Sony Vaio Pro 13 - Start of a Promising Comeback
The Sony Vaio Pro 13 will be picking up where the Sony Vaio Z left off, and will be the company's professional offering this year. However, Sony is asking you to pay S$1999 for the Core i5 version. Will it be worth the asking price? We find out.
Start of a promising comeback
If you haven’t heard, Sony will be discontinuing the Vaio Z line. Taking its place would be the Sony Vaio Pro 13, a sleek and sexy little 13-inch Ultrabook that Sony should have made last year, instead of the severely compromised Sony Vaio T (low resolution display, no SSD).
To make sure there are no doubts as to which market segment the Vaio Pro is targeted at, this little machine is full of premium components, a decision which we’re sure many Sony fans or Ultrabook buyers would appreciate.
However, an interesting split is happening within Sony's Ultrabook offerings. On one end, you have the premium Vaio Pro 13, a relatively affordable (by Sony’s standards) Ultrabook, and on the other hand, you have the convertible Vaio Duo 13 Ultrabook, an expensive follow-up to last year’s Sony Vaio Duo 11.
Specs-wise, both machines are more or less the same. The only major difference is in their form-factors, and battery lives. If you’d like to catch up on what the Vaio Duo 13 is all about, just head on down to our hands-on article written during Computex. While we've managed to give it a good run through as you'll see in the performance section of this article, we'll save the details and our verdict of it in a forthcoming article. In this review, we'll delve into the Sony Vaio Pro 13 and find out how it stacks up against the tough Ultrabook competition.
Looks Like (But Doesn't Feel Like) A Winner
Design-wise, it inherited the hexa-shell which you first saw on the Vaio Z, which according to Sony, is said to strengthen the overall structure of the notebook. While this may be true, we didn’t feel that it added any additional rigidity when compared with notebooks from other brands.
This might be due to the carbon fiber material used to construct most of the notebook. It’s durable and lightweight, which explains the Vaio Pro’s 1.06kg weight. While carbon fiber material is very durable, it feels like plastic, and this is inherent to the material itself. As such, this might put off consumers who are used to the look and feel of aluminum, which is widely recognized as the premium material of choice in notebook construction.
One other point that 's not in favor for the Vaio Pro is the amount of flex seen when using and handling the notebook, which is partly the byproduct of using carbon fiber as the main material of construct. This is especially evident in the machine's keyboard well as the carbon fiber material is quite thin there, and has plenty of flex when you press down on it hard. While it doesn’t affect your typing veracity much, it’s still something to look out for if you’re particular about keyboard flex. This might put off some consumers who're expecting a sturdy and well-built machine when the Vaio Pro 13 is priced at $1,999 - far costlier than most Ultrabooks. One thing going for the Sony machine at the moment is its ultra light weight, but let us detail more about the notebooks to see if its price tag is justified.
The keyboard is still as shallow as on the Vaio Z, but keys have much more resistance, which gives users the adequate tactile feedback they need to type comfortably.
While there are selected areas of the notebook made out of aluminum, like the palm rest, we felt that the Vaio Pro's build quality definitely would have benefited if aluminum had been the dominant material of choice, even though it would added an extra couple of hundred grams to its weight (or thereabout).
The Vaio Pro 13's build quality would benefit from having a single piece of aluminum for the palmrest and keyboard well rather than have two distinct and different material choices, which introduces more flex.
We also found that if you were to grip the notebook at its edges, the components that make up the keyboard well and the side would give off a slight creaking sound.
Thankfully, the keys themselves aren’t affected by the flexible keyboard well, because they’re fitted independent from each other. The individual chiclet-style keys are pretty shallow, a problem we had with the Vaio Z, but this time, the keys themselves present much more resistance to provide better typing feedback. So fortunately, there's no mushy feeling while typing despite the lack of key travel (or depth).
The large clickpad isn't made of glass like other premium Ultrabooks, but it gives users plenty of space to navigate that full HD display.
Also an aspect which we're glad Sony improved upon, is the notebook’s trackpad. It's now much larger, because Sony did away with physical buttons in favor of a clickable trackpad (also known as a clickpad) found in most modern Ultrabooks. This allows users to navigate the high-resolution display of the Vaio Pro 13 with ease. It’s not made of glass, but it’s matte surface allows users to slide their finger around with no problems. Take note that it’s a multi-touch trackpad, so if you don’t want to reach out to touch the display, you can easily use some of Windows 8’s multi-touch gestures on the trackpad itself.
