Tech Specs

Hardware

Software

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Keyboard

Mouse

Processor (base)

GPU (base)

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• 9.0

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  Reviewed by ugo.marceau (Currently owns)

  April 3, 2014 12:20 am

  I recently bought the Vaio Pro 13, my model has 8Gb RAM, 128GB SSD, Core i5, Touchscreen.
  
  Pros:

  - Performance:
  Nothing to be said about the performance of this laptop, this thing flies. Boots in about 6-7 seconds and you're online in 10.

  - Display/Touchscreen:
  Brilliant display, very bright and good colors. The auto-brightness feature is completely stupid but can be turned off in the settings. The touchscreen is super-responsive and fast.

  -Battery Life:
  The battery life is great. I get around 5 hours of battery life while browsing the web, videos here and there, brightness almost maxed out. I'm guessing you could pull out maybe 7 or 8 hours in low brightness just working on a Word or Excel document.

  -Build Quality:
  The carbon fiber chassis is really solid. As thin as it is, there is nearly no flex and it feels really solid. Only comlaint would be the slightly too loose hinges for the screen which make it slightly bounce back and forth when using the touchscreen, but nothing infuriating.

  Cons:

  Keyboard:
  This isn't the best keyboard, perfectly fine for light typing, but I enjoy deeper, more mechanical key presses. It works great I just don't enjoy the feel that much. This keyboard is backlit but the guys that tested it probably never used it off of a desk. When using it in bed or on a couch. If your eyes are at a low angle to the keyboard, the light leaks out like crazy from under the keys, to the point that it blinds out what the keys are actually showing. This gets really annoying when in pitch black and your eyes get tired.
  Connectivity:
  This is truly the Vaio Pro's weak point: Wi-Fi connectivity. Now don't get me wrong it's not a smash-that-computer-on-the-floor-it's-so-bad kind of problem but it gets quite annoying. Sometimes when you boot the computer or wake it from sleep it won't detect any Wi-Fi hotspots nearby and will need a reboot to work properly. I don't know what's causing it and a lot of other users have this problem too. Other than that the VAIO Pro has NFC which I actually enjoy and find myself using quite a lot. It also has bluetooth but I've never used it.

  All in all this is a great laptop albeit quite expensive. I got my model with a 300$ price cut which brought it down to 1000$ (actually 999.99$ but whatever), I probably wouldn't have bought it without that offer.
  All-in-all a great piece of hardware, I highly recommend it.

  The Breakdown

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  • Design 9
  • Keyboard 7
  • Touchpad 8
  • Display 10
  • Performance 10
  • Heat / noise 9
  • Battery life 10
  • Software 10

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• 7.0

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  Reviewed by Ferrr (Currently owns)

  January 17, 2014 02:19 am

  DISAPPOINTING TRACKPAD, BATTERY LIFE AND RESOLUTION

  I just bought (late dec '13) a sony vaio 13 pro, core i5, 8mb ram, 256gb. Double english-russian keyboard.
  I had before a Lenovo Yoga 13 1

  Nice design but carbon surface far much prone to fingerprints that the "suede-like" of Yoga.
  Sony's screen props up when you open it, for good visibility. It's very light (500g lighter than my Yoga1, even if, strangely, you don't feel it). Charger: Very good. Light, It has a USB plug for charging other devices, and a wireless router.
  The surface is very flexy and feels much less solid than the Yoga
  Overall it looks good and modern. No major complaint on design.

  Keyboard: Yoga is way much better. Feels 100x more solid, and is far more responsive. Vaio is ok, but keys are flatter and smaller, and writing on Yoga is a delight. Vaio is just OK. But it has light, Yoga1 hasn't.

  Touchpad: Bad. It responds when it wants, it stops responding in the middle of the action. You can alleviate your trackpad frustration using the touchscreen, very good and responsive.

  Display: Good. But I have compared side to side with my Yoga1's and I prefer the latter. And with the higher res of vaio everything looks smaller: outlook is a pain. Honestly, a res of 1600 x 900 as i had on Yoga is perfect on a 13' screen. More than that, it' s useless, as it doesn't improves display significantly and it makes items on your screen too small Of course you can use zoom, but then you go to horrible definition. and, stupidly, sony's doesn't permit to adjust res, just gives two other levels, too lower.

  Performance.: Excellent.

  Heat/noise. No issues. I don't feel what others say. I only heard the fan when dealing with a lot of high-res pics opened at the same time and still wasn't high at all.

  Battery life. Disappointing according to expectations. Without cable, at full luminosity, just opening outlook, word, excel and some windows in chrome, and being connected to my office's network through wifi, it lasted 5h30. I tried several times. For arriving to sony's specs, you have to sensibly reduce luminosity, and it's very uncomfortable.

