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Sony's 13-inch Vaio S Series aims up the middle

The Vaio S series aims to offer a stylish 13-inch Vaio at competitive prices.

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
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Dan Ackerman
Sony

The high-end Z-series of Sony Vaio laptops has its fans, but with prices starting at $1,899 and going to over $3,000, it's out of the price range of most laptop shoppers. The Vaio S series aims to offer a stylish 13-inch Vaio at much more competitive prices.

Sony says the S series offers, "easy portability and long battery life, perfect for the tech-savvy student or mobile professional," and it's certainly a bit lighter than some other 13-inch systems in the same general price range, at 4.4 pounds and only 1 inch thick.

Sony Vaio S series (photos)

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While the standard SSD hard drives and high-end gloss of the Z Series may be missing, the S Series includes Sony's G-Sensor Shock Protection technology, which is basically an accelerometer for protecting the hard drive in case of falls or bumps, as well as Bluetooth and Sony's Vaio Care button, which lets users access a suite of tech support tools right from a quick launch button above the keyboard.

The Sony Vaio S Series will be available starting January 5, and starts at about $900. From our brief hands-on time with the system, the S Series certainly seems like a perfectly reasonable midprice 13-inch laptop, but there's also a lot of worthy competition in that $800 to $999 13-inch range these days.