Sony VAIO Duo 11

the Sony VAIO Duo 11 (D11213CX). It comes with a touch screen that takes advantage of Windows 8 touch functionality, as well as a fast 128GB solid-state drive (SSD) and a third-generation Intel Core processor. The hybrid design of the Duo 11 stills has some kinks to work out, and it isn't helped by short 

battery-life, software glitches, or a design that is uncomfortable to hold.

Design
The VAIO Duo 11 is a convertible ultrabook, meaning that it functions both as a laptop and as a tablet. The transformation relies on what Sony calls the "Smooth Surf Slider design," a spring-loaded sliding hinge mechanism. Lift the back edge of the screen and pull back and up, and the screen slides up into a laptop-like position. Unfortunately, those are the only two positions available, and adjusting the screen angle in laptop mode is out of the question. Also, be careful not to stick anything in the gap behind the screen, below the hinge—exposed springs and ribbon cables could easily be damaged if you tried to close the system on a foreign object.
 The 11.6-inch screen adds capacitive touch and 10-finger tracking to the gorgeous 1920-by-1080 resolution IPS display, which not only looks great, it's also a huge step up from the 1366-by-768 resolution display seen on the likes of the Samsung Series 7 Slate (700T1A)  or the Toshiba Portege Z935-P300  ultrabook. Gorilla Glass protects the screen from scratches and scuffs, which is important, because even when closed—in tablet form—the display is exposed. One maddening quirk: The touch screen would occasionally stop registering touch input while in laptop mode. Sometimes this could be fixed by switching into tablet mode and back; other times it required power-cycling the laptop. When touch is a major feature in your device, it behooves you to make sure that it works properly.
When closed in tablet mode, the Duo 11 measures 0.71 by 12.60 by 7.84 inches (HWD) and it weighs only 2.9 pounds thanks to a lightweight magnesium-alloy frame and glossy black plastic chassis. It's thin and light enough for use as a tablet, but weight isn't the only factor to consider. The burnished black plastic gathered not only smudges, but also scuffs, which you don't want to see on a device that will be handled constantly. The angular lines of the VAIO Duo 11 are in keeping with the design ID used throughout the VAIO line. It looks great while the Duo is in laptop mode, but the jutting angles and sharp edges aren't comfortable to hold in tablet mode. If there's a flaw in the design, this is it.

The chiclet keyboard is smaller than those usually seen on 11-inch laptops, with no palmrest to speak of, and a shallow typing depth, even for an ultrabook. The full-size keyboard also has slightly undersized keys, making the spacing a bit wider than you'll find on most chiclet keyboards. In the center of the chiclet keyboard is an optical mouse, similar to the optical trackpoint seen on the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2. The optical sensor has a polished, rounded surface, which fingertips glide over easily, but it's a different experience than you'll have with a regular trackpad because it's highly sensitive. The mouse buttons are located on the edge of the keyboard, just below the spacebar. The size and dimensions of the hybrid laptop don't provide room for a palmrest.
Finally, Sony overlooked what should have been a basic detail. The Duo 11 comes with a digitizer stylus for handwriting and drawing with the tablet, but nowhere on the tablet will you find either storage for the stylus or any sort of tether point to attach it to. Sony does offer an accessory sleeve for the Duo 11, which includes stylus storage, but without it, the average user will find their laptop and pen separated rather quickly. Thankfully, any Wacom digitizer stylus can be used. Aside from this oversight, using the stylus is great, with 256 levels of pressure sensitivity and automatic palm-rejection letting you rest your wrist on the screen as you would with pen and paper, without causing any problems.
Features
Because the VAIO Duo 11 doubles as a tablet, you'll also find ports and buttons all over the device, rather than grouping them entirely on the right and left sides of the chassis. Some of these connections are standard for ultrabooks, like two USB 3.0 ports (one with power for charging devices while the system is asleep), a card slot (SD/MS), a compact Ethernet port, and 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. Bluetooth 4.0 lets you pair the latest Windows 8 peripherals, and 802.11n Wi-Fi keeps you connected as you roam from room to room. An HDMI port and VGA output let you connect to an external HDTV or monitor, but the Duo 11 is also WiDi-capable, letting you wirelessly stream through any WiDi adapter, like the Netgear Push2TV.
Business users aren't left out either, as the VAIO Duo 11 has integrated Trusted Platform Module (TPM), Symantec Validation and ID Protection Service (VIP), Intel Anti-Theft Technology, and a connection for a desktop port replicator.
Others features have clearly come from the tablet side of the equation, such as the front- and rear-facing 2.4-megapixel cameras and the screen rotation lock button. Internal sensors now include GPS, Accelerometer, Gyro, and Digital Compass. Newer features not seen on previous laptops or tablets include the soon-to-be-ubiquitous Windows Key button, effectively a physical home or start button on the front of the tablet, which duplicates the function of your keyboard's Windows key. Other physical action buttons include volume controls and a screen orientation lock button. Finally, Sony has also built-in Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology, used for pairing the Duo 11 to any device with Sony One-Touch technology, such as the Sony SRS-BTM8 Bluetooth wireless speaker and MDR-1RBT Bluetooth headphones.

