As a reviewer, I have the chance to look and play with a lot of different products. Laptops are one of the few categories I don’t get a chance to play with as much as I would like. It’s tough to be sure just how good a particular model is until you’ve had a chance to seriously use it for at least a couple of weeks. For an upcoming article on ultra-portables I decided to the four best ultra-portables through a serious usability test.
On Saturday, I scoured the countryside for the best laptop I could find that met my criteria. It had to be very light, have good battery life, a high quality screen for watching DVD’s, look good, and be comfortable to use for long periods. After much consideration and a lot of research, I took home the Sony PCG-TR3A Vaio laptop. It’s a bit pricy compared to the competition, only Apple makes more expensive laptops in the ultra-portable category.
I’ve only had a day to play with it and so far I’m fairly impressed. Without thinking about price this is a very nice computer. It’s a bit difficult getting used to the fact it only has a 1 Ghrz processor, when there are so many desktop replacement laptops with 3.0 Ghrz and more for considerably less. It has a lot of features and I can’t get passed how comfortable it is to write on. I’ve spent more than four hours straight writing and I haven’t gotten tired of it. The extremely sensitive, low threshold keys took a couple of minutes to get accustomed to, but now that I am, it’s lightning fast.
For the moment, I’m happy with the TR3A and that is saying a lot for a reviewer. Most of the time, I touch something and immediately find a whole host of things I hate. Which was one of the reasons I brought the Sony home with me even if the salespeople tried to persuade me to buy something different. On this trip to Fry’s they were on a Toshiba high and we steering everyone to those laptops.
In the coming weeks there will be a review on the Vaio TR3A for those of you interested in how this ultra-portable laptop survives my life.