  Software: my russian unit came without significant bloatware.

  Overall: nice, powerful and light but less usable than my yoga

  The Breakdown

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  • 10

  • Design 7
  • Keyboard 6
  • Touchpad 5
  • Display 6
  • Performance 9
  • Heat / noise 8
  • Battery life 6
  • Software 8

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• 9.0

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  Reviewed by SouwerPower (Currently owns)

  October 11, 2013 01:46 pm

  The flex is not really noticable and it's like a volvo, it's Worth it the day it falls to the floor.

  If the went to war With the Air, they win out. Windows has the bigger eco system, Windows 8 (and soon 8.1) is great With touch (stupid without touch though), wins out on ports and design, display, weight and durability -
  alone, it's lighter, more powerfull and a better display(wich touch) then the Air. and With the batterysheet (wihch makes it weigh the same), it also outlasts it. If you like MAC OS, og for the Air, if you like Windows, this machine just beats it hands Down.

  The Breakdown

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  • 10

  • Design 8
  • Keyboard 7
  • Touchpad 6
  • Display 10
  • Performance 10
  • Heat / noise 5
  • Battery life 10
  • Software 8

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• 6.0

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  Reviewed by sheharyar_h (Currently owns)

  September 10, 2013 02:20 pm

  Let me first state what I love about this laptop. The carbon fibre design is very appealing to the eye. The screen is a brilliant full HD. The weight is stunningly low and the machine is fantastically quiet. Battery life is very impressive, and the optional sheet battery boosts this to stupidly high levels should you require it.. Some people complain about the flex of the chassis. Personally, I have not felt this enough to complain about it. I do not have the touch version so I can imagine the screen's lightness causing issues there, but otherwise, it feels solid. And even if it isn't as solid as other laptops, this to me is a fair trade off for the lightness, especially considering flex can protect from shock impacts.

  Things I like a little less, next. The keys on the keyboard are actually very usable despite what some say, although they are slightly flat. But still, very comfortable on my 13 inch model. The trackpad is certainly not at the Mac standard; it takes getting used to when using gestures, and you will learn that certain areas of the pad are more responsive to certain things. I have gotten used to this, but it will rightfully annoy some, because Apple, the industry leader in trackpads, has a clearly superior one. Still, it is not cripplingly bad, only typical to windows laptops.

  Then, what I really don't like. Wifi. The wifi on the Vaio Pro is not good, and I stress that this is a point not emphasised enough in online reviews, for some strange reason. The Verge I commend for at least touching upon it. Simply put, the range at which the Vaio Pro can connect to wifi is poor compared to other laptops and devices. After 4-5 metres, you will probably drop connection, which is pathetic. Look online and you will find that many users have this problem, and patches/updates are slowly being eked out to fix it, but at this stage I wonder if it is hardware or software. Pray for it to be the latter, because it would be a massive letdown on Sony's behalf otherwise. Wifi to ultrabooks like this is essential because there is not even an ethernet port available, and so poor wifi connection can make your ultrabook a paperweight. In fact, because of how light it is, it won't even be a paperweight very well.

  To summarise, this machine to me would be almost perfect if the wifi problem fixes, because it is superb in mostly every other way. But an error with wifi is incredibly disappointing. My suggestion to anyone considering buying this is to wait and keep up to date with the wifi problem. If a fix is made,then suddenly you have a very capable, ultra stylish laptop at last for windows, enough to boost the score from a 6 to a 9 for me. But until then, look elsewhere.

  The Breakdown

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  • Design 9
  • Keyboard 8
  • Touchpad 6
  • Display 9
  • Performance 8
  • Heat / noise 9
  • Battery life 8
  • Software 7

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• 8.0

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  Reviewed by horace530 (Currently owns)

  August 15, 2013 11:52 am

  The keyboard is just fine, probably the best you can get from a Ultrabook, as promised by Sony.
  However, the Fn keys has space for improvement
  1. Remove the F7( Second Screen setting). For an Ultrabook with touchscreen you can easily call out the Charm bar for that function
  2. Add the keyboard backlight brightness "up" and "dim" shortcut( like the F5 and F6 on the MBA)

  Probably becuase of its extreme thinness , the touchpad could sometime get "flip out" when holding/pressing on the bottom and has its control slightly distrupted.

  Easy to get scraches on the silver model, not sure about the black ones

  Do not come with Office 2013 ( only the trail)

  Everthing else is just perfect.

  The Breakdown

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  • 9
  • 10

  • Design 8
  • Keyboard 8
  • Touchpad 6
  • Display 9
  • Performance 8
  • Heat / noise 8
  • Battery life 8
  • Software 8

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