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Sony Vaio SB 13.3in Notebook: Very stylish notbook with Intel Core i5. |
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Reviews
Sony offered 13.3in notebook which is part of its border S Series. The laptop looks exactly what you's expect from business-oriented laptop.
Display
The 13.3in screen is bright, with a handy ambient light sensor above the keyboard to adjust brightness on the fly. The resolution of 1366 x 768 is commonplace or 1600 x 900 LED-backlight display, but it makes more sense here than on some of the 15.6in laptops that have darkened my doorstep recently.
The mix of Intel HD graphics and a Radeon GPU mean that there's plenty of graphics power when you need it. Just slide the Stamina/Speed switch to change between the two graphics platforms - although you need to close all applications to make the change, at least you don’t have to reboot.
The laptop has an excellent video quality, which isn't surprising with a screen this good. Streaming 1080p Internet video played smoothly, with good detail and plenty of contrast. Local 720p HD content also performed well, with clear renderings and no artefacts. The built-in webcam is less than impressive, with blurred and relatively low resolution images. It's fine for video chatting, but not for detailed work.
The Engine room
The processor inside the SB is a dual-core Intel Core i5-2410M, and while 4GB should be considered a minimum spec these days, there were no signs of a slowdown when the SB was being asked to think fast. There's a spare SO-Dimm memory slot ready for more Ram if you find you need it.
Design
The Laptop weighing 1.7kg perhaps a touch less for lower-end configurations, Add to that very capable processor 8GB of RAM, switchable graphics between the Intel integrated and a Radeon HD 6630M with 1GB of graphics RAM running at 2.3GHz, and a fast 128GB solid state drive. Not enough? How about dual-band 802.11n networking, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, a combination BD-ROM and DVD burner, and support for Intel's WiDi wireless display technology.
Keyboard and trackpad
When open a laptop you will see a a stylish dark metallic-blue finish and standard chicket solid keyboard. The notepad has a single USB 3.0 joins a pair of 2.0 ports, while the HDMI and VGA ports cover pretty much all output eventualities. Two separate slots cater for SD and Memory Stick cards. There’s no mic jack, so you can only connect a pair of headphones.
The trackpad is a slightly-off centre number that does multi-touch, although whether tricks such as pinch-to-zoom work depends enormously on the application at hand. It’s next to useless most of the time - a bit like the fingerprint reader squirrelled in between the mouse buttons.
The notebook has a stamina/speech switch above the keyboard, Flicking the switch across to Stamina mode and opting for 50 per cent screen brightness and no active applications produced a much more reassuring time of 7 hours 56 minutes, suggesting that the battery nestled under the keyboard is actually more capable than the first impression suggested.
Connectivity
The Vaio SB has a good selection of ports. The left side of the device is taken up with the DVD writer and a single headset port, which means the rest of the ports are conveniently on the right. The laptop comes with two USB 2.0 ports, alongside a single USB 3.0 connection, both HDMI and VGA connectors, and a pair of separate card slots; one for Sony's own MemoryStick, the other for SD cards.
Networking is comprehensively covered with a gigabit Ethernet connection, 802.11 Wi-Fi b/g/n, and a built-in 3G modem. We had problems with the 802.11n drivers though, and ended up having to connect using g only.
Spec
- Intel Core i7-2620M Processor
- Windows 7 Home Premium
- 128GB SATA Flash SSD
- 8 GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
- Blu-ray Disc writer
- 33.7 cm LCD, 1366x768 + webcam
- AMD Radeon HD 6470M 512MB
- 2 USB 2.0 + 1 USB 3.0
- Wireless LAN (802.11bgn)
- HDMI output
- Backlight keyboard
- Bluetooth 2.1
- 1.7kg
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