Ultrabooks with Intel’s new Haswell processors are here! We’ve had the Sony Vaio Duo 13 on hand and are ready to give you the full review. Is this one worth your hard earned cash? We try to answer that question inside.

Today I’m pitting the Sony Vaio Duo 13 (third-gen Haswell Ultrabook) against the Asus UX31E (first-gen Sandybridge Ultrabook) in sleep and wake times. One of Intel’s goals for the Ultrabook platform was to eventually reach a point of instant-on, just like a tablet or smartphone, with Haswell, they’ve finally done it.

Chippy brought you an initial look at Sony’s new Vaio Duo 13 Haswell Ultrabook convertible, and now I’m digging deep to suss out the details. First up is a look at the stylus and how it works with the unit’s N-Trig active digitizer touchscreen. I’ve got a 25 minute video for you, showing the in’s and out’s of the Duo 13’s stylus. One unfortunate detail that I’ll tell you up front is that the stylus does not work properly with Photoshop… or perhaps Photoshop does not work properly with the stylus….

The Ultrabook versions of Haswell, the 4th Gen Core from Intel, bring something special. Connected Standby is the mark of an Ultrabook that’s been built to very tight power efficiency standards, brings alive a part of Windows 8 that few have considered before and gives you the best-in-class in terms of battery life. The Sony Vaio Duo 13 has been built to this standard and although the re-branded Sony Active Sleep was rumored to be a feature that would be brought alive with Windows 8.1, I have it working here on a Windows 8 sample sent to us by Sony. Demo below.

Why you need Connected Standby.

Sony Vaio Duo 13- Too Much Good Stuff to Fit In This Title

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The Sony Vaio Duo 13

So far as we can tell, Sony is the first vendor to bring the next generation of Haswell Ultrabooks to market. The Vaio Duo 13 and Vaio Pro are available today!

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Remember that Sony 13-inch slider we said would be based on Haswell? It is. It’s just been made official at Computex.

VR-Zone have just published images of a Sony Vaio Duo 13, minutes before the Sony press conference at Computex. [Happening as we write, stay tuned for updates.] A Sony Vaio Pro 13 has also been shown…

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