The new Sony VAIO S no longer sports the thick and curvy plastic casing of the previous generation, but instead goes at least half way in the direction of the VAIO Z in terms of design. It instead comes with a black magnesium-reinforced chassis and keyboard rest made of a single aluminium sheet, which gives it a classy look as well as ruggedness and adequate protection against wear and tear. Weighing just 1.69 kg and with a thickness of just 24 mm, this truly portable enough to carry anywhere. The overall build quality is good, though it did seem flimsy at times, such as when you try to lift the laptop by holding on its left side and the optical drive door cover comes off.
The Chiclet-type keyboard is just the right size for a laptop and is comfortable to use for long working hours. There is enough play to give you just the right amount of tactile feedback. There is no separate keypad, but this is not expected in this size range. Function keys double up to take care of multimedia and shortcut functions. Moreover, the keyboard is backlit with ambient light sensor, which automatically lights it up when it senses a dimly lit environment. This allows you to use it in dark environments such as in your car or in the airplane. The multi-touch touchpad is sufficiently large for comfortable use, while the buttons below it are uncomfortably hard to press and certainly seemed out of place where everything else is so ergonomically designed. Two tiny slits present on the left and right near the top are the openings for speakers beneath.
The monitor is a 13.3" LED display with pixel dimensions of 1366x768, thus an aspect ratio of 16:9. That makes it good enough to play 720p HD movies and the matte finish makes it possible to view it sans the unwanted mirror effect of glossy panels. The only problem is that probably you will have to watch them alone, because very poor viewing angles seriously plague this otherwise adorable laptop. Viewing at just 45 degrees on either side starts to show off discolouration or colour inversion. Apart from viewing angles, the colour reproduction is also not accurate, and the contrast ratio is not good. A HD webcam is present on the display bezel at the top near the middle.
While you can configure the Sony VAIO S to suit your needs before you buy, the one we tested came with an Intel Core i5 2520M dual core processor running at 2.5 GHz and 4 GB DDR3 memory. It comes with Hybrid Graphics, which is switchable on-the-fly without having to restart Windows, using a physical switch present above the keyboard, between the Mobile Intel HD for longer battery life (Stamina mode), and AMD Radeon HD 6470M 512 MB discrete graphics for high performance (Speed mode). Storage is taken care of by a Samsung 320 GB 5,400 RPM hard drive, while there is also an Optiarc DVD rewriter to handle optical storage media.
The Lithium-polymer battery is not exposed, which means you must first remove two screws from underneath the chassis to be able to access and remove or replace it. This laptop comes with the concept of Smart Battery, which lets you add an extra flat battery of length and width the same as that of the laptop, to fit underneath using a port provided for that purpose. The good thing is that you do not need to switch off the laptop to attach this battery and this battery can be charged separately from the PC. This effectively doubles the battery life.
Entering a password is not the only way to gain access to the laptop. Security has been adequately taken care of by the built-in fingerprint scanner situated between the touchpad buttons. There is also the pre-installed ArcSoft WebCam Companion software for security using facial recognition.
Performance
Performance is fairly strong when you switch to the discreet graphics. Older games such as Crysis are fairly playable at the native resolution with medium settings, while understandably, the same cannot be said of newer games. The laptop does not heat much even in normal room temperature and is therefore comfortable to be used while being placed on the lap, even with the exhaust vents being present at the bottom. Watching movies or basic work activity can be carried out with the integrated Intel HD graphics. Audio through the built-in speakers is fairly loud, but you may need to plug in your headphones when the surroundings are noisy.
For those interested in PCMark Vantage scores, here is what we got:
Battery life
We used the laptop in the Stamina mode with Wi-Fi ON and used it for regular activity such as surfing the internet and using a word processor with Windows power profile set to Balanced mode. The battery lasted for a total time of 3 hours 14 minutes. With W-Fi switched off, and with light workload (only word processor open), and with the Windows s power profile set to Power Saver mode, the battery life increased to 5 hours 23 minutes. When battery life is critical, the power button s green backlit LED starts blinking along with the battery indicator orange LED present at the front.
Sony Vaio S SAeries Laptop US Price Is $1409.65
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