In the Q&A session at today’s Sony VAIO event in Tokyo, a spokesperson expressed that while his company has yet to officially give Windows RT a whirl, it is still under consideration for future VAIO products. The rep added that he believes there’s an optimum timing for picking up this ARM-friendly version of Windows 8, but he didn’t elaborate further. Perhaps Sony’s just getting all too comfortable with Android.
With Windows 8 finally launching in less than four weeks, it’s only a matter of time before the web is flooded with prices of upcoming PCs, the first among which this month hail from Sony VAIO’s Japan branch. Starting with the Duo 11 slider PC, it’s expected to go for about ¥150,000 ($1,930) when it launches in Japan on October 26th (alongside Windows 8), and it’ll come with a 1080p display, 1.7GHz Core i5-3317U, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM and WiMAX. Then we have three flavors of the Tap 20 portable all-in-one which will range from about ¥140,000 ($1,800) up to about ¥180,000 ($2,310) come November 3rd, with the main differences being the CPU (1.8GHz Core i3-3217U, 1.7GHz Core i5-3317U or 1.9GHz Core i7-3517U) and the RAM (4GB or 8GB), but all three will feature the same 20-inch 1,600 x 900 display and 1TB hard drive.
Also announced at the Tokyo event are Japan prices for three more existing VAIO models that now feature a touchscreen: ¥130,000 ($1,670) for the T Series 13 Ultrabook with Core i5-3317U, ¥150,000 ($1,920) for the VAIO E Series 14P laptop with Core i5-3210M, and from ¥210,000 ($2,700) to ¥240,000 ($3,080) for the VAIO L Series 24-inch all-in-one with Core i7-3630QM and 1080p display. The two laptops will be available in Japan from October 26th, whereas the all-in-one will join in from November 3rd.
There’s no indication as to whether the US prices will match their Japanese counterparts (the former are usually a lot cheaper), but hey, stay tuned here and you’ll know as soon as we do.
Sony is clearly bent on getting the VAIO Duo 11 to market on time — just as we’re recovering from our post-IFA jet lag, the Windows 8 slider has popped up for approval at the FCC. The PC put through the wringer is very much like what we saw at the show, with 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC and that signature stylus on offer. There’s no sign of 3G or 4G for the road warrior crowd. We don’t have any clues as to the exact US release timing from the FCC’s sign-off, but it does clear a path for an American release side by side with the European model in late October, if Sony yearns for some international synchronicity.
Sony likes to do things differently, and the VAIO Duo 11 is its unusual entrant to the Windows 8 tablet market. Billed as a “hybrid sliding PC” the Duo 11 looks, at first glance, like a chunky tablet, but pull up just above the front-facing webcam and the touchscreen slides back and up to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. It’s an approach we’ve seen before, from the ASUS Eee Pad Slider, but here running Microsoft’s full Windows platform and with a digital stylus for handwriting and sketching.
VAIO notebooks generally look the part, especially the more expensive ones, and the Duo 11 follows in those footsteps with an angular black casing that’s a nice diversion from the usual round-cornered fare. The glossy plastic is a fingerprint magnet, of course, and Sony’s non-final hardware showed some flex when you pull the screen open, but once upright and in place – in a single, non-adjustable angle – it stuck fast no matter how roughly we jabbed at it.
Sony has chased connectivity not headline grabbing dimensions, and so while the Duo 11 isn’t the fattest tablet we’ve ever seen, nor does it rival recent Samsung and Apple slates for waifish form-factors. Instead, you get HDMI and USB connections, along with – in what seems to be a bizarre accommodation of legacy business users – a full-sized VGA connection. Things get even thicker if you bolt on the extended battery slice, doubling runtimes at the cost of significantly increasing width.
Sony VAIO Duo 11 hands-on video:
Unfortunately, adding that extended battery is seemingly the only way to accommodate the pen when you’re not using it – it slots into a cutaway underneath – which is a shame since stylus input works well in general. OneNote, Microsoft’s unfairly overlooked notetaking app (which will sync its notes with its cut-down counterpart on Windows Phones), receives digital ink with aplomb, the pressure sensitivity of what we’re guessing to be a Wacom-sourced digitizer paying dividends for quick sketches and handwritten notes.
As for the keyboard, it’s more compact than a regular notebook, but still very usable for typing. There’s a trackpoint-style navigation nub in the middle of the ‘board, though rather than physically moving it uses an optical sensor to map the movement of your fingertip. Still, we found ourselves using the touchscreen more often than not, as reaching forward felt more natural.
Unlike some Windows 8 tablets, Sony hasn’t compromised on raw grunt. There’s Intel’s Core i7-3517U paired with 4Gb or 8GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of SSD storage; the 1080p 11.6-inch display is incredibly crisp and bright. The underlying message is yes, you can use this as your main PC, but you’re probably going to have to pay handsomely for it. Sony will announce numbers closer to the VAIO Duo 11′s official release in late October.
