Sexy is the word of choice for the Sony Vaio S Series, Sony’s latest offering to the laptop market. Coming in black, silver and pink, colour won’t be much of an issue when choosing your new best friend.

Aesthetics wise, the Sony Vaio S is one of the nicer laptops UrbanWire has seen, sporting a full-flat body design with sharp edges that Sony seems to love on previous models. The saying “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it” certainly holds true here, with the 13.3 inch laptop looking especially sleek in matte black. Weighing in at just under 1.6 kg and with a total thickness of 22.8 mm (lighter and thinner than its 13 inch Macbook counterpart), the laptop looks and feels good, and lugging it around the whole day is anything but a chore.

You really can't get more stylish than a full silver body.

The Sony Vaio S comes with an Intel i7-3612QM Processor, running at 2.10 GHz (with Turbo Boost up to 3.10 GHz) thanks to its 4 cores as well as 4 GB of RAM (upgradable to 12 GB), making processing pictures in Photoshop or rendering a video a snap. The review model UrbanWire was given had the maximum 750 GB worth of storage space, which is more than enough for anyone, unless you happen to be an avid TV/Movie buff who carries over 800 shows with you. The Sony Vaio S also has a slot-in optical drive, which isn’t seen in many ultra-portable laptops due to space constraints. Often taken for granted, this feature was much appreciated during the installation of several pieces of software and the reading and writing of CDs, instead of the painstaking process of copying the files from a CD onto a portable hard drive and installing it from there.

Weighing just under 1.6 kg, this ultra-portable laptop even manages to read CDs.

While the specs are quite impressive for the laptop’s size, a key factor for mobile warriors when choosing laptop models is battery life. No matter how good the specs, they all amount to nothing if the laptop runs out of juice 30 minutes after unplugging it from the charger, or being unable to find a power socket. Not only does the 4400mAh battery inside solve most of the battery life issue, Sony has included a switch to combat the problem, with users able to toggle between “Speed” and “Stamina”, which drastically extends battery life for everyday usage by switching between graphic cards. A nifty feature, UrbanWire found this very useful when on the go, allowing me to get the most of out the battery depending on the situation.

Another interesting feature the Sony Vaio S has is it’s Rapid Wake technology, which claims to be able to resume the laptop from sleep mode in under 2 seconds. After testing, UrbanWire got an average of 1.7 seconds, well under the 2 seconds Sony promises.

The Stamina/Speed function is undoubtedly one of the best features found in this laptop.

UrbanWire put the Sony Vaio S to the test, playing 2 full-length 2-hour movies while streaming Wifi data – all in all, the laptop still had some battery life to spare, lasting about 6 hours in total before finally needing to be plugged in. An extended battery can also be bought, doubling battery life for a anyone who needs heavy usage.

The Verdict:
The Sony Vaio S Series is a good laptop for students and people who get a lot of work done on the go. With a stylish exterior, excellent battery life, great portability, as well as coming with much appreciated features like the optical drive and “Speed/Stamina” toggle switch, this sexy notebook promises and delivers accordingly.