Sony VAIO VPC-SA21GX/BI Laptop (Black)

The good: The Sony Vaio SA21GX packs a lot of equipment inside a thin and light, without setting a high price. The high-resolution screen, Blu-ray and AMD graphics round a complete package.

The bad: The screen hinge feels very unstable for our taste, and reverse, slightly angular design would not appeal to everyone.

The bottom line: Sony Vaio S Series notebooks refurbished are thin, but still offer many high-end features, creating an economical alternative to Z. Vaio attractive, but expensive

Sony Vaio laptops have been considered the benchmark for high-end laptops Windows, at least in terms of excellence set of media, hardware design, and higher prices than average. While Vaio gradually became more accessible in recent years, the reputation of products with style, remains too expensive, especially when it comes to ultraportables, including the undoubtedly impressive, but insanely price Vaio Z.

The Vaio S, a line of redesigned 13-inch laptops, became the inheritor of much of the style of the VAIO Z, but at more reasonable prices. For "reasonable" we mean from $ 899, which certainly falls within a range competitive with Apple.
Much has changed since the thickness S Vaio laptop last revision. The new 3.5-pound Vaio S is thinner and lighter, certainly more than general-purpose notebooks average of 4 pounds. It's so thin and light as a MacBook Air or Samsung 9 Series, but it is one of the thinnest laptops that includes a standard processor and optical drive. His closest alternative in terms of size and features is the Toshiba Portege R835.

There are very close packed alloy magnesium frame Vaio S: the second generation i-series Core processors, AMD graphics, optional 1600 x 900 pixels of high resolution screen, a Blu-ray and a cut-out battery box, which effectively doubles battery life. Add all this, and the Vaio S definitely has a sense of luxury. However, prices skyrocket, our setup was reported in 1299 dollars, depending on what else to add, you can easily get about $ 2,000.

If you're in the market for a 13-inch laptop in Windows that can keep up with the designs of Apple, the Vaio S comes as close as any Windows laptop. His angular, almost any design nonpayment may appeal to some, but the Vaio S receives a gesture of respect to be a more sensitive variation of the excess of Z, without charging a huge premium - at least if he keeps improving it a minimum.

At first glance, the Vaio S owes much to the aesthetic design of the Vaio Z. Some people who sit in cafes, you can even assume that this is an angled edge Z. and a thin profile are almost identical to the Vaio Z looked last year. The metal on an aluminum magnesium alloy structure is strong, but it is so light that you can cheat to feel a little weak.

THE Vaio has two variants of the model, Sony Vaio S decided to fork a little confusion, called the SA and SB spectra located at slightly lower prices and higher at the end. SB Vaio comes in four colors - black, white, pink and blue - and starts with lower specifications (Core i3/i5), while the SA Vaio comes in Jet Black or silver, platinum and has high-end CPU options (i5 / i7) and better AMD Radeon. Both the SA and SB share many of the characteristics of the same configuration, with some differences between the two. If you buy the Sony website, it is best to compare and contrast yourself and then make a decision. For most, the decision will probably be reduced to color in everything else. Our VAIO S is platinum Plata SA, a set of configurations of $ 1,299.

The similarities continue with the Vaio Z inside the Vaio S, lifted the keyboard and a row of dedicated buttons launch feel very similar. The hinge, however, is different. THE Vaio, a chrome center-hinged connected floats near the middle of the back of the notebook, giving a retro touch more directly with the design. The upper eyelid is very thin, very thin on the border, we have experienced the same kind of Flexy open and close like we did with the previous Vaio Zs. The hinge action also felt strange - sometimes too loose, often more rigid in other sides. The hinge works great, but seemed to be somewhat irregular. The Vaio SA opens to cover a wider angle than usual, beyond the standard 45 degrees, and offers better visibility to the laptop to write or work on a low table.

A large area of ​​palm rest for a frame size touchscreen otherwise normal. Its smooth surface responded better than the average of the multitouch gestures and movements, hidden under a pair of discrete buttons that go right ahead. Among them is a fingerprint sensor of small size, which can be programmed to store passwords for increased security.

The general characteristics of island-style keyboard keys with enough space between them. The keys are slightly recessed in a pan, leaving the top of the color keys with the other palm down. Like Apple's keyboards (and unlike many other Windows laptops), the Enter / Shift are being drowned out by a stranger extra column of keys on the right side, which makes writing much less crowded. The keyboard is illuminated Vaio S, a good addition to the low lighting, but in rooms with low light switches in our unit Silver Platinum Silver were hard to read sometimes.

If we are going to be picky Vaio S project is especially the drive angle 1980, the laptop seems to embrace. Of course, nothing like the Vaio S already existed in 1988, but especially in our Platinum model, the hard lines and give the laptop extra buttons around a little sense of retreat. Sony loves to add specific help, web, and more keyboard keys VAIO many like this, but the dedicated keys for the most part unnecessary. Physics "Stamina / Speed" switch performance in the upper left feels like a joke (after all, we do not want the power and speed at the same time?), But is essentially a graph of on / off. AMD Radeon includes not turn off automatically, and this is the Vaio S "method of balancing power consumption. The physical switch is odd: the programs have to be out and the laptop briefly flashes as his way of changing it. We so used to the graphics and automated as those in laptops from Apple or Nvidia laptop that Optimus find this unpleasant choice.

The 13.3-inch matte screen is better than most we have seen, viewing angles with bright colors and sharp and bright. Even better, the Vaio S offers an upgrade option in high resolution from the default 1366 x 768 pixels. Our SA21GX/SI Vaio has a 1600 x 900 pixel screen resolution. It may seem excessive in a 13-inch laptop, but it's not, screen space optimizer is a real added workflow, better alignment of programs that appear on screen at once. Text is still largely legible, if the condensate.
The stereo speakers sounded solid and stronger than I expected to hear. I would not say that S is an ideal portable media Vaio, but it is a powerful way to consume video in real time - and if you decide to upgrade to Blu-ray and a higher resolution screen, this adds up the media to a more compact 13-inchers we've seen.

This Vaio also has Intel Wireless Display, a useful way to transmit high-definition video from your laptop to an HDTV. Widi require separately purchased a converter that connects to your TV, but once configured, can be used to transform your big screen TV WiDi on a second monitor, with a slight delay in transmission time. Streaming video on the Web, support DVD and Blu-Ray playback, and applications are well connected, too, but games that require quick response will not work.

Included with your webcam video capture at resolutions up to 1280 pixels X720, but we see the image quality to be a little faded and dull compared with other recent HD Webcams.