While Sony’s keeping quiet on a lot of the precise technical specs, there’s plenty to talk about in the form-factor Sony has chosen for one of its debut Windows 8 VAIO devices. The Duo 11 slider pairs an 11.6-inch screen with a sliding — and very satisfying — hinge. This gives the slate two different ways to deal with Microsoft’s forthcoming OS. Handily, Sony has also developed a precise digitizer to work in tandem with the device. We’re liking the style of the slider, and that petite footprint is also rather appealing — aside from the paucity for keys. There are more impressions and a hands-on video after the break.
At the tail-end of Sony’s IFA 2012 presser, Kaz Hirai announced two updates to the VAIO line, one of which was the Tap 20. The so-called tabletop PC is a Windows 8 device targeted at families as it can easily convert from a very traditional upright position to a full flat profile. The device is still a work-in-progress, as one of the company’s reps confirmed to us, so it could hit shelves later this year with a much slimmer profile and less weightier feel. We spent some time getting to know this sliding slate, so follow on after the break to see how it fared.
Sony has just officially entered the Windows 8 tablet and touchscreen market with the announcement of the recently leaked VAIO 11-inch slide-out tablet. This will obviously be aimed at those folks that created the Surface tablet — and Sony hopes to spoil their plans with this new full featured and powerful Windows 8 machine.
It’s a tablet, and it’s a notebook. This thing does it all. Sony very briefly mentioned this new full-featured tablet at IFA 2012 and while we are digging for the skinny, check out the leak from earlier this week. The Duo 11 will come with many different options for CPU, and will be customizable to users needs and budget.
The new Duo 11 will come powered by Intel’s Core i7-3517U processor, and a few lower priced options will be available. Then they’ve managed 4GB or 8GB of RAM options complete with 128 or 256GB SSD’s for extremely impressive performance. The specifically mention the 11.6-inch display will be a full 1080p and look stunning — probably with the BRAVIA engine.
This convertible PC will have ultrabook power while remaining extremely portable, doubling as a tablet and more. The press photos reveal stylus support — which was expected — and we are hearing various accessories will be included at launch as well. Did we mention NFC, GPS, and 720p HD cameras both on the front and back of this tablet hybrid. Sony will be aiming for a late October release date but are pretty tight-lipped on pricing for now. We’ll update once they announce full details.
Sony just threw itself fully into the touchscreen Windows 8 arena — it’s introducing the VAIO Duo 11 slider tablet and the Tap 20 combination desktop and tablet design at its IFA 2012 press conference. The Duo 11 is a noticeably amped-up realization of the Hybrid concept we saw at CES. Its 11.6-inch, 1080p touchscreen is joined by a proper digitizer stylus for low-lag handwriting as well as some seriously powerful innards for a convertible PC its size: we’re talking an Ultrabook-level Core i3, i5 or i7 as well as a 128GB or 256GB SSD, NFC wireless, GPS, and HD-capable cameras at the front and back. Sony is hoping for a late October release for this beast of a slate, although we haven’t been given that all-important price.
The VAIO Tap 20, meanwhile, is more than just a tilting all-in-one desktop in the vein of Lenovo’s IdeaCentre A720. Despite carrying a 20-inch, 1,600 x 900 touchscreen, it’s still very much battery-powered — you can lug the 11.4-pound PC into the living room and treat it like a tiny multi-touch table, if that’s your inclination. It’s sharing the same processor picks as the Duo 11, but it turns to more conventional 750GB or 1TB hard drives and puts the emphasis on shareable apps like Family Paint and the Fingertapps Organizer calendar. Not surprisingly, there’s only one, front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera here, although NFC does make the cut. The Tap 20 is due to arrive at about the same time as its smaller Duo 11 sibling, although we’re once again without details of how much it will cost.
It looks like Sony is gearing up to give Microsoft Surface a run for its money with a new tablet hybrid of its own. The leaked pics you see below come courtesy of an unnamed PocketNow source, and appear to depict a new Sony convertible tablet running Windows 8. While there aren’t too many details at the moment, the pictures do give away some hints as to what this tablet hybrid could be.
First of all, we can see Microsoft Office running on the tablet in one of the images. The keyboard also appears to be backlit, and PocketNow points out that the keyboard isn’t detachable – it’s on there for good. That, when coupled with the office setting of the images, leads us to believe that the VAIO Duo 11 will be aimed more at business people than mainstream consumers.
We can also clearly see a stylus in a few of the images, but it’s unclear how big of a role that will play. You’d probably be able to get away without using the stylus given the touch-friendly nature of Windows 8, but once again, that stylus reinforces the idea that this is a tablet for business professionals. As you can see from one of the images, the tablet can fold over and hide the keyboard, despite the fact that the keyboard is a permanent feature of the Duo 11.
Sadly, PocketNow’s source left the most important information out of this particular leak: pricing and a release date. If Sony aims for a price around that of the Surface, the VAIO Duo 11 could end up being quite a worthy challenger to Microsoft’s upcoming tablet. With the release of Windows 8 just under two months away now, we can probably expect an official reveal from Sony soon, so stay tuned.
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