- Hey guys this is Austin.
Do you remember Vaio?
Back in the nineties and 2000s
Sony absolutely cranked out weird but cool designs.
Over the last few years though
things have been a little bit quiet on and Vaio front
ever since they went independent in 2014.
That is until today with the brand new Vaio SX14.
Take one look at this red and yeah it looks dope
however the rest of the build quality
sadly does not quite notch up with the looks.
Now sure it feels lightweight
however it just doesn't have that same premium feel
as you would expect when you're paying
upwards of $2000 for a brand new laptop.
It's sturdy enough but put it side by side
with one of my favorite laptops of 2019 so far,
the ASUS ZenBook S13, it's really no contest.
The only advantage here of the Vaio hardware
really is just that lightness but besides that
this beats it in pretty much every other aspect.
Speaking of the ZenBook they do share
a very similar keyboard design.
So not only do they have nice chiclet keys
but importantly they also have a lifted design
so essentially when you close the laptops they go flat.
Okay, that's actually not what I thought was gonna happen.
(coughs)
But when you open it up you get a little bit
of an extra lift on the keyboard
and this goes a long way in making it feel
a lot more comfortable,
especially for longer typing sessions.
Now I might sound like I'm being a little bit too negative
about the Vaio but there are some legitimate strengths,
starting with the ports.
This has more ports than any other Ultrabook I've ever seen.
So on top of three USBs, 3.0 ports
there's also not only a USB-C
as well as HDMI but there's ethernet
and there's even a VGA port
on a brand new Ultrabook in 2019.
Yeah, that's a Japanese businessman's special.
Like I was saying earlier the keyboard does have a nice feel
and you also do have a fingerprint sensor on board
but what I'm not a huge fan of is the touchpad.
Now, yeah, it's nice to have the physical buttons
but this is just way smaller
than pretty much any modern laptop
and it does date these Vaio just a little bit.
Now, by default it does come
with a fourteen inch 1080p display
but this red model is the hiring version
with a full 4K panel.
Now I'm usually not a huge fan of 4K displays on Ultrabooks
'cause I find they usually have
a little too much of a trade-off as far as battery life goes
but I will definitely admit this does look nice,
super sharp, super crisp.
Unfortunately though the battery life
is not the strong suit of the Vaio, at all.
Paired with a small battery
this just feels like a throwback.
Now admittedly I do use the computer fairly hard,
so I've got the brightness cranked almost all the way up
and high performance mode on
but even so I'm only getting
about three and a half hours on a charge with this guy.
Pretty much every other Ultrabook out there,
even when you're completely cranking it out,
should give you at least five to six hours,
so that's something that I'm not super thrilled about.
It's just, it's definitely probably,
the weakest part of this Vaio,
just being totally honest, I mean its fine,
it's usable if you're near an outlet
but it's just really weird in 2019
to have a laptop with that little battery life.
Thankfully performance is modern at least.
So not only do you have
the latest 8th generation Core i7 on board
but this guy's also outfitted with 16 gigs of RAM
and a super fast one terabyte PCIe SSD.
There's not doubt that this looks dope in red
but when you take it as an entire package
the SX14 just falls behind.
Not only is the battery life poor
and there's some weird design decisions
but most importantly it is really expensive.
This thing starts at 1300 bucks
but if you wanna get the maxed out version in red
that's going to cost you $2300.
Put that side by side with the ZenBook
and it's really no comparison.
I will take this pretty much any day
however that got me thinking.
Vaio used to be the undisputed champ
when it comes to weird and premium laptops
so what exactly happened?
So as you might be able to tell
some time has passed 'cause we're waiting
for some old school Vaios to show up straight from Japan
but there's some really, really cool stuff here.
So first of all we have the Vaio X505.
Now at first glance this could totally be a laptop
that's being sold today
however it actually came out in 2004.
Yes my friends, we're got a Japanese copy
of Windows XP loaded up on this bad boy
and it's kind of awesome.
Considering that this came out four years
before the MacBook Air it's actually not that far behind.
Now, yeah the 10.4 inch display
isn't massive by today's standards
but one of the cool things is that you actually
get some king of interesting thinness.
I mean this is honestly thinner than most laptops
you can buy today and this was way before the days of USB-C.
I mean, look, this is literally the Wi-Fi antennae
or the Wi-Fi card.
Now my Japanese skills aren't quite good enough
to figure out how to get this thing over to English
but it does have a whopping 1.2 gigs of RAM
which I think actually someone paid to upgrade.
Now as you might imagine,
a laptop like this was not exactly cheap,
even in Japan back in 2004.
I mean what what the actual price on this guy?
- [Man] Three thousand
- $3000 new, and that was back in 2004. (exhales)
Yeah but hey it's okay,
you've got a ten gigabyte hard drive, you'll be just fine.
Update, I was wrong, 20 gigabyte hard drive,
that's where it's at right there.
It's also surprisingly light at just about two pounds
and a lot of that is just the battery in the back.
A big part of that is because it is made out
of a composite carbon fiber.
Now when you look at this kind of stuff,
sure $3000 was a lot back in the day
but you were legitimately getting something
that was way ahead of its time.