Sony has outfitted the VAIO Duo 11 with a 128GB SSD, which makes for speedy two-second boot and wake times, and boosts day-to-day performance. It's the same capacity offered in the Toshiba Portege Z935-P300, but the Asus Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71  offers a larger 500GB spinning hard drive—because of the moving parts, traditional hard drives aren't well-suited to tablets that will pick up and move in normal use. There's also no room for an optical drive in the slim confines of a convertible ultrabook, so those still using DVDs will need an external drive.
Sony doesn't waste the chance to share a number of preinstalled programs and apps. When you first see the Start Screen, you'll be greeted by a number of VAIO branded apps (VAIO Care, VAIO Message Center, VAIO Update, and VAIO Control Center), along with app tiles for HuluPlus, Kaspersky Now, Skype, and Slacker Radio. The Kaspersky app is tied to a 30-day trial of Kaspersky Internet Security, and you'll also find a trial version of Microsoft Office 2013. Sony PlayMemories Home provides a simple hub for organizing, viewing, editing and sharing images and videos. Sony Album and Sony Music let you organize your media and stream to DLNA compatible TVs and audio systems. Sony SocialLife is more of a meta-app, consolidating social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and news feeds into a single attractive interface. For showing off the digitizer stylus mentioned above, Sony includes Sony Note Anytime, a handwriting recognition app for note taking, and also throws in a copy of ArtRage Studio Pro, letting you doodle and draw to your heart's content.
Sony covers the VAIO Duo 11 with a one-year warranty plus toll-free phone support. Additional 

accessories are also available for the Duo 11, including a protective sleeve, and a secondary battery slice.
Performance

The VAIO Duo 11 is equipped with the same third-generation Intel Core i5-3317U processor (1.7GHz) used in the Toshiba Portege Z935-P300 and other ultrabooks. The VAIO Duo 11 posted a solid 2.4 point score in Cinebench R11.5, identical to the score of the Toshiba Z935-P300, which uses the same processor. Paired with 8GB of RAM and the aforementioned 128GB SSD, the VAIO Duo 11 offers decent productive capability, as evidenced by its PCMark 7 score of 4,648 points. While it falls short of the Toshiba Z935-P300 (5,477 points) it's significantly more powerful than the Samsung Series 7 Slate (2,352 points) which sports a second-generation Intel Core processor, and is one of the few x86 Windows tablets we've reviewed up to this point.
Intel's integrated graphics processing (Intel HD Graphics 4000) provides enough visual oomph for multimedia and casual games, which is perfect for the touch-based gaming available on the Duo 11. As a result, it scored 1,117 points in 3DMark 11 (on Entry settings), and completed the updated Handbrake video encoding test in 1 minute 25 seconds. For most media tasks, like editing photos or loading graphics-intensive Web pages, this is more than enough graphics capability. High-end gaming, however, is out of reach on this system, as evidenced by unplayable scores in both of our gaming tests, Heaven and Alien vs. Predator; both tests produced an unplayable 12 frames per second when set to lower resolution (1366-by-768) and medium detail (anti-aliasing off).
The VAIO Duo 11 lasted 3 hours 9 minutes in a video rundown test, falling short of the 4:45 Sony estimates in press materials. While the test isn't as varied or detailed as MobileMark—our normal battery test—it does paint a clear picture for the average user. Three hours may make it through two (shorter) movies back to back, but isn't enough time to take you through a full day of work or school. It's especially irritating in the tablet form-factor—plugging in a laptop isn't that big a hassle since they are fairly stationary during use, but it will seriously cramp the use-it-anywhere convenience of a tablet.
While there will be plenty of comparisons made in the coming weeks, the Sony VAIO Duo 11 doesn't make the best first-impression for the emerging hybrid ultrabook category. As an ultrabook the Duo 11's awkward keyboard and short battery-life hamper the productive potential it might have had. As a tablet, the design is uncomfortable and the short battery-life cripples the convenience and entertainment value. The Sony VAIO Duo 11 shows promise, but there's plenty of room to improve.

GOOD

Touch capability. Gorgeous hi-res IPS display. Windows 8. Intel Core i5-3317u processor. 128GB SSD.

NOT GOOD
  Awkward design. Glitchy touch screen. Short battery life.

