Sony Vaio Duo 11: Looks good, lacks edge

For the uninitiated, an ultrabook is a higher-end type of subnotebook as defined by Intel. Ultrabooks are designed to be lighter and slimmer than a laptop without compromising on performance and battery life, and some even use design innovations so as to be a laptop and a tablet at the same time. In fact, because they are light, because they generally don’t have common laptop features such as optical disc drives and Ethernet ports, and because they use low-power processors, they tend to have a much higher battery life than a laptop.

Of late, there have been a number of companies climbing the ultrabook bandwagon—with Sony among the major first-entrants. The Japanese company has come out with the Vaio Duo 11 ultrabook (SVD11213CNB), which, on first look, does look like a fat tablet, because the cover is, in fact, a screen. A slight pull from the top of the screen turns it into a laptop (Sony calls it the Surf Slider design). This bit of a laptop and bit of a tablet uses a lot of innovation as far as design is concerned, and really stands out among the various flipping, twisting and dockable devices in the market.

Powered by Windows 8, the Duo 11 is quite light and slim—it weighs approximately 1.3 kg and is 17.85 mm thin. The display is 29.4 cm (11.6 inch) wide-view full HD touchscreen.

As a tablet:

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