Sony Vaio M available in the US, but is it worth it?

Remember the Vaio M, the new affordable netbook from Sony that should be able to compete with the likes of Asus, Toshiba and Acer devices, who dominate this market?

It was spotted in Europe earlier this month and has now also reached the States. It costs $379 and is available at Tigerdirect. So indeed the product competes with the Asus 1005PE or the Toshiba Mini NB305 in terms of price.

However, unlike its relative Vaio W, it doesn’t offer the same features. Outside, the M is still a looker, with a nice matte case available in different colors (only in white for now in the US, but more options will come later). On the inside however, things have changed.

First, you don’t get the famous Vaio chiclet keyboard anymore, but a common flat one. The 10 inch display is not anymore a HD ready one, offering only the 1024 x 600 px resolution (the screen remained matte, that’s a plus). Inside, the old Atom platform was replaced with the new Intel Atom N450 processor + GMA 3150 graphics, completed by 1 GB of RAM and 250 GB hard-drive. We knew the new platform won’t offer extra performance, but we expected better battery life. That’s not the case, as the Sony Vaio M ca offer up to 7 hours autonomy, way bellow the Asus (up to 14 hours) or the Toshiba (up to 11) – all these numbers are on paper, in practice they are actually lower.

Sony Vaio M = cheaper netbook with quite a couple of features shaved off

So all in all, the Vaio M manages to get a competitive price by shaving some of the features that made a Vaio desirable. Thus, i for one would certainly not pick one of these over the main competitors in the list of best 10 inch netbooks. And i wouldn’t pick it over the Vaio W also, especially since the brown version of that series can be bought with just $409 these days (with a 22% discount). Those 40 extra bucks are well worth paying for the extra features.

But how about you, what do you think of this new cheaper Vaio M? Would you buy one?

Via Netbooked .

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Tags: 10" netbook, Sony Vaio

Last updated: September 30, 2011 | Published: March 23rd, 2010 | Add the first comment!