by Shane O'Neill

Hands On Video: The Sony Vaio SB Laptop

Opinion
Jul 01, 20112 mins
Computers and PeripheralsLaptopsMacBook

The Sony Vaio SB white laptop is both light and durable, with amazing battery life. Its overall specs are on par with the MacBook Pro, but with a price tag that's a few hundred dollars less.

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The Sony Vaio SB, a 13-inch model designed primarily for small businesses and consumers, has a smooth aluminum design and comes in either black or white. It is still a fairly lightweight laptop at just over 4 pounds, but it is not in the ultra-thin category. It’s more a functional machine — with a CD/DVD player and burner and all the inputs you could ask for — that’s still light enough for easy portability to and from work or on the road.

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Some other stand-out features include: a backlit keyboard and multi-touch trackpad, Intel Core i5 processor, an SSD option port, and the ability to add more RAM (it comes with 4GB but can increase to 8GB). A big strength of the Sony Vaio SB is battery life. You will get seven hours out of the box, but a “sheet” battery can be purchased for around $150 that clips on to the bottom of the machine. The result? A remarkable 15 hours of battery life.

If you’re on the Windows-Mac fence, the Sony Vaio SB has similar specs to the MacBook Pro, but for roughly $300 less.

Take a closer look at the Sony Vaio SB in the video below.