Sony Vaio T SVT11113FGS Review

Sony always comes up with designs very different from the rest, be it phones or laptops. The Vaio T is an attempt to offer a stylish Ultrabook, and that too at a competitive price. 

Video Review

The Sony VAIO T11

Features and Design

The SVT11113FGS is an 11.6-inch variant of the Vaio T series. It’s small enough to easily slide into a handbag. Weighing only 1.4kg, it’s more convenient to carry than Ultrabooks with larger screens. Before delving into the technical specifications, we want to shed some light on the design because it’s much more interesting. It looks gorgeous from every angle. With the lid closed, the brushed aluminium finish with a chrome-coloured Vaio logo in the centre and a chrome strip running across at the rear looks great. The Vaio T is available in only one colour. The only piece of metal used in the construction of the body is the aluminium plate on the lid and it’s left uncoloured. The exterior of the chassis, palm rest and the screen frame are silver, to go with the colour of aluminium.

Brushed metal finish and chrome accents look excellent

Sony has paid good attention to finer details, in order to offer more comfort and make things more convenient. For example, the power button in the corner above the keyboard has a wraparound indicator that's visible even with the lid closed, so you can see whether the laptop is switched on or charging at any time. You’ll see two tiny rubber stubs on either side of the keyboard, and a long rubber strip above the screen frame to protect the screen itself from rubbing against the keyboard and palm rest. Indicators for charging status, hard drive activity and wireless status are placed on the front, below the touch pad. What we liked best were the two plastic bits cleverly placed at the back of the laptop, which slightly elevate the keyboard when you open the lid. This makes typing a bit more comfortable and also helps air circulate through vents at the base. The exhaust grille for the cooler is placed on the right hand side and the vents are placed around it. The USB ports, VGA output, HDMI port, card reader, Gigabit Ethernet port, and a jack for a stereo headset are placed on the sides for easy access. The USB 3.0 port on the left is capable of providing power output for charging mobile devices even when the laptop is off, and without the power adaptor plugged in.

The USB 3.0 port outputs power even in off state for charging mobile devices

Now for the tech specs: The Vaio T SVT11113FGS houses an Intel Core i5-3317U processor, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard disk. The suffix ‘U’ in the processor model number suggests it’s an ultra-low voltage (ULV) processor. It’s skewed towards good battery life with minimal compromise on performance. The hard disk is complemented by a 32GB SSD to make for a hybrid solution. It caches frequently used data for speedy booting of the OS and quick launching of applications and recovery from sleep.

The absence of a graphics processor helps the battery last longer. The graphics come courtesy of Intel's integrated HD 3000 GPU. The 11.6-inch LED-backlit display looks crisper than most of its larger counterparts because it has the same resolution of 1366x768 pixels resulting in a higher pixel density. 11.6-inches is a small screen, but it looks smaller because the frame surrounding it is about an inch thick, which takes away from the laptop's looks. A thinner frame would have looked more tasteful. Right at the middle, above the display are a 1.3 megapixel webcam and a microphone.

The keyboard is of the chiclet type and the keys are flat, not bevelled. The touchpad is nice and wide. It resembles that of a MacBook due to the absence of buttons; the click mechanism is located below the surface.

11.6-inch display and a chiclet keyboard

The Sony Vaio T comes with Windows 7 Home Premium preinstalled. The software bundle that Sony has provided is impressive. You get Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 and Microsoft Office Starter 2010. Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2012 comes as a 60-day trial version, and so does Norton Online Backup. Besides these, Sony has provided a few of its own apps such as Vaio Gate, Vaio Smart Network and Vaio Gesture Control. Vaio Gate is a launch pad that can be pulled down by pushing the mouse pointer towards the top of the screen. You can add or remove shortcuts to it by dragging and dropping icons. Smart Network allows you to enable/ disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Besides this, it also enables you to create network profiles in order to switch between networks with ease. With Gesture Control, you can control media playback, web browsing and slideshows by waving your hand in front of the webcam. It works best from a distance of a foot from the screen, but it worked quite well even 3 feet away. It comes quite handy when you want to view photos or control media playback from a distance.