Unfortunately the Sony Vaio Duo 13 has to go back today and we didn’t have time to get a full review together but we’ve had a reasonable amount of time testing and are now able to give you a relatively detailed overview. We’re expecting a longer term loaner very soon and that one will be a retail model rather than the production sample we’ve got here.

In summary the Sony Vaio Duo 13 is a very impressive and advanced Ultrabook and a unique bit of engineering both inside and outside. Haswell shows all it’s colors with the Duo 13 but there are one or two things to watch out for before you buy and of course, this isn’t a cheap Ultrabook but read-on to find out why you’re probably going to get value for your money.

Dospara, a Japanese company, are offering the Note Erdes Bookk ST1. Recognise it? Yes Epson are offering the same model as the Endeavor NY10S which, in turn is the MSI S20. With a local price of about 1120 dollars it comes with Core i5, 4GB and 128GB SSD.

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The Endeavor S series NY10S is now available in Japan at the Epson Direct Shop. It’s a slider in the style of the MSI S20 which offers a near – laptop experience along with tablet capability.

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I’ve just sent back the Fujtsu Q702 hybrid. It was a great, productive all-rounder (Review here) and is also available with Core i3 and without VPro for much the same price as the Ultrabook I’ve just started testing. The Sony Vaio Duo 11 also fits many of the same user profiles as the Q702. It’s fitted with a digitizer, converts to a tablet and has a great set of ports. My first impressions are generally positive.

Tucked into a report on MSI’s 2012 line-up over at Digitimes today is a mention of the MSI S20 Slider that appeared at Computex earlier this month. MSI are apparently aiming for an October or November release for between $799 and $899

Launch date is obviously going to depend on Windows 8 availability but we’re expecting that to happen without delay in Q4 anyway. As for the price, it seems quite competitive.

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Update: This is an Intel concept design called Letexo.

As I filter through some of the information coming out of IDF in Beijing, this image strikes me as being significant. It’s a slider tablet design with a Windows 8 button. The design smacks of Dell but the logo on the images [Lxo, Lyo or Lko perhaps?] tells us that this is probably just a CAD concept. However, it looks fantastic and is something that could hit the Ultrabook sector soon. 

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