5. The Display
The Sony VAIO UX180P's display is a marvel of engineering. It's only 4.5" diagonally, but what Sony manages to put on that screen! Fonts and images are tack sharp. Many who are farsighted and not nearsighted will need to break out their glasses to see what's going on. And, some will not be able to see the display and its contents sharply no matter what corrective lenses they use. But, those with the eyesight to see what's up will have a very rewarding viewing experience to say the least. I'm only sorry that I can't show you how great the display is on the Internet.
For the record, the UX180P has an easily reached set of buttons for zooming in and zooming out on the display. They help, but it can be a little awkward using them and then moving around the screen with the mouse to see what's what. While the screen is magnified you can't use the mouse buttons for example to click a Web link or double-click an icon. You have to return the screen to 1x magnification for that.
The display is too small to use our standard 64-rectangle brightness and contrast testing tools. However, I was able to measure the UX180P's display brightness and contrast in a 4 (across) x 3 (down) matrix. The results are amazing.
Average brightness is a very, very good 280 candelas per square meter. The display's contrast ratio (white-to-black) is an impressive 480. These are the kind of numbers I'd expect to see on a really good Windows Media Center Edition PC, not a tiny almost PDA-like device with a fairly small capacity battery. Of course, we measure brightness and contrast ratio at full screen brightness. Unless you want to run your battery down very quickly, in normal use you'd reduce brightness to perhaps mid-level, which with this display still leaves plenty of brightness for easy viewing.