Months after its competitors, Sony today entered the ultrabook laptop market with the brand new VAIO T-series, including the 11.6″ T11 and 13.3″ T13.
Inside the cases combining magnesium and aluminum, Sony’s first ultrabooks incorporate the 2nd Generation Intel Core “Sandy Bridge” power-efficient ultra-low-voltage processors, but there is no word on availability of the forthcoming 3rd Generation chips. Sony has provided only a specs sheet of a 13.3″ model, the VAIO SVT1311M1E, revealing a Core i4-2367M CPU SKU, 4GB of RAM, and the Intel HD 3000 IGP. The pixel count on the display is 1366×768. Storage choices are SSDs and hybrid HDDs.
For fast system resume, Sony employs Rapid Wake + Eco technology, to wake up the notebook “in moments”, while the battery life of models with SSDs incorporated is maximal 9 hours. Furthermore, Sony makes a bold claim of stand-by time of up to 90 days on the T ultrabooks.
The first images of the T-series reveal impressively thin and elegant 0.7-inch thin chassis dominated by a brushed-metal finish on the lid and a matte surface on the palm rests. The weight is 3.5 pounds. Other design features are a chiclet-style keyboard and a button-less trackpad. The notebook seems to be without keyboard backlight, judging from the press release which doesn’t mention it.
The ultrabook supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and wired LAN connectivity, and houses an SD/MMC card reader, HDMI, VGA, and headphone out jacks, as well as a USB 2.0 and a USB 3.0 port. The built-in webcam is Exmor-branded and has a 1.3MP sensor.
According to Sony, the VAIO T ultrabooks will be available starting this month, but there is no word on pricing.
It looks like this laptop sits with its back side on the display bezel. How can you adjust viewing angle on this? Very strange.