Sony Vaio Flip Review: The Most Beautiful Hybrid Laptop We’ve Seen In Recent Times, But For A Price

Sony might be selling its PC branch, which includes Vaio laptops. However, before the brand exchanges hands Sony has brought its beautiful hybrid laptop to India. Showcased at CES this year, from the Flip series we got to play around with the 13-inch version that is a laptop cum tablet.

Design
This is by far the best designed hybrid laptop that we have seen in recent times. You fall in love with the machine as soon as you pull it out of the box. Available in two colours, we got the black version to test. We have seen the silver version as well, which we found to be the preferred choice as dust and smudges won’t show up as easily as on the black one. To add to the show, Sony has used brushed aluminium all around this hybrid.

At a flip of a switch Flip 13 can be converted into a tablet. The 13-inch touchscreen is set on a special hinge located at its back. Just flip the screen around and press it back down to use it like a tablet. The weight of the laptop works against it when one uses it in tablet mode. The usual weight of a stand alone tablet is under 0.5 Kg. But since this is a hybrid machine one has to lug 1.31 Kg’s. Also, using it with just one hand is not comfortable at all. On the other side, in the laptop mode we found the backlit keyboard and touch pad to be fairly large and easy to use.

Performance
For the hefty price of Rs 99,990, Sony should have added the kitchen sink to this machine. As its brain, the Flip 13 has a 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost up to 2.6 GHz. There is 4GB DDR3 RAM to improve performance and also 128GB SSD drive. Together they can bring this laptop to life within a matter of seconds. Graphics have again been provided by Intel with an on-board processor in the form of HD 4400.

For daily use, work and multimedia needs this combo is pretty neat. But if you are one of those who like to play a graphically demanding game every now and then, then you need to look else where. Since it is a hybrid machine, having a decent camera on it is necessary too. It does have an 8 MP one, which does perform well when video chatting, but does not do the job if you want click a selfie. We found too much digital noise in still images.

Battery life is good and one can squeeze about 7 hours under nominal use. We have saved the best part for last –the 13-inch screen is a treat to work on. The user interface of Microsoft Windows 8 works really well with this screen that responds to every tap and swipe with extreme accuracy. Sony has given the Flip 13 a set of stereo speakers. These are pretty much loud and enhance the movie and music experience.

Verdict
Overall, this is a great machine if you can look past the price. One can do lots with it and it can very well be your business laptop. Flip 13 is good to be used as a laptop in most parts and a tablet if the need arises.