Sony are setting a high benchmark with their upcoming VAOI S Series range of laptops, which look to be the finest portable Windows 7 releases thus far.
By Leo Stiles
Traditionally the ultra-portable market has been characterised by lightweight and underpowered laptops that sacrifice much to achieve their size and some of these machines even stray into netbook territory. Fortunately for us, Sony doesn’t do compromise and in keeping with their more-is–more attitude comes the latest version of their ultra-portable laptop range; the monstrously powerful VAIO S Series.
All of the laptops in the range are built around a high definition 13.3-inch screen and housed in a magnesium/aluminium chassis that brings the weight down to 1.75 kg, while the laptops are just over an inch thick when closed.
So just how powerful are these laptops? Well, all of the models in the range are powered by Intel’s shiny new iSeries processor with the top of the range model sporting a ludicrously fast i7 CPU with 8 GB of RAM.
Add to this a 1GB Radeon HD graphics card and you can be assured that the laptop will run just about any game or graphics program with ease. The 1366 x 768 display should display everything with the usual clarity that we have come to expect from a top-end Sony product.
Be careful if hooking yourself to a harness when viewing your laptop from this angle
These kinds of specs do come at a cost and we’re not just talking about price. Battery life is an issue here and although Sony promises up to seven hours from the internal battery, you can realistically expect to get less than five hours if you are using the laptop normally. That kind of power consumption is not exactly stellar and kind of defeats the purpose of an ultra-portable device in terms of travel.
However, Sony have come up with an interesting (and expensive) solution to this problem in the shape of a slice battery which clips seamlessly to the underside of the laptop and can deliver an additional seven hours of juice. The battery, which will cost in the region of €150 can be charged independently from the laptop.
One feature that we almost overlooked was the innovative WEB button which wakes the laptop up into a limited internet mode within a couple of seconds and allows the user to do some quick emailing or basic web browsing without having to fully power up the machine. We like this feature a lot and once again demonstrates that when Sony thinks creatively, they are a hard act to follow.
Sony haven’t skimped on extra goodies either with optional Blu-Ray drives , HD webcams, USB 3.0 ports and 3G SIM card slots; all of which add up to make the Vaio S Series the most desirable range of Windows 7 laptops that we’ve ever seen.
Unfortunately, all this desirability comes at a very undesirable cost with the top model in the range coming in at around €1250, which is rather a lot to pay for any laptop. Then again, this is a laptop from the people who launched a €700 games console, so what did you expect?
The new Sony VAIO S Series is set to launch sometime in April.
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