No, it’s not a Sony, but it’s a Vaio. This Vaio SX14-R bears some of the similarities of the much-loved Sony Vaio laptops of the past and is made by a company spun off from the Japanese electronics giant in 2014.
Actually, Vaio itself had made an earlier re-entry in Singapore in 2018. As before, the new refreshed models this time might win over some former Sony users but will likely face stiff competition from rivals that have upped their game.
First, the good. The first thing that you notice when taking the Vaio SX14-R out of the box is its interesting surface. No, I don’t just mean the emerald green, which is striking and catches the eye unlike a grey or black laptop.
The surface seems to be coated with a material that almost kills all fingerprint smudges. Nothing I’ve seen so far from other laptop makers comes close to the effectiveness of this Vaio when it comes to warding off oily marks.
It’s also oddly smooth to touch, yet with a bit of friction built in, unlike, say, a softer surface on Asus’ Zenbooks. Does it feel premium? That’s a matter of taste, though personally I prefer a less shiny finish, which extends to some of the gold-coloured trims at the edges.
What you can’t argue against is the Vaio’s lightweight construction, which features a carbon fibre plate on the top and bottom. Yes, just like the premium Sony Vaios of old.
Pick it up and you immediately feel the convenience that this 1.08kg machine brings when you’re travelling on a crowded train or in an airplane.
The Japanese have always been innovators when it comes to making thin and light laptops (see Lenovo’s ThinkPad designed in Japan) and this made-in-Japan Vaio will surely win over some fans for its excellent portability.
Despite the light weight, Vaio SX14-R doesn’t just drop everything and force you to plug in a USB adapter for your accessories (ahem, Apple). Amazingly, it comes with all the ports necessary for real work.
On one side, you get USB-A, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet and USB-C ports. On the other, a USB-C and USB-A ports. That’s as many as you can find on such a thin and light machine, so you can plug in a projector or a USB drive easily.
The laptop sports a 14-inch screen, which is good size for common office work on the road. It might be a challenge scrolling through large Excel sheets but it’d do well for simple e-mails and reports.
The resolution is a basic 1,920 x 1,200 instead of 2K or higher in other premium laptops but the images appear sharp and the contrast is great on the display. You’d save on battery life as well with the lower resolution.
The bezels around the screen aren’t the slimmest, you have to admit, especially at the premium laptop segment. The top bezel, where the camera is built in, is clearly a bit bulky.
That said, it’s not a deal breaker. The camera comes with a handy physical shutter at the top, which lets you securely block out the webcam when not in use. Privacy and peace of mind there.
The keyboard, as with earlier Vaios, features keys that are well spaced out and great to type on. The tactile feedback is excellent to let you touch-type quickly as well.
It helps that the keyboard is tilted up slightly when you open up the screen. It’s a great design from Sony from years past and it’s been copied many times. No, it’s not the newest contraption you find on a laptop today but it still works well.
Note, too, that the new Vaio’s touchpad, while pretty large, isn’t the largest around (see Apple’s Macbooks or Asus’ Zenbooks). It even comes with two mouse buttons, almost like a nod to users who prefer an older style from the past.
Now, the bad. Perhaps the biggest issue with the Vaio SX14-R is the slightly dated Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor. Most other laptop makers have come up premium models with the newer Core Ultra 200V or Core Ultra 200H chips.
The older chip in the Vaio still works well and is sold by other laptop makers too but you’d expect the latest and greatest premium laptop to come with the newer chips that offer better performance and battery life.
So, how does the Vaio SX14-R perform in tests? The unit we got, which has 32GB of DDR5 memory and 1TB solid state storage, is no slouch. Predictably, though, it falls behind laptops with faster chips.
In PCMark 10, which measures performance in everyday tasks like video editing, the Vaio laptop scored 6,417. This is slower than an Asus Zenbook S14 OLED with the newer Intel chip.
In Geekbench 6, which also tests a PC CPU, the Vaio laptop scored 2,368 for single-core tasks and 12,642 for multi-core tasks. It is behind the Asus laptop on single-core tasks though surprisingly pulls slightly ahead in the multi-core score.
What about AI? Notably, the older Intel chip means that the Vaio laptop doesn’t qualify as a Windows Copilot+ PC, which comes with apps that offer live translation and other AI features.
In Geekbench AI, which tests performance in common AI tasks like image recognition, the Vaio SX14-R got 3,013 for single precision score, 1,153 for half precision score and 5,188 for quantised score using the ONNX AI framework.
With the OpenVino AI framework that favours Intel chips, the Vaio laptop returned with scores of 2,235, 2,288 and 5,349 for the CPU and 2,264, 6,959 and 10,947 for the neural processing unit (NPU).
Again, these numbers are behind faster chips that are able to do these AI tasks more efficiently and quickly.
With the benchmark running on OpenVino, the Asus laptop from late last year is clearly ahead with NPU Geekbench AI scores of 2,835, 18,487 and 25,740.
Thin and light laptops aren’t gaming machines, but I ran the 3D Mark test, which simulates real games, to see how well the Vaio laptop does for the occasional casual game.
It scored 3,215, which is again clearly lower than the Asus machine with a CPU that sports a beefed-up integrated graphics chip. So, the Vaio laptop is fast enough for you to fire up the occasional game (at a lower image quality setting) but it’s meant more for office work on the go.
While noting the generally lower performance against the latest premium laptops with faster chips, the bigger issue with the Vaio SX14-R is probably its cost.
I’ve seen the sticker price for my review unit dropped from more than S$3,000 to S$2,899 at Best Denki in Singapore. Unfortunately, even at that price, you can have a pick of great options from Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo with the latest Intel chips.
So, while Vaio may have a great lightweight design and Japanese quality going for it, it needs to ship with the latest Intel chips soon after they become available to be competitive.
It’s a tough ask against first-tier global rivals, sure, but it will go a long way to making laptops like the Vaio SX14-R more attractive to potential buyers.
