The Sony VAIO VGN-TZ31MN/N is an important laptop for Sony – it’s been a big player in the ultra-portable market for some time, but a host of competitors have emerged in the last few months that look set to steal some of its market share.

The Eee PC massively undercut most manufacturers on price and offered unprecedented portability for a budget machine; the Lenovo X300 ThinkPad brought features galore in a tiny package, as long as money was no object; and the Apple MacBook Air offers unrivalled style and a razor-thin chassis. So, the new TZ31MN is Sony’s answer to these pretenders to the ultra-portable throne.

Interestingly, the VGN-TZ31MN/N looks virtually the same as the VAIO VGN-TZ21 that preceded it, although it now sports a stylish white finish. This looks great, but may become grubby after a few months of regular use. We found that it easily picked up newspaper print from fingers on our morning commute.

Notably absent is the problem that plagued the TZ21, though. The TZ21 sacrificed too much rigidity for lightness, and, for example, the screen could be easily twisted – rather worrying for a laptop designed to be carried around all day. For the VGN-TZ31MN/N, Sony has added a little more strength to the structure, and a bit more weight as a result, and while this laptop is still far from rugged, we now have a lot more confidence in the protection it offers.

Something which we were glad to see unchanged is the screen. The 1366 x 768 resolution is crammed into an 11in diagonal and is impressively bright. Colours are wonderfully vibrant too.

That great screen is backed up with an equally high quality keyboard and trackpad. The keyboard borrows from Apple’s MacBook design, with ‘Scrabble tile’ keys that look like a triumph of form over function. But although the keys themselves are small, they keyboard is surprisingly comfortable to use and the well-spaced keys drastically reduce the chance of a mis-key.

Another nice touch is the row of media playback buttons that run along the laptop’s front edge. There’s also a physical switch to turn the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections on and off next to the play, pause and skip buttons, though we did find that the CD eject button could sometimes be pushed accidentally.

As well as being extremely portable, the VGN-TZ31MN/N also has a great battery life – something that sets it well apart from much cheaper ultra-portables like the Eee PC. In our light use test, the laptop lasted a staggering 8 hours and ten minutes, which is more than enough for a full working day. In fact given the VGN-TZ31MN/N’s small size, it makes you wonder why anyone would want to carry a considerably shorter-lived UMPC like the HTC Shift around.

Ports and expansion options tend to be the first things to get the chop on an ultra-portable – just look at the poor selection on the Apple MacBook Air. Thankfully, the VGN-TZ31MN is rather better equipped, with an ExpressCard/34 slot, two USB ports, a mini FireWire port, plus a combined Memory Stick/ SD Card slot.

Overall the VGN-TZ31MN/N is very impressive – it’s tiny, stylish and the battery live is nothing short of incredible. The catch, of course, is cost and at £1,361, this is a high-end ultra-portable. It’s still cheaper than the considerably larger (and albeit marginally better specified) Lenovo ThinkPad X300 though, and only a little more than the lesser MacBook Air – and it beats the battery life of both.

Much of the the VGN-TZ31MN/N's small size and lengthy battery life can be attributed to the Sony's unusual choice of hardware. For storage, Sony has shunned a standard 2.5in hard disk and instead used a 1.8in drive that you might normally find inside an iPod. The processor is an ultra-low-voltage U7600 processor from Intel that runs at only 1.2GHz, but uses only a fraction of the power that a standard notebook processor consumes.

So, if you’re looking for the ultimate ultra-portable and price is no object, the Sony VAIO VGN-TZ31MN/N should certainly be on your shortlist, but if all you want is something small and light than can handle most office tasks, you’ll still be better off with the Asus Eee PC.

Sony VAIO VGN-TZ31MN/N

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