Vaio shows what the company can do on its own with premium tablet prototype

By Rich Edmonds
last updated

Sony and Vaio are no longer working together as a single entity, but it seems the newly formed Vaio is eager to remind consumers just what the talented teams are capable of producing. The company has revealed an attractive render of a high-end Windows tablet.

Simply named the "Vaio Prototype", this tablet isn't quite ready yet for release, but the images provided do show what Vaio is working towards and it looks gorgeous – in fact, you could actually liken this prototype to the Surface Pro 3 by Microsoft. That's not necessarily a negative as the latest Surface is an absolute dream machine.

It's clear Vaio is going after a specific segment of the market.

Vaio Prototype

The prototype itself will sport a 12.3-inch display with a resolution of 2,560x1704, support a stylus, and be powered by a quad-core Intel Haswell CPU with Iris graphics. As one can see from the teased specifications, Vaio will be producing a premium experience for the high-end market. How does $1,800 sound? Vaio will be focusing on the Japanese market for the time being.

What are your thoughts on Vaio's new path?

Source: Vaio, via: WSJ

Rich Edmonds
Rich Edmonds
Senior Editor, PC Build

Rich Edmonds was formerly a Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.

63 Comments
  • Very interesting. If it becomes real, of course.
  • And $1800 is not that bad
  • Not bad IF they ship it with the keyboard!
  • That keyboard in the picture is a piece of carp! It's the same RF keyboard the Tap 11 came with
  • This looks like the Sony tap 11...
  • What an odd resolution, but still, it's pretty nice spec wise. Too bad if it ever comes to Oz it'll cost an absolute fortune.
  • Maybe display size something odd like 3:2, whatever, may cause this...maybe a segment of display has onscreen keys, can throw off specs as well
  • Same ratio as Surface 3, with a higher resolution.
  • Looks wonderful and the specs sound great _except_ for the display. I work with a Surface Pro 3 (Visual Studio) and for that resolution, the display needs to be closer to 14 inches. Otherwise, the buttons get to hard to hit. I also have recently acquired a Sony VAIO SVP13215PXB and I have to tell you that I am LOVING it so far! http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00CM2NNC6/ref=redir_mdp_mobile?tag=hawk-f...
  • With Windows 8, screen size scales, so buttons aren't necesarry any smaller, just more pixels per button (unless you choose to make it smaller to fit more on the screen).
  • Wow
  • This will show Sony that they made a mistake dropping the pc range
  • At $1800? Highly doubt it. Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android
  • Looks more Lenovo like in design than the Surface, but I guess it has elements of that as well. But still, they need real products, anyone can put together a render of their "dream machine design". It needs to do something better than the Surface and for a lower price. I hope they can deliver, I always liked Sony's designs and am worried how well Vaio can deliver without the backing of Sony. Still without having to follow Sony's path to Android and also trying to integrate things with PSN perhaps they've got more flexibility to work on these devices.
  • I always liked sony's design as well... But hate their expensive proprietary memory sticks...
  • I think its time to move on from their memory sticks and root issues, that's long in the past. Better to hate Apple for their propriety connectors.
  • For that price the battery better last for ay least 1.5 days. Other specs I guess are in par with a unit that would cost that much upon release. Definitely for heavy users and graphics professionals thought. Average users I assume would not need something this expensive.
  • add in a high end gpu etc and price it cheaper than PS4 , watch them(sony division) burn :D :P
  • Damn girl
  • Haha!
  • Should deliver Broadwell now.
  • Sony made a mistake, they just had to use metals instead of that terrible bendy fake carbon fiber
  • $1800!!!
  • Dem iris pro graphics doe
  • In the end, products will be split into the extremes aren't they. Cheap junk that provide horrible experience even for today's "cheap" standard; and good products in the premium segment. No more bang for the buck good enough products because the better products all go to target the big spenders.
  • Vs as sesqs,qqi
  • eeesez As zeu;-)Siu,uueu
  • suy:(zS:-)
  • 3 random comments, see how they fare!
  • When I look at those slits on the top i would say they still use a fan: fail - big time!
  • Processors like that need a fan to properly cool down.
  • in my eyes for a device like that they should use the CoreM. And those slits are much more visible than for example on the SP3. 