Read more »

Apple iPad 4

Pricing and Physical FeaturesThe fourth-generation iPad looks almost exactly like the previous model, and it's priced the same, too. There are 16, 32, and 64GB sizes in Wi-Fi-only  and same-size 4G LTE variants on AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless . If you want to be able to keep apps, movies, and music on your tablet, I advise getting at least 32GB. The various carrier models don't work on each others' LTE networks, but the Verizon and Sprint models will work on AT&T's 3G network and T-Mobile's 2G EDGE network with the appropriate SIM card. For this review, I tested the  64GB Wi-Fi-only model.

Just like the second- and third-generation iPads, this tablet has a 9.7-inch screen surrounded by a black (or white) bezel, with a curved metal back, and a single Home button. Apple's magnetic Smart Cover, which was released with the iPad 2, clips on just fine. The tablet still has a sealed-in battery, and no ports other than a standard headphone jack. There's a 1.2-megapixel camera right above the display on the middle of the top bezel, and a 5-megapixel camera in its traditional location on the back upper left corner.
the Apple iPad (4th Generation) has it all: top performance, a stellar screen, a surprisingly good camera, speedy Wi-Fi, and a breathtaking library of spectacular apps. Unlike other 10-inch tablets on the market, it's the full package, which makes it a very rare five-star product

On the bottom is Apple's new, compact Lightning connector, which isn't compatible with earlier accessories, but Lightning accessories are starting to appear, and I'm confident the ecosystem will develop quickly with more than 8 million Lightning-compatible phones, PMPs, and tablets already in people's hands.
Apps and Performance The new iPad, like the old iPad, runs Apple's iOS 6. See our full review for a look at the ins and outs of the iPad's operating system. We've also reviewed and profiled hundreds of iPad apps if you want to get an idea of the richness of the software for this device.
In the eight months since the third-generation iPad was released, most of the apps I have been using for testing have been upgraded to Retina versions. The OS smoothes and improves standard elements within many non-Retina-enhanced apps, too, including text and embedded maps.
Speaking of those maps, Apple's troubles with mapping don't affect this iPad as much as other iOS devices because the Wi-Fi-only model lacks GPS. Still, though, if it can find Wi-Fi the tablet can find its location, and you can download a third-party mapping app if you like; here are 10 solid Apple Maps alternatives.
The latest iPad packs an Apple A6X processor which Geekbench reports to be running at 1.4GHz (Apple won't confirm or deny). The custom-designed A6, as seen in the iPhone 5, was already one of the fastest CPUs available; the A6X enhances the A6 with even better graphics.
The results are stunning. The fourth-gen iPad outmatched all other Apple products on the Geekbench and GLBenchmark benchmarks, scoring 1,768 on Geekbench to the iPad 3's 749. Similarly, the heavy game "Need for Speed: Most Wanted" launched in 18 seconds on the new iPad as compared to 37 seconds on the iPad 3. Yes, it's more than twice as fast. With the iPad 3, I found apps that stressed the older A5 processor. That just isn't the case any more.

Apple's efficient software comes into play when comparing against the Google Nexus 10 too. While the Nexus 10 notched a faster Geekbench score at 2,480, the iPad creamed it on all of our actual Web-browsing tests, Sunspider, Browsermark, and GUIMark, as well as in the speed of loading pages. I saw delays and stutters in the Nexus 10's interface that I never saw on the iPad. Updating a large number of apps went more slowly on the Nexus than on the iPad. And under heavy strain, the iPad got a bit warm, but the Nexus 10 became even hotter.
Part of this is thanks to the iPad's excellent Wi-Fi performance; on PCMag's 5GHz 802.11n network, I got 37Mbps down on the iPad and 23Mbps down on the Nexus 10. Both speeds are fast, but it's the iPad's processor and software that seem to be making the difference here.
Gaming performance is significantly better on the new iPad, too. Intense games like Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Asphalt 7 run at a smooth 60 frames per second on the new iPad and render landscapes in advance of viewing; the Nexus 10 had frame-rate trouble in both games and would render buildings as I came up to them, which was distracting. Scores on the GLBenchmark graphics benchmark tell the tale. On GLBenchmark's "Egypt HD On-Screen," which renders a complex game-like scene, the iPad 3 scored 22 frames per second, the Nexus 10 hit 27, and the iPad 4 marked 42. That's a noticeable difference.

Read more »

Top 5 Android Tablets

Google Nexus 7

Google and Asus smack it out of the park with the Nexus 7, a terrific small-screen tablet that's an incredible value at $200. Our latest Editors' Choice, it's the best small-screen tablet you can buy

  Samsung Galaxy Note Tablet

 The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is the first 10-inch Android tablet to offer compelling, consumer-friendly features the iPad can't match.

 

Amazon Kindle Fire HD

 The 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire HD is a great way to consume your Amazon content on a small screen, but it's not the fastest or most flexible $200 tablet any more

.

