While we marvelled at its size, we noted numerous compromises made to achieve it, including poor performance, a cramped keyboard, no touchpad and most of all, an incredibly detailed but inconveniently-shaped 8in screen.

The X-series is similar in that it’s incredibly thin and light, but this time Sony has managed to make fewer compromises, and the result is a more conventional, but equally desirable, netbook. It’s only 14mm thick, and weighs just 780g, which is a good 500g less than most netbooks and only slightly heavier than the P-series. The X11’s 11.1in screen is far more practical, though. With its standard 1,366×768 resolution, it’s large enough to do office work without straining your eyes and you can even watch 720p HD video on it.

The keyboard has quite small keys, but they are well-spaced and have a standard layout. Their action is light, but there’s hardly any travel and not a lot of feedback. Our only real niggle was the Space bar, which sits too close to the keyboard recess in the case. As a result our thumb hit the case more often than the key, which could prove annoying and as a result your thumb hits the case more often than the key. The touchpad is quite small and narrow, but the buttons have a nice light action.

Despite its slender design, there’s a reasonable selection of ports. The VGA connector only barely fits, taking up the full height of the chassis, but there’s no HDMI output. There are only two USB ports, one less than most netbooks, and the usual network port. There are separate SD and Memory Stick slots, and a headphone port, and that’s it.

The Atom Z540 processor runs at 1.86GHz, which slightly faster than the typical 1.6GHz Atom N270 netbook processor. There’s also 2GB of RAM, so there’s a bit more space for applications to run in. In our benchmarks we didn’t see a huge difference, as once again, the Atom’s poor multi-tasking performance dragged the score down. In our image-editing test the X11 scored a more reasonable 23, though. Office and internet applications will run well, as long as you don’t have more than a couple open at a time. Editing large photos or video will be tiresome though, and the integrated Intel graphics chipset can’t handle any serious 3D gaming.

To save space, Sony has fitted a solid-state disk (SSD) drive, but this only provides 128GB of storage. SSDs are very power efficient, which helps contribute to the X11’s impressive battery life, lasting for seven hours and 10 minutes in our tests. Another power-saver is the LED-backlit screen, which produced amazingly vibrant colours, but suffered from restricted vertical viewing angles. It has a glare-reducing finish that cuts down on reflections. Turn over the X11 and you can see that the slender battery takes up almost half the space on the underside of the case.

The X11 is well equipped for communications. As well as the Gigabit LAN port, there’s support for the fast Draft-N wireless connections. You also get a built-in 3G broadband modem, so you get an internet connection on the go, with the SIM card slotting in beneath the battery. The X11 doesn’t come with a contract so you’ll have to arrange your own. The best current offer is a £15 rolling monthly contract from 3, with 5GB of data per month.

There’s no doubt the X11 has its flaws – principally, the poorly placed space bar and the tiny touchpad – but at 780g it’s still an incredible feat of engineering and a netbook that we would be proud to own. However, price is a big issue and you could buy three Samsung N140 netbooks for this price and still have change for a couple of year’s mobile broadband fees – making the X11 seriously overpriced despite its charms.