  • The sp3 uses a fan also so I guess that is a DOA device as well? :P.
  • Thick :(
  • A bit pricey but a beautiful device nonetheless.
  • Looks cheap to me, the pen looks mega budget.
  • Looks faster Posted via Windows Phone Central App
  • Looks good! Price will be higher in my neck of the woods, so I'll have to see it with an actual price tag before I'll even consider it...
  • My spider senses are telling me there is a new genre of hybrid tablet-laptops are incoming from various manufacturers
  • At that price point it better have 8 gigs of ram and 512gb+ of ssd storage if they really want it to compete with the pro 3 as it is pretty darn close to the top end model - price wise. Hopefully they will see sense and release a LTE model as well :).
  • And to think that MS could have picked up the Vaio unit for a relative bargain ($250m USD or so) and repurposed it as an in-house high quality laptop manufacturer.
  • I went to the web site and that tablet looks realy thick. If they can thin it down a bit, work it to less than 1.2 LB, pen, keyboard and tablet at $1800 I think they will get buyers. They should not use Broadwell core cpu. it will give them opportunities to improve the spec battery life, thiness, heat etc.
  • Looks very nice. Shame that "focusing on Japanese market" usually means pretty much no international release :(
  • It looks identical to the Sony Tap 11.
  • is that kboard just btooth, it doesnt 'snap' to the tab in any way....tut tut tut
  • Wonder if their still using shared gpus or dedicated
  • Always liked the Vaio design.
  • Meh...broadwell, please
    Haswell is like everywhere...i think it's time to do the impossible possible!
  • And the price... If I wouldn't have a problem with a 1949$ surface, I'd probably appreciate it, but most of the surface pro 3 buyers don't want to some that much money on this machine... Just my opinion
  • is it not a little chunky? Although i've never held a Surface so maybe that's an acceptable thickness
  • Looks just like vaio tap 11 which has been around for years now?? But I would pay 1800$s for those specs!
  • Beautiful.
  • Looks nice. I bought my parents a Tap 11 with n-trig pen and it's great. This particular tablet looks a little too expensive for me, though it does seem fairly priced; especially with that 12.3" screen. I'm sure that will appeal to artists.
  • U think It's comes with the new windows 10
  • The one they're releasing soon in Japan, definitely not. The international version that MIGHT get released at a later date, probably. Would be stupid not to wait at this point  
  • I love vaio laptops but are pricy so I will stuck with my Acer for now
  • I thought Sony was not making no more windows products
  • Little on the thick side...=(
  • Nice looking: No doubt it will be crippled by bloatware necessitating a scratch install upon unboxing.
  • "Vaio will be focusing on the Japanese market for the time being." But that's an American keyboard!
  • Looks like an update to the Vaio Tap 11, so nothing really special. I bought the Tap 11 over a SP2 due to the weight (you can find my thoughts on it in the forum, which was initially postive, but in hindsight my impressions were probably premature), the initial honeymoon period was good until little cracks started to creep up during usage.  Namely poor battery life (despite the use of Haswell) and the disappointing keyboard and lackluster support from Sony.  Final straw was when the 8.1 update rolled out and Sony had a BT driver issue which would cause the keyboard to lose pairing very frequently (every 30minutes of usage in my case), I took it back to Sony Store and Sony's answer to this problem was "roll back to Win8", unacceptable (and that was before the staff there asked me for my MS account login password so they can diagnose the problem, as an IT person this request is simply insane!  Every IT person knows how much private info is tied to the MS account.  How do they train the staff there at Sony to ask for things like this?  And I'm wondering if IT illterate people gave them such passwords!).  Not surprise their business was tanking with that kind of support.   So I sold the i5 Tap 11 as soon I got it back from Sony support and wait for a few months and bought the i7 SP3 w/Type Cover, I have to say the SP3 form factor is miles better thought out and put together than the Tap11 despite costing roughly the same.  The SP3 has its issues but much less than the Vaio, and being Microsoft's own baby we see that at least they are committed to updating firmwares and drivers very frequently to address issues with the SP3.  Vaio has to put in a lot more effort than just making pretty design to beat the SP3.  
  • It's beautiful as always in PC the only one I liked just as good as Apple was only VAIO & still its diamond
  • Looks like a crappier version of the surface.