Sony’s New Masterpiece – The Vaio 14A with solid core features & Flip Screen [Review]

For most manufacturers, making just simple laptops with the basic features that people are accustomed to is just passé; new technologies mean that there’s so much more, so much flexibility that things like touchscreen, and even the option to convert the laptop into a tablet are really prominent among some high-end laptops. One such example is the Sony Vaio 14A laptop.

Design

The first thing we noticed about the laptop was the sleek design. Like all Sony products we’ve seen, especially the mobile phones, the sleek design has become something of a Sony hallmark. The traditional elements including USB, memory card slot are all here but the real star of the show is the flip screen. The screen flips over and effectively turns the laptop into a kiosk so that a person sitting in front of you can now see it. What’s more, you can even use this as a tablet! The keyboard and the touchpad on this particular device were really great – something we’re huge fans of. Sony has also included a digitizing pen that feels really solid in the hand. As far as the design sensibilities of this laptop go, we have to give full marks to Sony for the Vaio 14A.

The display is 14 inch touch screen high-definition display of up to 1920 x 1080 resolution and X-Reality for mobile technology. We were really pleased with the resolution and the overall quality of the display.

The Technical Side of Things

The heart of this laptop is the Intel Core i5 processor 1.60 GHz with Turbo Boost up to 2.60 GHz. The Sony Vaio is equipped with a Windows 8 single language 64-bit operating system, a pre-installed 4 GB memory and Intel HD Graphics 4400. Remember the flip screen we told you about? Well, there’s a lock button that allows you to enable or disable the flip screen option. USB 3.0 ports are standard and it comes with a front side HD web camera. The battery is a sealed one which means you can’t take it out and swap it.

Performance

The design of the laptop had already won us over and now it was time to find out if it did really deliver where it counts the most – real-world performance. Thankfully, it does. The i5 processor with its turbo boost does deliver stellar performance. Gamers and designers will also like this model – it’s got Intel HD Graphics 4400 – not the best there is, but it gets the job done. And about the flip-screen, it’s just flawless. We didn’t notice any problems as such while using it. It might be termed as a novelty attraction on a laptop, but it’s highly usable in real-world situations especially. Overall, the key performance metrics of this laptop’s usability and functionality are high. The only negative things we find is the battery life – which at close to 6 hours is maybe a bit less than what we’d expected.

Verdict

This is a great laptop. It’s got some really solid core technical features and with the addition of the flip screen is just about as good as it gets. The only negative like we mentioned earlier – the battery life.