Japanese PC maker VAIO is overhauling its laptop lineup with new models sporting 11.6 inch, 13.3 inch, and 15.6 inch displays. The new models add spill resistant keyboard for improved durability, a fingerprint sensor, a dual microphones, among other things.
Unfortunately VAIO is shipping the smaller models with 7th-gen Intel Kaby Lake dual-core processors rather than newer 8th-gen Kaby Lake Refresh quad-core chips.
The new VAIO S11, VAIO S13, and VAIO S15 go on sale in Japan today. They could eventually make it overseas.
VAIO spun off from parent company Sony a few years ago, and at first the new PC startup focused on its home market of Japan. But you’ve been able to find some VAIO PCs in the US for the past year or two.
The new VAIO S11 is a notebook with an 11.6 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display, support for up to a Core i7-7500U processor, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of solid state storage.
It has full-sized HDMI, VGA, and Ethernet jacks, three USB 3.0 ports plus a USB Type-C port, and an SD card reader. The notebook measures about 0.7 inches thick and weighs about 1.9 pounds.
Take pretty much all of those features and put them in a model with a 2.3 pound notebook with a 13.3 inch display, and you’ve pretty much got the new VAIO S13.
VAIO’s new 15.6 inch model, meanwhile, comes with Core i3-7100H dual-core, Core i5-7300HQ, and Core i7-7700HQ quad-core processor options. Those are 45 watts chips rather than the dual-core, 15 watt processors used in the smaller models.
The VAIO S15 supports up to a full HD display, up to 16GB of RAM, up to 1TB of hybrid hard drive/SSD storage, and features an optical disc drive.
It’s also a much larger machine, measuring an inch thick and weighing 5.5 pounds.
I saw s11 and s13 made in china, so how could be?
I’d buy the 13 inch, if it’s not overpriced like the Ultrabooks.
It was a pity when Sony sold Vaio, was a fan of their laptops, still use my pro 13 as a daily laptop to this day, but it is showing its age so need to upgrade. Would have loved to get a new Vaio from Japan but shame that it is using the older cpus and those bezels could have easily been made smaller and would have been if sony still owned the company.
Japanese brands are so behind it’s not even funny. Taking a walk through an electronics store here and seeing the Japanese models will give you a heart attack. Extremely mediocre systems for 1500, 2000 and more dollars. But hey, made in Japan so it must be good right? They still seem to think that 4gb of soldered memory is perfectly acceptable for a machine costing over 1000 bucks.
Just a correction, that i3-7100H is a dual core CPU, not quad.