Digital Trends

Sony Vaio UX50

June 9th, 2006 | by Brandon King

Setup and Use

The UX50 feels very solidly built. Even the screen sliding mechanism is tightly constructed, with no wiggling when locked into place. The mouse pad piece is the single best solution we have seen to date. Instead of a pencil eraser or joystick, Sony uses a textured patch of rubber that makes using the mouse a veritable joy compared to other handheld PC options. The accuracy of the touch screen is excellent, as it would need to be at a native resolution of 1024x600. The UX50 is relatively thick, measuring a little over an inch thick, but the added bulk helps the unit fit most sized hands well. The Zoom buttons step through ½ increments from 1x to 3x, unlike previous U series computers, which would switch the resolution of the whole screen. For easy access to nine customizable applications, screen orientation flip, monitor output, volume, and screen brightness. The buttons on the display are big, making for easy access whether using the built in stylus housed in the back, the mouse, or a finger.

Unlike the U70, which is imported into the US lacking an English handwriting application, the UX50 ships with EverNote's ritePen. The accuracy for the handwriting recognition is very good, and allows for quick access to alternative interpretations of the text entered. Rather than slowly trudging through letter-by-letter entry, ritePen allows the user to enter entire sentences at a time. A bundled Japanese application is also included, but only accessible from the launcher program, which allows the drawing directly on the screen with either an opaque pencil or translucent highlighter. Notes can be assembled into sets and saved, but since the application is entirely in Japanese, it will be of limited use to most users.

For DVD playback, even though the UX50 does not ship with an optical drive, Sony includes PowerDVD 3.0, and both Roxio Digital Media Home and Drag'n Drop data CD/DVD writing. Fingerprint recognition is done through the Protector Suite QL application, and allows for logging into Windows with a finger swipe instead of a password. We did find a version of SonicStage installed (3.4 for Connect), which is meant for access to Sony's online music store. This particular SonicStage version was not as painful to use as past versions, and offered a much improved interface, quick loading time, and offered little semblance to the SonicStage of yore, which would induce panic upon every attempted use.

The built in Sony Camera Capture Utility offers a slightly clumsy interface, but allows easy switching between the front and read mounted camera. Switching between the cameras take a couple seconds, and both cameras cannot be accessed at once. The utility uses two separate windows — one for camera control and one for the camera view and capture button — which should have been integrated into a single window. Native resolution for high quality images is 1280x1024 for the rear mounted camera, and 640x480 or the front camera. Movies are confined to 320x240 for both cameras. One very interesting feature, easy to overlook is the built in GPS location feature. Images can be stamped with the GPS location data when a Bluetooth GPS unit is present. All aspects of the camera are user definable including contrast, brightness, backlighting compensation, quality, light source, saturation, and hue. Our only complaint is that Sony should have made better use of the widescreen format, and condensed the interface; and when idle and plugged in, the camera is used for the custom VAIO screen saver, pulling video from the last camera used.