Whereas the current day Vaio, I mean it's not a bad laptop
but you're still paying a premium price
for something that's really not in that same kind of league
of wow this looks like it could be made today
if you ignore the fact it doesn't have a touchpad
and has a little nipple.
Now as cool as this is we are just getting started
with some of these awesome old Vaio designs.
Next up is the PCG-505 from 1998.
Now, yeah this looks a bit on the thicker and heavier side
compared to stuff that's modern
but again this was the late nineties.
This was absolutely tiny compared
to what most people we're (coughs) carrying around.
Now sadly, this model doesn't actually function,
although it would be cool if it did
but we can take a look at the hardware
and see just how far ahead of its time it was.
So not only do we have a USB-A port,
which, believe it or not,
for the late nineties was very impressive.
We also have a series of other ports
including my favorite, a little modem
that kind of pops into the side here.
And on top of that if we pop the little side of the screen,
we have a good old stylus.
Now I know a stylus is not a touchscreen
but you could use this in conjunction with the touchpad
to write the world's tiniest, little notes.
Now if USB and FireWire aren't your thing,
you could also get this giant dongle for it.
Now this adds a ton of additional ports
including you have PS2 you have VGA.
Where is this plugged in?
Wait, no it doesn't go in there.
Oh actually, wait, oh I'm stupid.
The cool part about this is that this was very much
in an era where laptops
were nowhere near as good as desktops
for most categories, right?
They were way more expensive,
they usually had terrible battery life,
terrible performance but this was a major step forward
toward a super portable laptop
that could actually get real work done.
It also had a Wi-Fi card on the side.
Actually I have one here, don't I?
So with this now we are online
not even having to use our super cool modem.
Probably one of the craziest models
that Vaio ever brought out was this the UX180P
and no my friends this is not a giant side kit,
this is a full fledged Windows XP computer.
Now if you wanna talk about ahead of its time
this is absolutely it.
Now again keep in mind we're talking about 2006 here.
We have a touchscreen with a stylus.
It has not only Wi-Fi but also built-in cellular.
There's even a fingerprint sensor
in both a front and rear facing camera on this guy
and we're talking about 2006.
Now this is not exactly a blazing fast system
with a Core Solo Processor and half a gigabyte of RAM
but when you consider just the level of spec
you're able to get in something this small
it's really impressive.
I mean seriously, fingerprint sensors
are still a good thing to have on laptops, alright.
They are by no means ubiquitous in 2019
and especially when you look at stuff like cellular networks
again, that's something that is not standard whatsoever yet
and yet this weird little computer from 2006 totally had it.
I mean that, that's innovation dude,
like there's no way of getting around that.
This was so far ahead of its time.
At least it came pre-loaded with Norton 2006
so I'm sure that'll be very helpful
for our ancient Windows XP install.
Also fun fact, this was product placement central in movies
back in the late 2000s.
Not only was it in National Treasure
but it was even in Paul Blart: Mall Cop,
you know, that famous American movie
that everyone is totally in love with, right?
So the next item is the Vaio P
which came out, for the record,
ten years ago in 2009 and I believe it probably shipped
with XP or maybe Vista at the time but someone,
whoever had this before us, loaded up Windows 10 on it.
Man, you're gonna have to use this for a week, you know.
- [Man] What?
- This is gonna be your new laptop for the next week.
It runs Windows 10,
it has full up to date security patches and all.
What actually is this thing even running?
We've got a blistering fast, single core Atom processor,
two gigs of RAM as well as a 60 gigabyte hard drive
but I mean it does legitimately run Windows 10.
I cannot believe someone did this.
Like, I mean, that's so, like.
It's actually, I will say one thing,
a lot of these computers from this era,
they shipped with Windows XP
and they were Windows Visa compatible
because Vista was so much more heavy on the resources
but most of the time you can actually load up Windows 10
on a Vista compatible machine
and Windows 10 will actually run better.
Which is pretty impressive considering
that it's like 12 year newer operating system.
Oh, we have Wi-Fi, it sees our Wi-Fi network.
Dude this thing is so cool.
I'm blown away this runs Windows 10.
I legitimately thought we were gonna turn this thing on
it was gonna have Windows XP.
And this thing even has decent ports,
you have a pair of USB-As as well
as you can pick up a dongle which has VGA
as well as ethernet on it and on top of all of that
it has a glorious ultra-wide display
way before LG ever made it cool.
Now when these were all new Vaio
was known as a bit of a form over function company.
Now Sony had a ton of cash and a ton of interesting ideas
and a lot of these were legitimately super unique
but they also did have some sacrifices right.
But that's okay.
Today when you look at laptops
they're all so similar, right?
I mean you get a slightly tapered design,
you get a couple of extra ports.
That makes it something unique.
However back in the day,
I mean something like this just did not exist.
Something like this didn't exist.
I mean this stuff is so cool and I think
that's absolutely something we need today
in current PC design.
More innovation, more willingness to take risks.
I mean that's absolutely good for everyone.
Also, this is still my favorite thing ever. (laughs)
This runs on just on XP man,
how are you gonna complain about that?