Here we see one of Sony's recent design features, where the keyboard area is on a slightly lower level than the rest of the base unit. The cylindrical mechanism connecting the lid to the back of the base unit is prominent; as well as the hinges it also houses the power button on the far right and the power socket on the far left. When the laptop is in use the power button glows a smart green, and red when idle; it blinks to warn the user when the battery is running out.

The laptop's surfaces are pleasant to the touch, with a powder coating. This stops it from accumulating fingerprints, and according to Sony is also environmentally friendly. The lid, the display bezel, the keyboard edging and the palm rest area are allmatt surfaces with a good feel to them. The Vaio logo appears on the lid, detailed in shiny chrome, as well as on the base unit where a smaller version is imprinted into the casing.

The magnesium chassis is robust and of high quality. While the lid is plastic, it also looks to be of good quality, and is so robust that you have to use brute force on the back of the lid to cause any screen distortions. However the lid does twist a little under moderate pressure, causing dark patches to appear on the screen.

Apart from this the case is very much of superior quality. It does not creak or bend; the only thing is that the keyboard gives way a little over the DVD drive. The lid's two slender hinges cannot quite prevent it from wobbling slightly when you adjust the angle. However they are strong enough to hold the screen reliably in all positions, and when the laptop is closed there is no need for any additional mechanism like hooks or magnets to pull the lid towards the case; the lid lies flat and is held in place by the strength of the hinges.

This resistance does stop you opening the lid of the laptop with one hand. The case lifts up from the desk if you try, and you have to hold it down with the other hand in order to open it properly. Even if you are just adjusting the viewing angle you will need to have a second hand free.

The lid does not go back further than 45 degrees beyond the vertical, since the hinges are attached to the front of the lid rather than the underside, so that part of the lid sticks out beneath the hinges and hits against the back of the notebook. But it is very seldom that you need to tilt the screen any further back than this.

Sony leaves the immediate area around the screen free of any LEDs or glowing buttons, which could potentially cause glare in your field of vision. The only status lights are on the very front of the laptop and indicate battery charge, hard drive activity and WLAN status.

Wireless can be switched on and off via a software tool as well as the actual switch which is positioned above the keyboard. This is practical, as it means you don't have to fumble around looking for it on the sides of the machine. Below it is a switch for muting the loudspeakers, as well as a presentation button which activates VGA output, which automatically start a video projector for example.

Keyboard

Unlike almost all consumer notebooks by Sony, the BZ26M does not have a chiclet keyboard, with keys that have relatively large spaces between them. Instead it has a conventional keyboard.

This offers a pleasantly firm typing sensation with good sized keys, but it leaves no room for a separate number pad. This omission could also be put down to the 16:10 format of the laptop, since it makes the machine somewhat deeper and not as long as the 16:9 machines which have become so widespread in the consumer market.

The keyboard dips a little under pressure in the area over the DVD drive. This is one of the very few flaws in the workmanship of the machine. However, this flexing is within acceptable bounds.

Other than this there are no problems typing. The keys do not make too much noise, and there are no unpleasant surprises in the keyboard layout - everything is where you would expect it to be.

Touchpad

The touchpad is distinguished visually and physically by means of its dimpled surface, as well as being slightly recessed from the surrounding hand rest area. It is not too easy and not too hard for your finger to glide over the lightly textured surface; exactly as a touchpad should be.

The only difficulty we had was with the scroll function, which is automatically activated when you touch the far right of the touchpad. The problem is that there is no readily identifiable border between the scroll area and the rest of the touchpad, so that it is easy to slip out of the scroll function and suddenly find yourself moving the cursor instead of the contents of the screen.

The two touchpad buttons are somewhat loud when you use them, but other than that there is nothing to complain about. They give good tactile feedback and are clearly differentiated from each other.

For those spending a lot of time working on their notebook, a screen with a matt finish is far more ergonomic than a glossy one, which produces distracting reflections which are tiring on the eyes. The BZ26M naturally has a matt display, as it is aimed at the business consumer who will be working extensively with their machine.

The screen has a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and a 16:10 aspect ratio. This does mean that you will get black strips above and below the picture when watching widescreen films, but for office use it is a definite advantage to have the taller screen, as you will need to scroll down less when reading documents.

The colours on matt displays are often not as brilliant as on glossy ones, and this is true of the BZ26M. Also the brightness is adequate at best, with an average of 165cd/m². But this should not present a great problem, unless your desk is right under a window or you are sitting on a park bench outside in the bright sunshine.

On the other hand the uniformity of brightness is very good at 83%, with no visible irregularities. The contrast and black value could be higher, but are perfectly okay for office use.

The picture appears distorted pretty quickly when you view the screen from the side. The colours also deteriorate rapidly when you tilt the display back and forth vertically. This is an area for improvement.

