Competition is a great thing, and it is much more so when the market is receptive towards the product in question. In North America, ultraportable laptops are a rare bird – anything at around 2kg (4.4 lbs) with a 12” screen and people’s eyebrows start arching upwards and oohs and aahs begin asserting the digital superiority of the owner. If it happens to be less than 2” thick while at it and have more than 1.5 hours of battery life, then supremacy is generally assured.

This has by far not been the case in Japan. A nation of conformity in everyday lifestyle, it has found its outlet for creativity and uniqueness by differentiating each one of its citizens via the goods they wield. Curiously, the sheer fact of perpetually looking to differentiate themselves unites them into a different kind of group, where everyone is still exactly the same in that they all own radically stylish items, but that is a philosophical discussion that is far beyond the point of the article. In our case, we are interested in how this applies specifically to laptop computers.

The subject of this review, the Sony TZ90NS, is the latest entrant into this category. It’s a given that this isn’t a performance monster. This is not the primary purpose of it; the primary purpose is to be ultraportable. As well, the specific model we will look at today is part of Sony’s “Owner-made” series, where you can customize all the components to your liking and mix and match what’s available; the retail outlet models are usually significantly more run of the mill and have standardized component choices (though all have a carbon fiber compound body that, while not making it as light as the original X505, still helps reduce the weight further).

You can have the top lid of the laptop in one of four colors: black, light gold, Bordeaux or “premium carbon” (where an actual carbon fiber weave is used). The screen is 11.1”, which is somewhat on the small side, but for portability’s sake it’s rather acceptable. Interestingly, it uses a full 720p WXGA resolution – 1366x768, which is actually higher than most 14” and 15” laptops on the market right now which use 1280x800. The fonts, however, are not too small, and are pleasant to use. The LED backlight of the screen is extremely powerful. There is, unfortunately, some uniform backlight bleeding from the bottom, which is probably due to the fact that the screen is so thin that there is little place to hide the LED backlight system.

The storage options represent the most interesting aspect of the laptop. The standard configuration has a 160GB 2.5” 5,400rpm hard drive with no optical drive; but you have a choice of 40-100GB 1.8” 4,200rpm drives (currently, there are no 5,400 or 7,200rpm drives in the 1.8” form factor) coupled with a dual-layer 8X DVD burner, and, as a third option, you can outfit your laptop with a 32GB SSD (solid-state drive), which increases battery life, decreases weight, and in general adds a humongous “cool factor” to your laptop.

The keyboard of the TZ has been radically changed from the previous generation TX. The keys now protrude through openings in the casing, whereas before the keyboard was a separate unit; the feel of the keyboard is significantly improved, and buttons feel more responsive and pleasant to use. When bought online from SonyStyle Japan, you can choose to have either a Japanese or an English keyboard, a nice touch.

All of the above is nice, though, but the main point that differentiates this laptop is its portability – and a few words need to be said about that. Being able to choose the storage options, the battery sizes and so on presents a pretty daunting array of options, but the final word is: this laptop is extremely light, the battery lasts a ridiculous amount of time, and it’s a pleasure to use (and it’s only 22.5mm/0.89” thick). As configured (with a U7500 1.06GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, 60GB 1.8” hard drive, DVD+/-RW drive and carbon fiber lid top and standard battery) the laptop weighs in at an astounding 1,070 grams (2.312 lbs). Battery life was very good as well: it managed to squeeze about 2.5 hours of continuous movie playback time on the plane, and if used for less CPU-intensive tasks, closer to 4-4.5 hours can be expected. In order to reach the rated 4.5h mark, you’d have to clock the RAM down to 400MHz down from 533 (the system settings utility lets you do that), switch power management to maximum, and turn down the brightness; however, if you’re stuck on a flight without power outlets, this might just be the ticket. If you really wanted battery power above anything, you could configure it with a XL size battery, which would raise the total weight to 1,315 grams, but would raise your battery life to 14.5 hours with a 2.5” hard disk, or an astounding 18 hours with a SSD (flash drive). All while preserving the cutting edge looks and portability.

Oh, and it doesn’t come cheap. As configured above it came out to about $1,800 USD, which is more than the Thinkpad X60s (which doesn’t have a touchpad!) or the Dell XPS M1210 – although it is almost half the weight of either one.