Impressive Triluminos Display
Thanks to the comfortable to use, large clickpad, it’s very easy to forget that the Vaio Pro 13 has a ten-point multi-touch display, protected by a layer of Gorilla Glass 3. Besides being the more straightforward form of interaction with theyour system, the full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels resolution) IPS Triluminos branded display on the Vaio Pro 13 is also quite stunning. Viewing angles are good, despite the fact that it’s a glossy screen. This means you can view the display from almost any angle with minimal loss in image quality (thanks to the IPS display). Images won't lose contrast or color when the screen is viewed off-angle, a feat that notebooks with cheaper TN-based displays can't deliver.
Color reproduction is also excellent, without being too washed out or over saturated. This is due to the machine's Sony's Triluminos and X-Reality display technology, which is also found on Sony's TVs as well as handsets. These displays support a wider color gamut, , so colors appear more vivid and clear, which in turn allows images to appear more life-like. This, coupled with the X-Reality hardware processing engine to enhance images through adjust sharpness, contrast and saturation gives the Vaio Pro 13 one of the best displays we've seen.
With a display this impressive, the Vaio Pro 13 would be great for users who need a highly portable machine to work on photographs and need the machine's image reproduction to be as faithful as possible to the original materials.
Rigid to the Touch
The hinge has the same design as that on the Vaio Z, but they're very stiff, and the display is as heavy (or heavier) as the bottom, so you can't open the lid with just one hand.
There's a rubber stopper behind the lid of the display, which prevents your notebook from being scratched and provides extra traction so your notebook doesn't move about on smooth surfaces.
Unfortunately, like all notebooks with a clamshell form factor and a touch-enabled display, using too much force to interact with the display would push the display backwards, making it wobble slightly or altering your viewing angle.
It doesn’t mean that the hinges are not good -- because they are rigid -- but there are limits to this and this is more of an issue that all clamshell touchscreen notebooks face. So if you think that you'll be interacting with the machine's touchscreen often, you'll likely have to cradle the screen.
And if you're impressed with the display quality, and can't wait to watch movies on it, you'll be pleased to know that Sony also accompanied the notebook with a pair of fairly loud speakers built-in. Audio is loud enough for personal use, and it doesn’t distort or get muddled when volume is maxed out, which is great for users who would like to enjoy their music or movies when they’re alone.
Not Many Connectivity Options
Sony wasn't able to fit as many connectivity options onto the Vaio Pro 13, unlike what they did for the Vaio Z, which had VGA and RJ45 ports on a frame that's just as slim. Even if not for the latter ports, probably a couple more USB ports would have really helped the notebook's extended functionality. Of course to be fair, the Vaio Pro 13 does have 2x USB 3.0, 1x HDMI, audio combo jack and a card reader. These should suffice the basic needs for most users, but if extended connectivity is something you need, then the Sony Vaio Pro 13 might disappoint you. For example, due to the lack of a RJ45 LAN port, should you require such connectivity in your professional usage, you would have to sacrifice one USB port for devices like this pocket router dongle that has a RJ45 LAN connection.
All of the ports are found on the right of the machine.
Like Lenovo, there's also an assist button that helps users for troubleshooting their notebook.
The edges of the VAio Pro 13 are sharp, and may cause discomfort if you rest your palm or wrist there.
Sony added some unobtrusive aesthetic touches to the otherwise very serious looking Vaio Pro 13.
The bottom of the machine is clean and void of markings or screws, which means self-upgrading is out of the question and the battery is non-removable. For those curious, the heat vents are on the left side of the machine. All you can see at the bottom are latching slots for the optional sheet battery to extend on-the-go usage.
If you need more battery life for your notebook, you can always get an extra sheet battery, which is attached to the bottom of the notebook via a docking port found on the bottom of the notebook.
Performance and Benchmarking
On the surface, the Vaio Pro 13 does look plenty like the Sony's previous flagship notebook, the Sony Vaio Z. However, that’s where the similarities end. Underneath the hood, the Vaio Pro 13 is an Ultrabook through and through, as you can tell from its processor type. Our test unit sports a fourth generation, dual-core Intel Core i5-4200U (1.6GHz, 3MB cache with hyper-threading), which is a consumer-ultra-low-voltage processor made for Ultrabooks (maximum TDP is rated at just 15W). Processors of this class are are designed to consume as little energy as possible, while providing enough power to let you run most mainstream programs such as basic productivity applications (word processing, using the internet and other such tasks). Graphics intensive games are mostly out of question as slim notebooks like this lack discrete GPUs. Should you choose to dial down the graphics quality settings, the built-in graphics engine of the CPU can afford you entry to basic gameplay needs, but it's more then sufficient for everyday tasks, watching HD videos and the likes.
