Sony VAIO Duo 13 reviews

When Sony launched Vaio Duo 11 at the end of last year, the notebook attracted a lot of attention from consumers by virtue of its powerful performance and excellent display. At the same time, the VAIO Duo 11 's shortcomings are also quite obvious, that is with the obvious defect of the shape design and widely criticized the battery life capacity. At the Computex 2013 Taipei Computer Show, Sony made a very admirable second attempt at the Vaio Duo 11 's minor improvement. Compared to the VAIO duo 11, the VAIO duo 13 has been improved in almost every shortcoming, including the re-improved sliding hinges and more powerful battery life. The price of the VAIO Duo, however, has become more expensive, starting at $1400 (about $8600) from the previous $1200 (about RMB 7400). 13. At the same time, with a more spacious keyboard design and just the right touchpad, I wonder if consumers will be able to pay for a number of improvements in Vaio Duo 13 and $200 (about RMB 1200)? Let's take a look.

Shape design

It seems that Sony is still very receptive to criticism from outside, and Vaio Duo 13 has a full expression. The new Vaio Duo 13 has raised a lot of grades, both from the outside and the touch. Although the display size was adjusted to 13.3 inches, the weight of the entire fuselage was only 1.34 kilograms, and in the case of an enlarged display it was only 30 grams heavier than the previous generation Vaio Duo 11 1.3 kg. The reason for this is that the original Vaio duo 13 was made of carbon fiber, while the VAIO duo 11 used more magnesium-aluminum.

In addition, the VAIO Duo 13 is completely redesigned for the hinge section. Sony's Vaio Duo 13 is a lightweight, surf slider design that can be turned on more easily, allowing the user to pull up the screen with just one hand. At the same time, the new design feels more robust, and when the user switches the display down to the tablet mode, it feels more secure and safe, without the slightest sensation of the previous generation of Vaio Duo 11. In addition, the wiring of the VAIO duo 13 was designed to be behind the hinges and was not exposed directly, so the hinge portion of the VAIO duo 13 was also pretty.

The front of the VAIO Duo 13 is designed with a very visible Start button on the Windows 8 system, paired with a 2 million megapixel camera and Sony logo. When we pull up the Vaio Duo 13 display, the VAIO logo will appear in front of us, and the logo on the back of the hinge is also printed with Vaio. VAIO Duo 13 All the interfaces are designed on the back edge of the fuselage, including the SD card slot, two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output connector, power connector and 3.5mm headphone interface, plus the high edition VAIO Duo 13 is also added to the VGA adapter.

On the back of the Vaio Duo 13, we were able to see the speaker, auxiliary and volume buttons, while a 8 million megapixel camera was cleverly designed at the bottom of the fuselage on the left.

Keyboard, Touchpad and stylus

Due to the design of the Vaio Duo 13 itself, as a side-slip device for the keyboard space is very limited, especially in order to assist the size of the display, usually this type of design in the keyboard layout space is somewhat stretched. Sony, through its deep industrial design expertise, has reduced this inconvenience to a minimum, extending the pull-up display back as much as possible, allowing consumers to use the expanded version of the floating keyboard. Compared to the previous Vaio Duo 11, the key layout of the new model has become much looser, which is a great highlight of Sony's design skills. Although the Vaio Duo 13 keyboard is still crowded compared to other types of devices, the distance between the keys is ample enough to effectively reduce the input error rate.

For the design of the trackpad, although the changes are very subtle, Sonyiran brings a very user-welcome design. That is to abandon the original optical pointing rod and left and right button design, the use of a full-featured Synaptics touch panel to replace. Users can scroll, stretch, and other gestures smoothly and easily. However, because the space is compressed by the keyboard, the VAIO Duo 13 touch panel is somewhat too slender, when we do the copy and paste operation, slightly less convenient.

For the stylus, the VAIO Duo 13 comes with a random n-trig stylus that increases in weight compared to the previous, improving the feel of the use. After all, for the stylus this kind of accessories, in fact, is not the lighter the better, only with the right weight to write in the hand will increase the feel, and better graffiti and input and other operations. At the same time, the VAIO duo 13 is specifically added to the slot used to place the stylus, compared to the VAIO duo 11. At the same time, Sony also provides users with two kinds of position to prevent the stylus, in addition to the right side of the body of the pen clip, but also allows the stylus to stand at any angle upright groove.

In addition, Sony added a "Wake-up" feature to the Vaio Duo 13 stylus to match the two slots where the stylus was placed. The VAIO Duo 13 has a built-in Mr Sensor that, when the user picks up the stylus from the slot, the Mr Sensor can sniff the user's actions to automatically wake the device from sleep. At the same time, consumers can further design for the wake-up function, which can automatically open applications such as Notepad or notes after wake-up.

Display and sound

Sony's VAIO Duo 13 is equipped with a 1080p resolution IPS touch panel, and it has been added to the Triluminos display technology that Sony has exclusively applied to BRAVIA LCD TVs and Vaio Pro, both in terms of display brightness and visual angle. At the same time, the VAIO Duo 13 display responds to the user's touch input very accurately and quickly, especially in tablet mode, and a good touch experience is important for a Windows 8 system PC.

The VAIO Duo 13 speakers are designed at the bottom of the fuselage, but this does not prevent them from having very good sound effects. Although not comparable to professional speakers, but for ordinary users at home or in the Office to watch movies or listen to music is very enough.

Performance and Endurance

In fact, before all the ultra-polar in the performance of the product, the gap is not very obvious. But the Vaio Duo 13 has performed better on performance test scores than previous rivals, thanks to Intel's newest fourth generation Haswell processor.

