Sony doesn't do netbooks, but if it did the Vaio P would be one. It is small and neat. It weighs just 0.6kg and it measures 245 x 120 x 19.8mm. Picture those measurements in your mind and you'll visualise a wide, thin notebook, which is precisely what the Vaio P is.

Its wide format allows for a large keyboard that is extremely comfy to use, and a wide format screen which might only measure 8-inches across diagonal corners, but which offers 1,600 x 768 pixels.

These criteria, plus the general build quality, which oozes style and pizzazz, are enough to capture the imagination. And there are other things to draw the attention, like a webcam, GPS, 3G support via a SIM and Draft-N wireless support.

There are seven different models currently available, and the least expensive of them will cost you £850. You could get two good netbooks out of that. But of course, Sony doesn't call the Vaio P a netbook, even though it runs an Intel Atom Z520 processor. OK, then.

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While it might look stunning, that screen is actually a serious pain to live with. It simply isn't an ergonomic format. The width pixel count is great, but in terms of height there are too few. Web browsing was difficult as we had to keep panning up and down. Writing text was irritating as we couldn't see a great many lines on a page. And there is another problem: the screen resolution means that what you see is rather small. If your eyesight isn't wonderful, you may find yourself squinting.

The keyboard, though, is a thing of greatness. Sony knows how to do keyboards and the one here, with its isolated keys, was responsive under the fingers. Fast touch-typing was easy. Wisely, Sony didn't squeeze the keyboard to fit in a touchpad. Instead there is a pointing stick which you can tap for a left mouse click. There are two small mouse buttons beneath the keyboard with a central one for scrolling.

Battery life was disappointing and we found we only got about an hour when using a SIM. We also tried a mobile broadband dongle and the system didn't seem to like that at all, crashing often enough to be really irritating. In fact, running full Windows Vista might not have been a good choice for Sony. With 2GB of RAM, Vista struggles.

There is a Linux-powered 'instant-on' environment for those times when you don't want to wait for full Windows to boot. That gets you into features like Web surfing, picture and video viewing, and music listening. It'll cover entertainment needs, but if you want to write much text or be otherwise productive, you are probably going to need the Windows boot.

Sony's Vaio P is a stunning looking piece of kit. But we aren't so sure about its capabilities or its value for money. Neither cheap enough to compete with netbooks nor efficient enough to compete with notebooks, it is difficult to see where it really fits in.