Sony has started shipping two new Vaio ultrabooks with large screens starting at US$699 as the company expands its lineup of thin and light laptops.
The Vaio T Series 14 and 15 ultrabooks have Intel's Core processors based on the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. The ultrabooks have Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system.
The laptops are targeted at students and professionals, Sony said in a statement. A unique feature of the laptops is the ability to combine hard drives with low-capacity 24GB solid-state drives, which can be used to store operating systems. SSDs are typically faster than hard drives and can help laptops boot and perform faster.
The T Series 15 ultrabook is priced starting at $799 and has a 15-inch touchscreen that can display images at a 1920-by-1080-pixel resolution. The laptop weighs 2.35 kilograms with an internal battery.
The T Series 14 ultrabook has a 14-inch screen with a 1366-by-768-pixel resolution. The non-touch version of the laptop starts at $699, while a touchscreen version starts at $799. The laptop weighs 1.86 kilograms.
The laptops will support up to 8GB of memory and offer options of 1TB or 512GB SSD storage. Other features include a webcam, USB 3.0 port, HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) port and an SD card reader.
The ultrabooks are now available worldwide.
Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com