Adopted 16. The Vaio duo 13 of the GHz core Duo I5-4200U processor has a significant performance boost over the Vaio duo 11 core i5-3317u. In particular, the difference between the two in the video card test is more obvious: in the 3dmark06 test, Duo 13 scored 6047, whereas his predecessor was only 4807. The former results also beat the Ivy Bridge platform for the best results-the Acer Aspire S7 scored 4918 points.

And for overall performance, like the PCMark7 test, we're not seeing that much improvement-in fact, the duo 13 scored even slightly below the duo 11 in the test. In the Atto disk Performance test, the duo 13 read speed is only slightly higher than the duo (546MB/S and 540MB/S), it is puzzling that the device's write speed is much lower than the duo 11 (138 MB/s and 525 MB/s).

While these figures are curious, after all, Haswell has just come out, we need to test more devices before judging the performance of the chip. But for the time being, what we have seen is satisfying.

One of the most criticized aspects of the Duo 11 performance is the unacceptable delay of its accelerometer. Thankfully, this flaw has not been passed on to duo 13, which can be converted in a screen direction in just 1-2 seconds. The Duo 13 's boot speed is also satisfactory, and it takes only 6-7 seconds to enter Windows 8.

Endurance, the last generation of Vaio duo 11 4 hours 47 minutes of widespread criticism, and on the latest VAIO duo 13, Sony made a maximum of 10 hours of endurance commitment. This endurance is mainly accomplished by adding a battery with a large capacity expansion. Sony says the VAIO duo 13 has a battery capacity equivalent to an additional external battery on the duo 11 battery base. In our endurance test, in the case of Wi-Fi on, the screen brightness 65% under the cycle of a video, the VAIO Duo 13 insisted on 9 hours and 40 minutes, this result is very impressive, compared to all the current ultra-polar device is much higher.

Software and after-sales

VAIO duo 13 differs from VAIO duo 11 in pre-installed applications, including Hulu Plus, Skype, and Slacker radio. In addition, the latest Camscanner scanning applications including Kaspersky, Artrage Studio Pro, Noteanytime and Sony are preinstalled in the Vaio Duo 13. In addition, the NFC-enabled application with VAIO Duo 13 is preloaded with the duo 13.

In terms of warranty, Sony offers VAIO Duo 13 users a one-year global after-sales service system, even providing onsite repair services in the United States.

Photo effect

The VAIO Duo 13 has a total of two cameras, a front-facing camera of 2 million pixels, and a master camera pixel that reaches 8 million. Sony also uses the Exmor RS for PC sensor for two cameras. Sony said that the sensor's camera can play a very important role even when shooting in low light environments and scanning with camscanner applications.

Unfortunately, the position of the VAIO Duo 13 main camera is slightly chicken, and when in tablet mode, holding the fuselage in the right hand will block the camera. But from the imaging effect, the photos taken by VAIO Duo 13 look very clear, and the shaded areas have quite a lot of detail. We found that autofocus is better than manual focus, but the front camera is not able to focus manually.

Configure selection with competitor

The Sony VAIO Duo 13 will be available on June 9, starting at $1400 (about RMB 8600), with the configuration of 1.6GHz core I5-4200U processors, 4GB running memory, Intel HD Graphics 4400 graphics, and 128G capacity SSD SSDs. At the same time, if consumers are willing to pay more than $150 (about 900 yuan), then you can also get support for the 4G network of T/T LTE. In addition, if you are a consumer of the pursuit of quality, then you can also choose to spend 2728 dollars (about 16700 yuan) to purchase the top with version. Includes Core i7 processor, 256GB SSD, 8GB running memory, Intel HD Graphics 5000 graphics, LTE network support, and Windows 8 Pro operating system. In addition to this black version of our review, Sony will also launch the white version, which is quite attractive for female users.

Recently, the message about the new generation of Intel Haswell processors has been a source of great concern, and we've been advising consumers who want to start laptops to wait a while. Now, Intel has officially launched the fourth generation of products, and already have a lot of brands have introduced Haswell processor-based ultra-polar. And for Vaio Duo 13来 said, to face the strength of the competitors are also not to be underestimated.

The first is Acer S7. The biggest selling point of this fan is its 2560x1440 ultra-high resolution and good battery life. In addition, the use of the gorilla third-generation glass panel and a very beautiful external Asus Zenbook Infinity is also very competitive. Most of all, Sony's own VAIO Pro 11 can also be seen as the main competitor of Vaio Duo 13.

Summarize

In fact, the average user's evaluation for a super-pole originally said is the most valuable reference, and seemingly layman's actually always put forward some very constructive views. We have VAIO Duo 13 in the testing process to some of the less professional ordinary users, get very good feedback, we have always said this is a chic, impressive notebook. For professionals, in addition to the Vaio Duo 13 can not change the slide shape is not satisfied, the model for those who often need to carry a computer or tablet running around the user, is very satisfying.

As you can see, Sony has done a lot of work on the Vaio duo 13, with its improved hinge design, spacious keyboard space and impressive battery life, all of which make Vaio Duo 13 A super-market leader. However, we cannot ignore the shortcomings of the small touchpad and the poor position of the main camera.

For those who have a recent intention to buy, we still recommend that you stay in the currency for purchase. Because at this week's Computex 2013 Taipei Computer Show, there are also many new products using Haswell processors, and there are more options in the future. But if you want to buy a VAIO that supports the stylus, then Sony's Duo 13 should be a pretty good choice.