Sony VGN-TZ11XN/B laptop

The carbon fibre casing is extremely durable

Then there’s the VGN-TZ11 XN/B Natural Black that we’re reviewing that has 2GB of RAM in a single module and a 100GB hard drive at the eye-watering prince of £1,799, although you can find it for £1,589. Finally, we have the VGN-TZ11 VN/X Black carbon fibre, which is an XN/B with a 1.20GHz U7600 processor that will ‘be coming soon’ at a price of £1,899 inc VAT.

Sony is charging an epic price for a tiny laptop so it’s fair to ask what it delivers for your truckload of cash. Happily, the answer is "quite a lot, actually".

The tiny chassis includes a dual layer DVD writer that nestles into the right hand side, just in front of the VGA port. The back of the Sony is fully occupied by the battery, but the left side is riddled with ports.

Under a cover you’ll find modem and Gigabit LAN ports and a mini Firewire, there’s an Express Card/34 slot under another cover, and two exposed USB 2.0 ports, which is impressive enough, but the real action takes place at the front. There are two mini jacks for headphones and microphone so Skype users are well catered, two memory card slots, and a flick switch to disable wireless.