The Ultrabook versions of Haswell, the 4th Gen Core from Intel, bring something special. Connected Standby is the mark of an Ultrabook that’s been built to very tight power efficiency standards, brings alive a part of Windows 8 that few have considered before and gives you the best-in-class in terms of battery life. The Sony Vaio Duo 13 has been built to this standard and although the re-branded Sony Active Sleep was rumored to be a feature that would be brought alive with Windows 8.1, I have it working here on a Windows 8 sample sent to us by Sony. Demo below.
Why you need Connected Standby.
Sony Vaio Duo 13- Too Much Good Stuff to Fit In This Title
I haven’t been able to test CS power usage yet due to time constraints but I’m expecting a local MP3 playback battery life of at least a few days and up to a week if the advantages are the same as it is on Clovertrail Windows 8 devices.
There are a couple of things to note about CS-approved devices. Due to the tight requirements there’s going to be a limited selection of component options for systems built to CS standards. LPDDR3 RAM and a WiFi chipset from Broadcom (WiDi capable) will be the same on many of the first wave of devices and it’s likely that the (required) SSD is soldered on board but we’ll test those components for you in a full review.
Apart from that, the Sony Vaio Duo 13 is turning out to be a lot more usable than the Duo 11 which was great but lacked quite a bit on the productive side of keyboard input. With a bigger digitizer screen and a better keyboard along with the huge battery life advantage, the Duo 13 has a lot going for it. Full review from us soon.
Any rumors of a Duo 11 update? I’d rather have a smaller device when it comes to tablet use. Although, 11″ is already too big to be comfortable.
If the WiFi chip is going to be the same on all CS capable devices, I’d like to know what’s the chip? More specifically, how many antennas does it have? All too often, notebook WiFi chips only have 1 antenna which makes 802.11n not much better than 802.11g. With 3 streams and on the 5 GHz band, I can get a link speed of up to 450 Mbps with real world transfer rates of 250 Mbps (~30 MBps). With a single stream/antenna based device, I get link speeds of up to 150 Mbps with real world transfer rates of 30 Mbps (~3.5 MBps). I transfer GBs of data over WiFi daily so this is important for my tasks.
I guess 802.11ac support would be nice but if it’s only using 1 stream then it’s not going to be that useful either.
It’s unfortunate the SSD isn’t likely to be upgradeable. It’d be nice if notebook and/or SSD makers provide a list of CS capable SSDs (if that’s possible with current SSDs) so we could upgrade them.
If they use the same one as with Clover Trail devices then it’ll likely be single antenna/stream. For me that’s too slow for LAN traffic. Plus, it won’t make use of diversity techniques so you could get occasional hiccups even when you’re device is stationary.
It’s unfortunate that PC makers often skimp on WiFi by using very bad Realtek or Ralink chips and/or single antenna designs. I can understand smartphones only going up to 65 Mbps or 150 Mbps link speeds because space is too limited to add more antennas but notebooks should have enough space unless it’s trying to be the world’s thinnest notebook or tablet.
Fairly often, people’s internet issues are due to poor WiFi links and not the internet connection itself.
Maybe the review could perform WiFi speed tests over the LAN. A graph over time would be nice to see how much it can vary would be good. I’d like time graphs of Turbo under prolonged loads as well since from my experience Sony devices get hot and throttled more often than others.
(Sorry about the last post, accidentally pressed post before writing anything)
I don’t know about other Sony computers, but the Duo 13 has extremely positive reviews on the Notebookcheck, especially regarding thermals and noise. In fact, I think the Duo 13 is the BEST I’ve ever seen.
Bonus is the fact that Vaio Duo 13 takes FULL advantage of cTDPup and cTDPdown. cTDPdown is used in Tablet mode, Nominal is with Battery and Notebook mode, and cTDPup is used with plugged in.
The Duo goes back to INtel tomorrow so there’s no chance for a full review. Is there anything special you’d like me to test?
Steve got an idea when you’ll get your hands on an asus zenbook infinity??
There’s no indication yet but I will definitely get some time with it at IFA and IDF in the first weeks of Sept.
WiFi info please. Clover Trail tablets seem to only connect at 65 Mb/s (actual throughput is of course a lot lower). That’s 1 stream and only 20 MHz bandwidth. Pretty crappy. I wonder if CS capable Haswell devices will have bad WiFi setups as well.
I’m seeing very poor performance here although note that i’m not handling a retail product here. This is a production sample.
WiFi is 2.4Ghz only. abgn. I’ve seen connection rates of 117Mbps but the drop-off after one wall is big.
Again, this isn’t a production Vaio Duo 13 so please check reviews of retail devices for more reliable info.
Hi Chippy
I was wondering if I can disable connected standby on the Duo 13? I don’t need it and whenever I put it in sleep (button on the side) the fan keeps running for a while until it switches off. As I am often at customers I need it to completely go to sleep when I press the button as I have to stove it in the bag immediately. Any idea?
Thanks for all your great reviews!
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