DigitalWorldTokyo published a very very good review of Sony UX50. I congratulate J Mark Lytle, it is good to read a nice review after dozens of crappy ones. You should read Barry’s comment under the review too.
Well, about UX50, it looks like that all my predictions were true : Screen, digitizer, keyboard and battery life are not very good.
Notice that the screen zoomed in 2X. If you zoom that much to be able to use, than the screen isn’t very different than PDA screens.
I had planned to write this review on it but it’s simply too cramped (mainly by the left and right sides of the keyboard slider mechanism) and unresponsive. There’s almost no tactile feedback from keypresses and typing is a real chore. The onscreen handwriting recognition is no substitute either, as PDA fans will attest.
Then there’s the screen. Yes, it’s clear and bright but it’s pretty obvious that 4.5in is never going to be enough. My eyes really hurt after about 15 minutes of viewing the usual gamut of websites and that’s despite almost constant use of the zoom buttons. Moreover, I don’t use glasses or lenses — yet…
On the juice front, the battery life is — as might be expected — not up to scratch. With the Wi-Fi on, two hours was just about all right, but playing a movie with the screen at full brightness and headphones in reduced this to a poor 1.5 hours.
Mark didn’t like its’ weight and form factor very much either.
Finally, the 520g weight of the UX50 is likely to split opinion down the middle. I found it too heavy to sway me from me 900g Toshiba laptop. Why save just 400g but sacrifice a proper keyboard, much larger screen and great battery life?
Both the UX50 and a laptop need to be carried in a protective bag anway — this Vaio clearly isn’t pocketable — so where’s the need for the handheld in that case?
