What is the Sony VAIO Pro 13?
A big part of the appeal of an Ultrabook is that it is slim and light. So, that the Sony Vaio Pro 13 can claim to be the lightest 13-inch Ultrabook in the world is a coup for this £1000-ish laptop.
Sony Vaio Pro 13 – Design
Look a little closer, of course, and you realise that the Sony Vaio Pro 13 is only a lighter than alternatives like the MacBook Air and Samsung Series 9 – at 1.06kg, where the Samsung is 1.13kg. All these laptops are deliciously light, though, and make fantastically portable computers.
It’s also good to see that Sony hasn’t entirely copied the design of the MacBook Air too. Rather than picking an aluminium body, the Vaio Pro 13 is mostly carbon fibre.
The lid and underside are made of this material, which has greater tensile strength (but lower flexibility) than aluminium. Using carbon fibre is also how the Sony Vaio Pro 13 manages to stay impressively light. However, it does flex a little more than the more-or-less rock solid MacBook Air 13.
The one bit of aluminium is the keyboard rest. As this is the part your hands will make contact with the most, it’s the one bit that needs that cool touch of metal to give that truly convincing high-end laptop feel. This part has a brushed finish, and looks the business.
In keeping with the Sony Vaio range’s typical styling, the Vaio Pro 13 has much sharper edges than a MacBook Air. It’s angular-looking, and the sort of laptop we can imagine Patrick Bateman admiring. It’s also just 18mm thick, so takes up much less room than any non-Ultrabook laptop.
To help stop it feeling too wafer thin in use, there are rubberised studs on the outer part of the hinge that push the keyboard up a little when the laptop’s open – giving a comfier typing angle. It’s a neat design tweak that doesn’t negatively affect the bodywork.
The Sony Vaio Pro 13 ticks the ‘desirability’ box with real verve.
Sony Vaio Pro 13 - Connectivity
As is common to all Ultrabooks, the Sony Vaio Pro 13 makes some connectivity compromises to slim down as much as it does. The main sockets all live on the laptop’s right edge – two USB 3.0 ports, a full-size HDMI, SD card slot and the ever-present headphone jack.
What’s missing? The Ethernet port. Other slim laptops use a collapsible Ethernet socket, as the full one is just too big to fit into laptops like this, but the Sony Vaio Pro 13 takes a novel approach.
It comes with a module that attaches to the power block, and adds an Ethernet port. This transmits the router’s connection as a Wi-Fi network that can be shared with multiple devices. The best bit – this module comes with the Vaio Pro 13 as standard.
Sony Vaio Pro 13 – Screen
No such workarounds have had to be made to the screen, though. This laptop has a 13.3-inch Full HD touchscreen with a glossy finish.
It leaves an excellent first impression, with great sharpness, strong contrast, high brightness and excellent viewing angles. Aside from the glossy finish’s high amount of reflection - reducing outdoors usability - there’s little to dislike.
Sony Vaio Pro 13 – Specs and Battery Life
This is a high-end laptop, and you won’t find an affordable Intel Core i3 CPU version of it any time soon. It’s expected to start at around £1,000, making it a direct pound-for-pound competitor to the MacBook Air.
Exact configurations on offer haven’t been revealed yet, but we do know both 1.8GHz Intel Core i7-4500U and Core i5-4200U Haswell processors will be on offer. 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD will also be baseline specs.
With the standard battery, the Sony Vaio Pro 13 will last for eight hours, according to Sony, and there’s a neat battery pack accessory you can plug into the laptop’s underside that rockets this figure up to 18 hours. As it’s a carefully designed bespoke plug-in, it doesn’t add all that much girth to the Pro 13, either. 
Sony Vaio Pro 13 – Keyboard
As you’d expect of a top-end style laptop like this, the Vaio Pro 13 has a keyboard backlight – with a cool blue hue. And, on the downside, key travel is fairly shallow.
However, the key action is crisp and the 13-inch frame gives enough space for comfy full-speed typing.
Sony Vaio Pro 13 – Impressions
Clever design touches, light weight and good looks make the Sony Vaio Pro 13 worth waiting for if you’re out for a practical, portable laptop. If Sony’s battery claims ring true and its battery pack accessory is priced right, this could become one of the best Ultrabooks in town.
