Sony VAIO Duo 11 review

The launch of Windows 8 is just around the corner, and after many months of sneak-peeks and product teases, the first of the new wave of products is finally here. The Sony VAIO Duo 11 fuses the DNA of an Ultrabook with an 11.6in Full HD tablet, and it’s Sony’s vision of the ultimate Windows 8 device.

Measuring 21mm thick at its rear, and tapering to a whisker over 18mm towards the front, the VAIO Duo 11 is thicker than the slimmest Ultrabooks, and, at 1.3kg, a good deal heavier than the Samsung Series 7 700T Slate Microsoft supplied to us for testing Windows 8. Build quality is excellent, however. The matte carbon base and metal keyboard surround feel outstandingly rigid, and there’s barely any flex or give in evidence until you start heaving it brutally from side to side.

While it fails to grasp the attention with achingly slim dimensions, the Sony’s relatively chunky frame conceals its novel party trick: grip the lip along the display’s upper edge, and a light tug sees the display pivot upwards and click home to reveal a keyboard underneath.

As the spring-loaded hinge takes up the rearward third of the Sony’s base, there isn’t the room for a full keyboard and dedicated touchpad. Instead, Sony has dedicated most of the available space to a compact, Scrabble-tile backlit keyboard, and squeezed in an optical trackpoint between the G, H and B keys. The trackpoint’s buttons, meanwhile, are placed on the raised keyboard surround below the spacebar, with the usual left- and right-buttons plus a middle button which, when held down, permits vertical scrolling with a nudge of the trackpoint.

In tablet mode, you can flick and gesture your way through Windows 8 with your fingers or, thanks to the N-Trig digitiser lurking beneath the display’s glossy finish, prod and scribble with the bundled stylus. The latter is a stylish, metal-clad affair with two buttons positioned on its brushed metal shaft, and is powered by a tiny AAAA battery. Neatly, there’s a choice of two pen nibs, allowing users to opt for a softer or firmer feel while inking.

Sony has crammed in plenty of features and connectivity, too. Looking around the VAIO Duo 11’s chamfered metal edges reveals two USB 3 ports, full-sized HDMI and D-SUB video outputs, an SD/MS card reader and a Gigabit Ethernet port at the rear, next to the power socket.

Peer under the front edge, and there are buttons for adjusting the volume, launching Sony’s VAIO Care software suite and toggling the automatic screen rotation on and off. Sony has also crammed in a pair of front- and rear-facing 2mp cameras, a TPM 1.2 module, and dual-band 802.11abgn wireless, Bluetooth 4 and NFC support.

For review we were supplied with the faster of the two base specifications, with a Core i7-3517U processor taking pride of place alongside 8GB of DDR3 RAM and a SanDisk 256GB SSD. The cheaper model, at £1,000 inc VAT, equips a Core i5-3317U, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD instead.

The Core i7 processor delivers sparkling performance. Set to the test in our suite of Real World Benchmarks, the Sony acquitted itself remarkably well, with an overall score of 0.71. And with the SSD recording sequential write speeds of 305MB/sec and read speeds of 417MB/sec, applications spring into view with little delay. With Sony’s Quick Boot doing its bit to speed up the process, booting from cold sees the VAIO Duo 11 leaps into life in an astonishing seven seconds flat.

Cramming in a clever spring-loaded hinge and whole host of hardware leaves little room for an internal battery, but the Sony still lasted for 7hrs 6mins in our light-use test. Splash out on the battery slice that clips to the VAIO Duo 11’s underside – a £120 optional extra – and that figure will reach well over the ten-hour mark. As an added bonus, the battery slice provides a slot for stashing the supplied stylus.

The Sony’s display is simply superb. Stretching a Full HD, 1,920 x 1,080 resolution across its 11.6in diagonal, the VAIO Duo 11 boasts exceptionally wide viewing angles and punchy colour reproduction. A maximum brightness of 451cd/m2 ensures that the screen remains legible in the brightest conditions, and those bright, sparkling whites combine with deep, luscious blacks to result in an excellent contrast ratio of 868:1. The panel doesn’t quite cover the full range of colours in the sRGB gamut, but colour reproduction is pretty accurate, despite the panel’s inability to produce the most intense shades of blue.

Ergonomics

While the initial wow factor will be enough to loosen many people’s wallets, the VAIO Duo 11 isn’t without its fair share of niggles. The most pressing issue is that, in laptop mode, the VAIO Duo 11 isn’t that comfortable to use. The trackpoint works, but is fiddly enough that we regularly resorted to prodding the screen with a finger instead, while other members of PC Pro disliked it so vehemently that they immediately reached for a USB mouse.

