Let's make no bones about our thoughts on this one – it's probably the best power portable laptop Sony has produced for a while.

The Vaio S weighs in at 1.75Kg. Not light, but light enough and has a 13.3-inch display. But wait until you see these specs.

There is serious power here with the Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5-2410M under the hood.

We had to check twice to make sure that it was actually Sandy Bridge inside this laptop, as Intel has changed its branding for the new so-called "second generation" Core processors and what you see here is actually the old branding.

Our colleagues at T3.com grabbed some Sony Vaio S Series video footage which you can watch below.

Elsewhere, you get Windows 7 Professional, a whopping 500GB of storage/4GB of memory and AMD Radeon HD 6470M alongside the Intel HD Graphics on the Core i5. These are power specs, so expect a serious price as a result.

The model we saw also had a Blu-ray drive, though this will surely be a high-end addition only - normally you only get a DVD SuperMulti drive. Indeed, we were told that the specs in this display model were not final.

In terms of the screen, the definition of the Vaio Display Plus panel looks impressive and resolution clocks in at 1366x768.

If there's one thing we'd criticise, it's the general appearance. While it's smart, it's not quite a match for several other portables in terms of look – the back of the screen, for example, has a rough feel to it that we really don't like. But in feel, it's a different story.

Sony calls the design of the Vaio S "fully flat" and, while that's just marketing bluster, we can see where it's coming from. Overall thickness checks in at less than 24mm – plenty thin enough for slipping into a bag. However, nothing is lacking in terms of ports and controls.

There's a switchable graphics system so you can turn the dedicated graphics on or off. The graphics switches between the integrated Intel GPU and AMD Radeon HD graphics (which, coincidentally, you can spec with 512MB or 1GB of RAM).

Sony promises a seven hour battery life with this model if you put the laptop into stamina mode, while there's a fully flat second battery you can buy as an extra and charge independently of the main unit. There's also a new flat-design port replicator that can dock with the Vaio S, allowing you to work while the attached BPSC24 battery charges.

Sony's new laptops also have the possibility of booting into a Linux-based OS for quick web access. While this happens in just 15 seconds, surely you're more likely to sleep your Windows install instead?

The Sony Vaio S is a terrific power portable, though we await the presumably high price. The Vaio S UK release date is March 2011.