Sony VAIO Duo 13 review

There are many reasons to fall for Sony’s latest hybrid, the VAIO Duo 13. Whether it’s the novel sliding design, which sees it flip from Ultrabook to tablet in a moment; the presence of Intel’s power-efficient Haswell CPU technology; or the gleaming Full HD touchscreen, this 13.3in hybrid is hardly lacking in raw appeal.

The headline feature remains that nifty hinge, though. Just like its predecessor, the 11.6in VAIO Duo 11, the Duo 13 looks initially like a giant tablet, but gently lifting the rear of the display sees it spring upwards to reveal a keyboard and touchpad; two hooks on either side of the base grip the display’s bottom edge to hold it in place.

Yet, despite its larger 13.3in touchscreen, the VAIO Duo 13 remains impressively slender. It’s barely a centimetre wider and longer than the VAIO Duo 11, and only 1mm thicker. It isn’t much heavier, either. The VAIO Duo 13 weighs a reasonable 1.31kg – only 30g more than its 11.6in sibling.

With the VAIO Duo 13, Sony is keen to prove it’s learned from the mistakes it made with the VAIO Duo 11. Where the Duo 11’s hinge popped up to reveal a messy bundle of cables and sliding mechanisms, the VAIO Duo 13 is altogether more neat and streamlined. Most of the ports have been moved, too, with a pair of USB 3 ports, HDMI, an SD card reader and a 3.5mm headset jack now sensibly positioned along the rear edge, and the SIM card slot for the integrated 4G modem neatly secreted under the display.

There’s an active stylus included in the box, and as this is pressure-sensitive, it’s possible to take full advantage of the stylus for everything from handwriting recognition to more artistic pursuits. Disappointingly, there’s no way to stow the stylus inside the VAIO Duo 13’s chassis, but Sony has included a small plastic clip, which slots into the right-hand flank and holds the stylus in place. Sony has also added a flip-out stand just next to it, allowing the stylus to be propped up like a pen in an inkwell.

The larger chassis now affords room for a full-sized, backlit keyboard, and while the short-travel keys are a little lacking in feel compared to the best Ultrabooks, it’s easy to get up to touch-typing speed. We’re not sorry to see the back of the VAIO Duo 11’s optical trackpoint, but although the wide, squat touchpad is a step in the right direction, it remains far from ideal – it’s very thin, which means repeated strokes of the pad are required for larger movements, even with the sensitivity cranked right up.

The Sony’s IPS display is outstandingly bright, delivering lively images and extremely wide viewing angles. Brightness reaches an ample 341cd/m[sup]2[/sup], and the contrast ratio of 876:1 allows the Sony to dredge up oodles of detail in both the darkest and the lightest parts of images. Colour accuracy is a high point, too, with an average Delta E of 3.1 and a colour gamut that stretches right across the sRGB spectrum.

It’s no slouch in other areas, either. Although you can save £130 by opting for a slightly slower Core i5 CPU, our review unit had a 1.8GHz Intel Core i7-4500U processor, 4GB of DDR3L RAM and a 128GB SSD. In our Real World Benchmarks, this trio achieved a score of 0.73, which is similar to other Haswell-powered Ultrabooks we’ve seen so far.

And this quick performance is matched with stunning battery life. In our light-use battery test, with the screen brightness dimmed to 75cd/m[sup]2[/sup] and Wi-Fi switched off, the VAIO Duo 13 scrolled through our set of offline web pages for 15hrs 33mins. That’s longer than the Apple MacBook Air 13in, and substantially longer than Sony’s Haswell-powered Ultrabook, the VAIO Pro 13.

Just like the VAIO Duo 11, however, we’re not entirely convinced the VAIO Duo 13 manages to marry the best of both laptop and tablet worlds successfully. Although it’s impressive how much Sony has managed to pack into a slim chassis, it’s still a little too heavy and unwieldy to work brilliantly as a tablet. Flip the screen into laptop mode, and it’s still far from ideal as a laptop: the lack of a wristrest makes typing uncomfortable, the touchpad is aggravating and the inability to adjust the screen angle is a constant annoyance – it’s locked at 45 degrees.

Ultimately, the Sony VAIO Duo 13 is a tantalising mixture of the mediocre and the marvellous. Despite getting so many things right, it’s neither a great tablet nor a stunning Ultrabook. With both the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11S and Yoga 13 delivering a more convincing laptop experience and an acceptable tablet mode for almost £500 less, we simply can’t recommend the VAIO Duo 13.

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