After launching in Japan last month, the new VAIO S13 laptop will be available for purchase in the United States for $1199 and up starting February 12th.
The 13.3 inch notebook weighs about 2.3 pounds, measures about 0.7 inches thick (at its thickest point), and sports a quad-core 8th-gen Intel Core “Kaby Lake Refresh” processor.
Other features include a 1920 x 1080 pixel display, three USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and VGA ports, a headset jack, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, an SD card reader, a backlit keyboard, and a battery that VAIO says should be good for about 8.5 hours of run time (so expect a bit less in real-world usage).
There’s also a fingerprint reader below the keyboard.
The entry-level model has an Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8GB of LPDDR3-1866 RAM and a 256GB PCIe solid state drive. But you can pay more for beefier specs. Here are some of the configurations available at launch:
- Core i5/8GB/256GB for $1199
- Core i7/8GB/512GB for $1599
- Core i7/16GB/512GB for $1899
- Core i7/16GB/1TB for $2199
While you can probably find cheaper laptops with similar specs, VAIO generally makes premium devices with premium materials. The new VAIO S13 has a magnesium alloy chassis, a hinge that gives the keyboard a bit of a tilt when the laptop is opened up.
This is also one of the thinnest laptops I’m aware of to feature full-sized VGA and Ethernet ports.
There’s no word on if or when VAIO will bring its new Vaio S11 laptop with an 11.6 inch display to the United States.