Sony VAIO VGN-UX180P Review by LAPTOP Magazine

A true feat of design and engineering, the Sony VAIO UX Series Micro PC puts the power of a full-sized notebook into the palm of your hands. Designed for highly mobile professionals—or gadget hounds that love to show off—this Windows XP system crams a remarkable amount of technology into a 1.2-pound frame, including a surprisingly peppy Intel Core Solo processor, two cameras, and a fingerprint sensor. And unlike Samsung's more affordable but underwhelming Q1 UltraMobile PC, this device sports a keyboard and wireless WAN capability. The question is whether users are truly ready to compute on a PSP-sized screen.

Easily one of the slickest-looking gadgets of the year, the black-and-silver UX boasts a bright but small 4.5-inch display with SVGA resolution. That's less than half the size of Sony's smallest ultraportable notebook, 2.5 inches smaller than a typical UMPC, and 0.5 inches smaller than OQO's Model O1+, which started the handtop trend two years ago. The high resolution is impressive, and we appreciated the wide viewing angles afforded by Sony's XBrite technology when watching movies, but some may find the desktop icons and text to be too small to read. Sony wisely includes a set of Zoom buttons on the right side of the device, but when you magnify the view, you have to scroll left and right to see the whole screen.

You have two options for moving the cursor around: Use the telescoping stylus to tap on the touchscreen, or place your thumb on the textured mouse pointer to the right of the keyboard while using the two mouse buttons to the left of the keyboard (up for left-click, down for right-click). The pointer takes some getting used to, but once you adjust to the sensitivity, it's fairly easy to use.

We especially like the Touch Launcher application, which brings up a panel of nine boxes for quickly accessing everything from Windows Media Player to your inbox. From that same window you can also adjust the brightness of the display and change its orientation from landscape to portrait mode (especially handy for reading long Web pages.)

Undoubtedly, the UX's biggest flaw is its keyboard. Although it's certainly large enough and well spaced to minimize typos, the keys are spaced too far apart to type quickly. Worse, the keyboard feels flat, providing almost no tactile feedback. The fact that the keyboard resides behind the screen contributes to this issue, but there are similarly designed devices on the market, like the Sidekick 3, that manage to offer a much better ergonomic experience.

Thanks to a 1.2-GHz Core Solo Processor and 512MB of RAM, this pink-sized PC performs quite well. The MobileMark 2005 score of 150 isn't very high, but applications opened and closed quickly during our tests. We also had no problems streaming the latest YouTube videos over a Wi-Fi connection and chatting using Yahoo Instant Messenger. The UX's battery life is impressive given its small size, lasting 3.5 hours on a charge; that's an hour and a half longer than the OQO. You can spring for the large capacity battery to essentially double your runtime, but the extra bulk defeats the purpose of owning a Micro PC.

You can use the UX as a desktop with the included docking station that contains a VGA connector, allowing easy output to a larger LCD. You also get three USB ports (for plugging in a full-sized keyboard and mouse), a FireWire port, an A/V out port, and Ethernet. The screen looked a little stretched at 1024 x 600 pixels, so we recommend using the 800 x 600 setting. Sony throws in a separate VGA/LAN adapter for mobile presenters.

The UX itself includes one USB port (great for connecting a memory drive) on the left side of the device, mic and headphone jacks on the bottom, and a Memory Stick slot on top. Other noteworthy features include a 30GB hard drive with built-in shock protection and a fingerprint reader

A 1.3-megapixel digital camera resides on the back of the slide-up display, and a front-mounted Motion Eye camera sits above the screen for adding some video to your Web chats. The former digicam captured snapshots that looked a little sharper and more colorful than your average camera phone, while the latter delivered slightly choppy and grainy video. Still, the fact that you can videoconference at all with this device is an accomplishment.

This mini PC turned in an average throughput of 10.8 Mbps from 15 feet and 10.9 Mbps from 50 feet. If you want to be able to connect from anywhere, Sony includes wireless WAN technology that enables users to tap into Cingular's EDGE network at speeds up to 130 Kbps. That speed is fine for e-mail and casual surfing but not nearly as fast as Sprint and Verizon Wireless' EV-DO networks

In addition to the cool Touch Launcher app, Sony bundles a boatload of software, including Microsoft Streets & Trips (pair this gadget with a Bluetooth receiver and you have a full-fledged navigator), a variety of Norton security software, and Microsoft Works 8.5. The SmartWi Connection Manager program makes toggling among the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and wireless WAN radios a snap.

The Sony VAIO UX is easily one of the most innovative notebooks of the year. It's much faster and is packed with far more features than any competing handtop. In the end, however, this system isn't quite practical enough to be your primary PC and is too expensive to be a secondary PC. If you can live with the flat keyboard and tiny display, the UX is worth the splurge.

Topics

Resource Centers

Sony VAIO VGN-UX180P

The first handtop that performs like a real notebook crams in a ton of features but falls a bit flat when it comes to usability.

Featured Site Sponsors