Sony Vaio M Series netbook review

Our benchmarking gave the M series 0.39, about average for a device of this size, and again that is where the issue of not being able to upgrade the memory is a bugbear.

If we weren’t already disappointed, we soon would be after completing our battery life tests.

Netbooks can live or die by their battery life. After all, if you're out and about you don't want to be beholden to a plug socket as it kind of defeats the purpose of the device. Alas, Sony appears to have forgotten this fact.

On heavy use, despite being a six core battery, the M series only lasted three hours and on light use it was even more disappointing, only just breaking over the four and a half hour mark. We understand this is a budget machine but the key to a netbook is its battery life and we were stunned at how bad it was on this product.

At an average price of £299 (inc VAT), this netbook is not too shabby. It is aesthetically very pleasing, has great connectivity and a fairly standard, but adequate chip set.

However, the lack of battery life, inability to upgrade memory and misty eyed screen were a real dampener and we do believe there is better out there for your hard earned cash at a similar price.