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201

With its blazing quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 is the best 10-inch Android tablet you can buy, and one of the few to be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich. But the OS still lacks the tablet-optimized apps to compete with the iPad

Acer Iconia Tab A700

 The Acer Iconia Tab A700 is a good midrange 10-inch Android tablet with an above-average screen, but it lags behind other high-resolution-display tablets.

.

 

Read more »

How to Buy the Best Tablet

It's difficult to remember a time before tablets, but it's been just two short years since the original Apple Ipad hit the scene, and the current tablet market was born. Since then, we've seen scores of manufacturers trying to snag a slice of the tablet pie, which so far, has been dominated by Apple, now on its third iPad iteration, which sold 3 million units in three days when it was launched last month.
According to IDC, of the 28.2 million tablets shipped in the last quarter of 2011, more than half of them were iPads. Google, the other major player in the tablet space, has also made some nice market share gains with its Android operating system, thanks in part to Amazon, with its budget-friendly, sub-$200 Android-based Kindle Fire , which captured 16.8 percent of tablet sales in the same time period. What's most interesting about all of these stats, however, is that overall tablet shipments were up 155 percent from the same time period in 2010. It seems as though the tablet is here to stay.
But which tablet is right for you? Whether you're eyeing an iPad, one of the many Android tablets available, or even a Blackberry PlayBook , here are the key factors you need to consider when shopping for a tablet:
First Off: Do You Even Need a Tablet?

Simply put, tablets aren't really filling a true need—they're neither replacements for full-fledged computers nor Smartphone . A tablet is a touch-screen media device that is actually most similar to a portable media player, but with a larger screen. Many tablets have mobile service features, but they don't make phone calls via a traditional mobile provider. And while you can tackle productivity tasks on an iPad or an Android tablet, you won't get a desktop-grade operating system, like you'll find on a PC. Plus, since we're talking about slates here, there's no hardware keyboard. The main focus of the tablets we'll discuss is media 

 consumption.
Tablets have an advantage over both laptops and phones, offering a portable way to check email, browse the Web, video chat, watch movies, listen to music, and play games, but with a bigger screen with more real estate than your smartphone can provide. Even so, you probably don't need one, but if you want a tablet, read on.
Pick an Operating System

This consideration is a bit obvious, but size—both screen real estate and storage capacity—is important to consider. First things first: When you hear the term "10-inch tablet," this typically refers to the size of the screen, measured diagonally, and not the size of the tablet itself. Apple continues to offer the new iPad and the iPad 2 in one size only (9.7-inch screen) and the BlackBerry PlayBook comes in a single 7-inch screen size, which RIM argues gives it the advantage of pocketability. Samsung Galaxy Note, for one, wants you to have a choice, so it offers its Android tablets in multiple screen sizes (10.1, 8.9, 7 inches, and even a phone/tablet hybrid with a 5-inch display and a stylus).
Screen resolution is important too, especially for ebook reading and Web surfing. A sharp, bright display is key. Right now, the new iPad with its 2,048-by-1,536-pixel Retina display is the sharpest you'll find. If you're in the market for a 10-inch Android tablet, look for a display with at least a 1,280-by-800 resolution. For 7-inch models: The Amazon Kindle Fire is 1,024-by-600, and is perfectly viewable, even for eBook Reader .
The weight of a tablet is one definite advantage it has over a laptop—but let's be clear, at around 1.44 pounds (in the case of the iPad) it's not cell-phone light—this is true for 7-inch tablets as well. After you hold one on the subway for ten minutes, your hand will get tired. Setting it flat in your lap, rather than propped up on a stand, can also be a little awkward. And, again, a 10-inch tablet doesn't fit in many pockets.
As for storage, the more the better—all those apps, when combined with a typical music, video, and photo library, can take up a lot of space. Right now storage tops out at 64GB of flash-based memory, with most of the tablets we've seen available in 16, 32, and 64GB varieties. Larger capacity models can get as expensive as full-featured laptops, though, especially when you factor in cellular service plans. (The top-end 64GB iPad with Verizon or AT&T 4G will run you $830 plus monthly fees.)
Wi-Fi-Only vs. Cellular Models

Many tablets come in a Wi-Fi-only model or with the option of always-on cellular service from a wireless provider. If you want to use your tablet to get online anywhere, you should opt for a model with a cell radio like the AT&T Pantech Element or the Verizon Motorola Droid Xyboard. Of course, this adds to the device's price, and then you need to pay for cellular service. Generally, though, with a tablet, you can purchase data on a month-to-month basis, without signing a contract.
Another way to get your tablet online: Use your 3G or 4G phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot for your tablet—this won't work with every phone/tablet combo, so you should check with the carriers before you buy in

Read more »