Sony Vaio W in Hot Pink

Some products are highly sought after not for their performance or value for money but for their uniqueness and style. That’s why people line up at Havaianas to pick up the latest, trendiest and very expensive footwear despite the fact that a pair Spartans offer the same comfort at a much lower price.

The same can probably be said with the Sony Vaio W.

It’s either you’re a huge fan of the Sony brand or just have the hots for the color pink. More so if both. I just didn’t have any choice since this is the only review unit left for me to borrow.

Sony’ Vaio W is the Japanese company’s entry into the netbook category (I would argue that the Vaio P was actually the first) and despite the standard specs that it offered, Sony commanded a price almost twice as much as most other brands. You get an Intel Atom N280 1.66GHz, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, WiFi 802. 11b/g/n and Intel GMA 950 graphics running Windows XP. The suggested retail price — Php39,990USD 681INR 57,770EUR 649CNY 4,963 (it’s gone down since then).

However, there’s one feature I really liked with this model — it offered a nice screen resolution of 1366×768 pixels, something no other netbook in its category has ever offered before. I’ve been talking about netbook display resolution before and how it is important for some graphics applications.

So next time you look at the price tag, just think “Havaianas Effect”. Same reason why HP has the Vivienne Tam and Tord Boontje editions and Asus had the S101 and N10J models (read: market segmentation).