As with most new Ultrabooks, SSD is the main choice of storage for speedy data storage and retrieval. Compared to traditional notebooks with a HDD, boot and resume times are also greatly improved. However, take note that there are now a few types of SSD implementations in the market. The latest are those that use the PCIe interface, which offer far greater data throughput. For example, a notebook like the latest MacBook Air (which employs a PCIe-based SSD) can enjoy data transfer speeds of up to 700 MB/s, while regular SATA-based SSDs typically top out at around 500 to 550 MB/s. But there are other factors besides SSD interface type that affect performance of the SSDs. However, what you should take away is that as long as there is an SSD on your Ultrabook, it will definitely save you a lot of time on any disk-based activity, regardless of the SSD properties.
To give you a gauge on how the Sony Vaio Pro 13 performs, we’ve selected a handful of notebooks such as the Sony Vaio Duo 13, which is a convertible Ultrabook with very similar specifications save for its Core i7 processor and larger 256GB SSD. There's also the Apple 2013 Macbook Air which mainly differs by its PCIe-based SSD and a lower clocked processor but with a better Intel HD Graphics 5000 integrated GPU, as well as the Aftershock Halo, which is a notebook that is decked out like an Ultrabook, but has a much more powerful quad-core mobile processor (Intel Core i7-4750HQ, 6MB cache, 47W maximum TDP) instead of a low-voltage Ultrabook processor. While the mix of notebooks vary, we hope this will also give you an expectation of where the Sony Vaio Pro 13 sits among some of the new notebooks in the market.
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PC Mark 8
As you can see, the performance differences in PCMark 8 are somewhat consistent with what processor each machine is running. The CULV processors on the Duo and Pro 13 machines aren't as powerful as the regular quad-core processor on the Halo. The only odd one out is the MacBook Air (2013), due to its faster PCIe-based SSD, which gives it a performance boost despite its much slower 1.3GHz processor.
However, the results indicated by the benchmarks aren’t indicative of the user experience associated with the machine. Users would need to pay extremely close attention before they can discern the subtle differences between Core i5 and Core i7 CULV machines. The Halo on the other hand, because of its much more powerful quad-core CPU, performed noticeably better, thanks to its two extra cores and better onboard GPU. Read on to find out just how much better the Intel Iris Pro 5200 integrated GPU is compared to the Intel HD Graphics 4400.
Gaming benchmarks
As far as graphics performance goes, both the Vaio machines are reliant on the onboard Intel HD Graphics 4400 that come with lower-end Haswell chips. The graphics performance of Intel HD Graphics 4400 is revealed to be much less powerful than the new generation Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200 on the Halo, which is expected.
However, according to our benchmark scores, it seems that the Vaio Duo's Core i7 chip and additional RAM offers a slight speed boost in terms of gaming performance. The MacBook Air also managed to keep up with the Vaio Duo 13 thanks to its PCIe-based SSD. It’s not enough to let you play the latest graphics intensive games, but as you can see from our Far Cry 2 game test, you stand to gain more than 50% speed boost if one settles for a lowered graphical quality and there's more to gain if you tone down the resolution. Even so, the takeaway from the results here is that you shouldn't expect to play 3D games on your Vaio Pro 13 (unless you're willing to compromise on some graphical parameters). If gaming is a priority, you might have to look at machines like the Aftershock Halo, which are armed with the newer, more powerful Intel HD Iris Pro Graphics 5200 integrated GPU, or better yet, true 14-inch mobile gaming notebooks with discrete graphics.
Battery Life and Portability Index
The Sony Vaio Pro 13’s computing and graphics performance wouldn’t exactly blow you away, but bear in mind, it’s not designed for that purpose. The whole point of getting an Ultrabook is so that you can have a notebook that’s able to perform most tasks with adequate crunching power and a long battery life to stay as much time as possible away from a power socket for on-the-go usage.
