Sony have created a pure Ultrabook showcase with the Vaio Pro 13. It’s thin, light, powerful, stylish, touch-enabled and efficient. There’s WiDi, NFC and a fast SSD and you can add an external battery to the 37Wh pack that’s already inside.
This is the Ultrabook that’s been chosen for the South Pole expedition by The Scott Expedition
The Sony Vaio Tap 11 has got an 11.6” screen which really puts it outside the ‘handheld WIndows’ category. On the other hand it weighs only 780gm, comes with a super light, but very usable keyboard, offers full Core-level performance and has a digitizer. It is, in my opinion, a benchmark for 2013 and 2014 Haswell-based tablets.
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….
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.
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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.
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!
At Computex 2013, Sony has now officially revealed the Sony Vaio Pro. The company claims that the 11.6-inch and 13.3 inch Pro are the lightest touchscreen Ultrabooks in their respective categories. Now with the carbon fiber treatment, we’re wondering if the older Z-series will give way to the Pro.
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