When the Ultrabook concept was revealed at CES last year, most major PC manufacturers introduced their take on what was supposed to be thin, sexy and affordable. Sony went out of their way to produce the Vaio Z, which then symbolized what an ultrabook could be like. The Vaio Z had a Full HD display, super thin and light body at just 1.17kg, super fast pair of SSDs running in RAID 0, and even a media dock that sported a discrete GPU which enabled super-fast graphics on an ultraportable (when docked), thanks to the power of a custom Thunderbolt-based interface. On the other hand, the Vaio Z targeted the ultra-premium consumer.
To that end, Sony hopes the Vaio T can fill in the blank under the “affordable” column with lessons learned from the Vaio Z. Design-wise, the Vaio T does lift a few visual cues from its powerful sibling, but its obviously thicker and heavier. Instead of carbon fiber, Sony opted to deck the Vaio T in silver aluminum alloy (for the lid), silver magnesium alloy (at the palm rest) and plastic (for the bottom cover).
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Also for some, its 13.3-inch screen could be a deal breaker, with a now-common 1366x768 pixel resolution. Granted, it’s the preferred screen resolution for manufacturers trying to keep costs low. But this isn’t helpful when you’re trying to differentiate against a sea of competing Ultrabooks.
Continuing the trend of cutting costs, Sony chose to equip the Vaio T with a hybrid drive that has 500GB of storage, combined with a 32GB SSD. This at least gets you a nice chunk of storage, while retaining speedy boot and resume times, so that the Vaio T can maintain its Ultrabook status.
In terms of hardware, Sony opts for the cheaper Intel Core i5 processor and just 4GB of RAM, but overall performance remains reasonably good for a laptop of this class. On the plus side, if you consume a great deal of media on-the-go, the Vaio T does come with some decent built-in speakers; not the best we’ve heard from an Ultrabook, but definitely way better than the comparatively weak audio on the Vaio Z.
Despite the budget status of the Vaio T, it’s also interesting that Sony thought to include gesture control software which works via the webcam, where you can wave your hand to execute actions such as starting music playback, or to advance a slide in a slideshow presentation. Then again, this feature only worked sporadically. Still it’d be interesting if Sony continues to develop and refine the technology in future revisions.
To that end, Sony hopes the Vaio T can fill in the blank under the “affordable” column with lessons learned from the Vaio Z. Design-wise, the Vaio T does lift a few visual cues from its powerful sibling, but its obviously thicker and heavier. Instead of carbon fiber, Sony opted to deck the Vaio T in silver aluminum alloy (for the lid), silver magnesium alloy (at the palm rest) and plastic (for the bottom cover).
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The unmistakable Sony design touches on the machine doesn’t exactly make you gasp in amazement (as it would half a decade ago), but it hardly disappoints either. The diverse materials used also help to keep the weight of the machine down and keeps the price in check as well. However at 1.6kg, it does weigh quite a bit more than the other Ultrabooks in this shootout.
Also for some, its 13.3-inch screen could be a deal breaker, with a now-common 1366x768 pixel resolution. Granted, it’s the preferred screen resolution for manufacturers trying to keep costs low. But this isn’t helpful when you’re trying to differentiate against a sea of competing Ultrabooks.
Continuing the trend of cutting costs, Sony chose to equip the Vaio T with a hybrid drive that has 500GB of storage, combined with a 32GB SSD. This at least gets you a nice chunk of storage, while retaining speedy boot and resume times, so that the Vaio T can maintain its Ultrabook status.
In terms of hardware, Sony opts for the cheaper Intel Core i5 processor and just 4GB of RAM, but overall performance remains reasonably good for a laptop of this class. On the plus side, if you consume a great deal of media on-the-go, the Vaio T does come with some decent built-in speakers; not the best we’ve heard from an Ultrabook, but definitely way better than the comparatively weak audio on the Vaio Z.
Despite the budget status of the Vaio T, it’s also interesting that Sony thought to include gesture control software which works via the webcam, where you can wave your hand to execute actions such as starting music playback, or to advance a slide in a slideshow presentation. Then again, this feature only worked sporadically. Still it’d be interesting if Sony continues to develop and refine the technology in future revisions.
SPECS
DISPLAY 13.3-inch HD LED(1366x768 pixels)
PROCESSOR Intel Core i54317U (1.7GHz)
MEMORY 4GB
PROCESSOR Intel Core i54317U (1.7GHz)
MEMORY 4GB