Futuremark Powermark
To see how long the Vaio Pro lasts under load, we put it through the Powermark benchmark test. This test puts the machine through a series of tasks such as webpage rendering on browsers, playing and editing of photos and movies. Such a test is meant to mimic the typical usage of a notebook, so that you are able to get a good gauge on how long the machine’s battery will last under constant use of such everyday tasks.
We’ve also put the Vaio Pro 13 against the Sony Vaio Duo 13 which has a slightly more powerful processor, but a much larger battery, the Aftershock Halo which has a full-powered mobile processor and an even larger battery capacity, as well as the Apple MacBook Air (running Windows) which has a weaker CPU but is also endowed with good battery capacity.
Please note that the results for the Aftershock Halo is derived from the "Home" benchmark found in PCMark 8, as it was unable to complete our Powermark test reliably. Our internal tests found that the near identical workloads of the "Home" benchmark in PC Mark 8 and Powermark, which gives very similar battery life results too.
As plotted in the graph above, the Sony Vaio Pro 13, did reasonably well with an up-time of almost four hours. It isn’t the best timing we’ve noted for a notebook of its class, but it’s still impressive especially when you consider how small the Vaio Pro 13’s battery capacity is (it's the smallest with a rated capacity of 37.5Wh). Also note that this 4-hour battery life could be further stretched if the machine’s volume and brightness are tuned down, and if you’re using it for even less intensive tasks.
Power Consumption
While the Vaio Duo 13 has the best battery life of the three notebooks, which is directly attributed to its larger battery capacity, when we look at the results closer by calculating the power consumption of the notebooks, the less powerful Sony Vaio Pro 13 naturally came out tops. However, the odd one one out from the results collated is the MacBook Air. That's because the MacBook Air was operating in the less optimized Windows environment and not its native OS X and OS-specific drivers. However, this is a necessary evil as that's the only way we can cross-compare notebooks to a certain degree.
Portability Index
The Portability index used here is unique to HWZ, and uses elements like battery life, volume and weight to determine how portable a machine is in its class. Machines with good battery life and are lightweight will naturally register better portability ratios (higher the number the better). However, that doesn't mean the Vaio Pro 13 is three times more portable than the Aftershock Halo. It just means it has a better mix of battery life and far less weight, compared to the Aftershock machine. While the average Portability ratio for a 13-inch Ultrabook from the last generation lies between 2.0 and 2.5, the Sony Vaio Pro 13's extra light weight propelled it to a much higher portability standing to garner a ratio of about 3.5. The more capable Vaio Duo 13, although a few hundred grams heavier, possessed a good enough leap in battery life to obtain an overall better ratio of over 4.2.
Keep It Up Sony
The Sony Vaio Pro 13 costs S$1,999 (Core i5, 128GB SSD configuration), and is slightly pricier than many Ultrabooks in the market, mainly because it comes in a premium package - complete with HD touch display, carbon fiber and aluminum alloy build, large trackpad, as well as a slim and very lightweight body. However, it does have a few imperfections that take away some of its shine.
Firstly, is the fact that it has a 'patchwork' body which introduces more flex than a unibody design would. Next would definitely be its shallow keyboard, though some users may not mind it as the keys offer adequate tactile feedback due to increased key resistance. It is also a very quiet keyboard and some may actually prefer such an attribute (probably because the Japanese hate to be a public nuisance).
Lastly, there are other notebooks out in the market that cost a great deal less, and have better build quality or components. Take the Macbook Air for example; it has a better build quality (aluminum body, better keyboard, etc.), but costs almost S$500 less. The only thing you won't get with the Air is a full HD display and a touch enabled screen. It may be heavier than the Vaio Pro 13, but some consumers might not be convinced that it’s worth paying a few hundred dollars more for a body that weighs a few hundred grams less with a full HD touch display.
But then again, there are users who would gladly fork out more for a beautifully designed Windows 8 notebook that weighs just six grams over a kilogram. These are the users who are able to see past the Vaio’s (not very serious) concerns, and see the gem that is the Vaio Pro 13. These are also the people who are more than willing to pay extra for a machine that Sony has spent a great deal of effort putting together, and admirably did not introduce an intentional handicap to avoid cannibalizing on its other premium notebooks like the Vaio Duo 13.
If you’ve got the chance to try Vaio Pro 13 out for yourself, you can’t help but get the feeling that Sony is trying to make a comeback to its heyday where its brand is synonymous with design and quality. If Sony keeps on making quality products like it, and price them appropriately, there aren't many reasons why your next Ultrabook wouldn’t be a Sony.
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