The trackpoint’s tap-to-click mode is best left disabled. With it left on, it’s all too easy to accidentally jog the cursor while typing, and on occasion we selected swathes of text with a stray finger and deleted whole chunks without realising.

The keyboard is markedly better. The wide channels between the tiny keys keep mis-presses to a minimum, but with no wristrest to lean on, it’s difficult to find a comfortable typing position. The positioning of the trackpoint buttons beneath the spacebar often results in accidental clicks, and the narrow Shift keys made it all too easy to dab the neighbouring keys by mistake. It’s possible to balance the Duo 11 on a lap and type happily enough, but if you’re expecting the same levels of comfort as you’d demand from a dedicated laptop, you’ll be coming away disappointed.

In other cases, it’s the little things that aggravate. Compared with our Samsung Series 7 700T Slate running Windows 8, flicking across the Start screen sees the scrolling motion brake abruptly rather than gently coming to a halt. With no control panel options to tweak, we can only hope that updated drivers might yet improve matters.

Then there are the issues that are likely down to our review unit’s pre-production status: when shifting from tablet to desktop mode, we often found the Sony doggedly refusing to automatically rotate the display to suit. The only solution we found was to either give the Duo 11 a little shake, or to tilt the whole device forward until the screen was vertical, at which point the screen duly rotated back into landscape mode.

Conclusion

Despite some glimmers of brilliance, the VAIO Duo 11 is neither a great tablet nor a great laptop. Indeed, the problem is that, while ingenious and beautifully formed, Sony’s decision to go the true convertible tablet route has forced it to compromise usability in both modes. As a tablet, the VAIO Duo 11 is heavy, and in laptop mode the fiddly trackpoint and average keyboard are no competition for those of a good quality Ultrabook.

Taken as a whole, there’s still much to like – the superb performance, sterling image quality and fine build are impossible to ignore – but we can’t help feeling that in the most crucial area, namely usability, the VAIO Duo 11 doesn’t hit the spot. Some may be willing to forgive the Sony’s flaws given the sheer breadth of its abilities, but, right now, we’d recommend you think long and hard before committing your cash.

Warranty
Warranty	1yr collect and return
Physical specifications
Dimensions	322 x 200 x 21mm (WDH)
Weight	1.280kg
Travelling weight	1.6kg
Processor and memory
Processor	Intel Core i7-3517U
Motherboard chipset	Intel HM76
RAM capacity	8.00GB
Memory type	DDR3
SODIMM sockets free	0
SODIMM sockets total	0
Screen and video
Screen size	11.6in
Resolution screen horizontal	1,920
Resolution screen vertical	1,080
Resolution	1920 x 1080
Graphics chipset	Intel HD Graphics 4000
Graphics card RAM	N/A
VGA (D-SUB) outputs	1
HDMI outputs	1
S-Video outputs	0
DVI-I outputs	0
DVI-D outputs	0
DisplayPort outputs	0
Drives
Capacity	256GB
Hard disk usable capacity	238GB
Spindle speed	N/A
Internal disk interface	SATA/600
Hard disk	Sandisk SD5SF2256G
Optical disc technology	N/A
Optical drive	N/A
Replacement battery price ex VAT	£120
Replacement battery price inc VAT	£144
Networking
Wired adapter speed	1,000Mbits/sec
802.11a support	yes
802.11b support	yes
802.11g support	yes
802.11 draft-n support	yes
Integrated 3G adapter	no
Bluetooth support	yes
Other Features
Wireless hardware on/off switch	no
Wireless key-combination switch	no
Modem	no
ExpressCard34 slots	0
ExpressCard54 slots	0
PC Card slots	0
FireWire ports	0
PS/2 mouse port	no
9-pin serial ports	0
Parallel ports	0
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports	0
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports	0
3.5mm audio jacks	1
SD card reader	yes
Memory Stick reader	yes
MMC (multimedia card) reader	no
Smart Media reader	no
Compact Flash reader	no
xD-card reader	no
Pointing device type	Trackpoint
Audio chipset	Realtek HD Audio
Speaker location	Underside
Hardware volume control?	no
Integrated microphone?	yes
Integrated webcam?	yes
Camera megapixel rating	2.0mp
TPM	yes
Fingerprint reader	no
Smartcard reader	no
Carry case	no
Battery and performance tests
Battery life, light use	7hr 6min
Overall Real World Benchmark score	0.71
Operating system and software
Operating system	Windows 8 Pro 64-bit
OS family	Windows 8
Recovery method	Recovery partition
Software supplied	N/A