We've been mightily impressed with what Sony has been doing with their Vaio notebooks for some time - the battery life, the design and solid performance numbers in our tests make them much sought after, if a little pricey.
While the Vaio Z is one notebook at the top of my personal most-wanted list (as well as the new MacBook Pro), some time spent recently with the Vaio TT made me think it should on that list too.
The killer? Battery life, or more specifically, battery life that lasts the length of a DVD movie. Despite advances in batteries, there's still a bunch of notebooks that don't make it this far.
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Sony's hinge design marks out the Vaio TT.
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The Vaio TT lasted me 3.5 hours on maximum power mode, with the screen un-dimmed, wireless on, and the DVD movie playing. In our lab tests, it lasted 6hrs 15mins of light usage (an idle test, so you're going to get less in real life).
Compare that to say, Toshiba's NB100 ultraportable netbook. The price is right at under $650, but in our tests it struggled to reach three hours under light use. The ASUS 1000H though, does manage an impressive six hours under light use.
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Battery life is great, as well as the Vaio TT's distinctive keyboard layout
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Curiously, the luxury end of the notebook market seems to be getting some attention too from Dell, with its not-so-secret Adamo notebook.
Add onboard DVD drive (and Blu-Ray in the top-end Vaio TT, though we're not sure why you'd bother) to the battery, and you've got a couple of things to keep in mind when weighing up the choice between a cheap and cheerful $500-$600 netbook, and a fully featured ultraportable like this one, or the Lenovo X300 or Toshiba's impressive Portege R600.
We just can't help but wish the Vaio TT was cheaper - starting at $3799 for the VGNTT15GNR, it's more expensive, though in many ways much better featured, than the 13.3in Apple Air.