Sony Vaio Duo 11

The jury's still out on hybrid tablet-laptops as the touch-friendly abilities of Windows 8 starts to creep into PCs far and wide. Shouldn't you really decide one way or the other before you buy? And does something like the Microsoft Surface, a tablet with a clip-on keyboard, make the argument redundant anyway? Still, Sony's having a go with the Vaio Duo 11, which has a novel way of switching between its two personalities.

It's on sale now starting from £849, rising to £1,489 depending on configuration.

Design
Just as Sony's Xperia tablets cut their own distinctive dash with their unique slanted styling, so the Duo 11 does its own thing, which won't necessarily be to everyone's taste. It's on the heavy side for a tablet at 135g, but that compares pretty well with the average ultrabook, which may be the best way to think of the Duo.

The Ethernet port closes up when not in use to keep the profile down and there are VGA and HDMI ports if you want to connect a bigger screen, plus two USBs and a multicard reader. At the front are some buttons for volume, locking the screen orientation and launching Vaio Care if something goes wrong. There's also a full HD webcam on the front with Sony's Exmor R sensor.

As a tablet, it's a bit heavy to hold comfortably in your hand as you work for any length of time, but that's not really it's primary function. It comes into its own when you rest it on a table or desk and flip up the screen into laptop mode.

Put your fingernails under the lip at the top (when you're holding it in landscape mode) and pull it up and out. The screen slides up and out and comes to rest at an angle of about 45 degrees, exposing the keyboard as it does so. It works well enough, but doesn't feel particularly sturdy -- it didn't fill us with confidence that after a few months of banging around in satchels and on public transport that it would continue to work with such aplomb.

It's different? Yes. But is it any better? It takes up less space than a laptop, which could come in handy on flights or the daily commute, but you're stuck with the fixed angle of the screen, which isn't adjustable.

Features and performance
While the benefits of the sliding mechanism may be up for debate, the quality of the screen isn't. The 11.6-inch display sitting safely behind Corning Gorilla Glass comes with a full HD resolution of 1,920x1,080 pixels -- impressively high for a screen this size. As a result it's beautiful to look at -- web pages are sharp and detailed, movies look sumptuous and games render brilliantly. The full resolution isn't necessarily the best for touchscreen use though, as many icons and menus can come up too small for easy access with stubby fingers. If that's the case then both cursor and pen can come in handy -- or you can reduce the resolution in the settings.

The screen isn't detachable like that of the Samsung ATIV Smart PC or theAsus Transformer Pad, so you can't make it lighter or thinner. Then again, there's no danger of leaving half of it behind and you don't have to fiddle with any clips.

Its touch-sensitive surface is very responsive, and fast to react too. It's only a short learning curve to get used to swiping and pressing directly on to the screen -- we found ourselves reaching out to do this for a while even after going back to our usual non-touchscreen laptop.

It comes with a stylus for drawing or writing but unfortunately there's no handy compartment to slot it into. So you'll need to remember to carry it around separately and there's more chance of losing it. Which would be a shame, because it's really rather good, with a nice thin nib and a single AAA battery that powers its buttons to deliver extra functions like right click and erase.

The keyboard is compact but perfectly serviceable, with smallish but well-spaced keys with good travel and a slim line of mouse buttons along the bottom. There's also a mouse button in the middle that can come in handy when you prefer a cursor to using your fingers on the touch screen.

Spec options
There are several different configurations of the Duo 11 available. The most basic comes with a 1.8GHz Intel Core i3-3217U processor, but you can go up to a 1.9GHz i7-3517U for an extra £320. You can also choose between 128GB and 256GB flash drives and up to 8GB of RAM, as well as opting to go for the either the standard Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro.

In both cases it's the full 64-bit version rather than the lite version for tablets. The main difference is that you can add whatever software you like to the Duo 11 -- with tablets you're pretty much limited to the apps available from the Windows app store.

Our test model sits in the middle with a 1.5GHz Intel Core i35-3317U, 4GB RAM and a 128GB flash drive. It delivered a PC Mark of 4,768, which makes it one of the faster models we've seen, trailing the HP Spectre XT but not much else. However, it took three minutes and 20 seconds to encode our test 11-minute movie for iTunes -- not the fastest ( Samsung's Series 5 managed it in 1.5 minutes), but certainly not bad. Frame rates when playing Portal are typically around the 180-200fps mark, which isn't bad at all.

The battery didn't quite make the four-hour mark. If you need more, there's the option of an additional sheet battery that you can clip on to the main body, which should effectively double your work time.

Conclusion
The Duo 11 has a stonking screen and delivers an impressive performance. It shows off Windows 8 to best effect but while the sliding screen mechanism is distinctive, it won't be for everyone. This being Sony, it's no bargain, but if you want a hybrid tablet/laptop that will turn heads for style as well as performance, it's definitely worth a look.