Sony has equipped the BZ26M with an Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 with 2.0 GHz clock speed, to handle all office uses. The processor uses a relatively large amount of energy with a thermal design power of 35 Watts, but does give better performance than low voltage CPUs, which are used in many of the slimline notebooks.

The results of the PCMark05 test and other benchmarks lie in the expected range: 4123 points is a good average score for the processor. The second core in particular makes almost every process faster. The Cinebench R10 test (multi-CPU rendering) shows that the increase in speed is almost double; with several processes being carried out simultaneously the speed gain can be even greater.

Sony has chosen the Intel GMA 4500 MHD graphics card, integrated into the chipset and using up to 700MB of the memory. This graphics card is more than sufficient for office tasks, but you will only get good gaming performance with really old games, despite the fairly low native resolution of the screen.

The 3DMark tests confirm this: while it achieves a score of 3684 in the 3DMark2001 test, this falls to 1052 points in the 3DMark05 test, and the benchmark sequences seemed more like slide shows than fluid gaming scenes.

The hard drive is a Toshiba MK2555GSX, with 250GB of space and 5,400 rpm. If you download a lot from the internet, or have a large collection of photos or music, you might find that the hard drive fills up too quickly. But for a pure business machine the size of the hard drive is sufficient. In addition you could always replace the hard drive with a larger one via the access panel on the underside of the notebook.

In the HDTune test the hard drive performed well, achieving a high score with an average transfer rate of 58.7 MB/s, and a satisfactory access time of 17.7 milliseconds.

The DVD burner is a product of Sony subsidiary Optiarc: an AD-7590S which can read and burn DVDs at 8x speed. The drawer has to be manually closed when you put a DVD in it.

Whilst doing this we got the impression that the drawer wouldn't fit properly into the body of the laptop; we had to push against some sort of resistance, as if the drawer had jammed. The effect seems to be intentional, since we can find absolutely no flaws in the workmanship of the drive, but it does feel rather strange and will take getting used to.

The WLAN adapter is an Atheros AR928X, which supports the established 802.11 b and g standards as well as the new 802.11 n standard, which is supposed to give a better quality signal and faster transfer rates.

System noise

Although Sony has not used an especially energy-efficient processor in the Vaio BZ26M, the fan volume is quiet and at times barely perceptible. When the notebook is idle, the noise (or in this case the quietness) is the same for hours on end, with the fan purring gently along at 31.2 dB(A). You have to put your ear to the left side of the notebook to be able to hear it at all.

If you go out of your way to subject the BZ26M to heavy use, you can raise the noise level of the fan to 40.3 dB(A). But this is still entirely bearable, and the BZ26M is designed for lighter office tasks which rarely require this level of processing power.

The hard drive is barely audible the whole time at 31.6 dB(A). The DVD drive makes a noise of 36.8 dB(A) during plackback which is a bit more substantial, but will not really impinge on your viewing pleasure.

Temperature

If you're looking for something to keep you warm during the winter months, the BZ26M is not for you, as the temperature build-up is impressively low. The underside of the casing heats up to 38.4 degrees C at most, in the area where the air vent (and therefore the processor) is found.

In idle mode the heat build-up reaches a maximum of only 34.3 degrees, which is barely noticeable. So if you are hoping to work with the notebook on your lap sometimes, the prospects are good: under normal circumstances this notebook should not overheat.

The power supply, on the other hand, can hit a maximum of 59.7 degrees and so could double as a hand-warmer. However this almost 60 degree figure is an extreme value which will rarely be reached during normal usage. With an average amount of activity the power supply remains cool. 

Sony's engineers have built a six-cell battery with 55 Wh capacity. This gives the BZ26M a maximum battery life of 382 minutes, which is 6 hours and 22 minutes. To achieve this run time we had to turn on all energy-saving measures and let the Battery Eater tool read just a single text document (Readers Test).

The minimum battery life, in contrast, was only 88 minutes (about an hour and a half), reached in the Battery Eater (Classic Test) which involves heavy use of the notebook with WLAN enabled, full screen brightness and optimum performance from the processor and graphics card.

Since neither test is particularly close to reality, representing rather the two extremes of the battery, we also tested how long the battery would survive during internet surfing and DVD playback. Both values were similar: with wireless internet surfing we reached 3 hours and 40 minutes before the battery gave up, and 3 hours and 20 minutes with DVD playback, enough for the most epic of films.

It is somewhat surprising that the notebook lasted for similar lengths of time during these two activities. Normally surfing takes up less battery power than watching a DVD.

So the battery life is wholly adequate for light tasks, but if you overburden it you will find the battery drains reasonably quickly. Resource-intensive tasks should be carried out at home before you travel. Other than that, the BZ26M can work reliably and for a long time away from a power supply.