At one point 11-inch laptops were becoming very popular, but now it seems as if consumers and makers have lost interest in them. There were not many 11-inch laptops that were made this year and apart from Apple’s $999 Macbook Air they are generally not doing so well on the market. In an effort to revive this category Sony produced a new 11-inch Vaio E that is worth spending $449 on it. It has a sharp design and good performance thanks to a new AMD E2-1800 processor, which is also credited for making the price reasonable. The 11-inch laptop was made less relevant when designers started to make many thin ultrabooks that weight less, are thinner and more useful when travelling. However, ultrabooks and other laptops that are in the same category as they still cost more than 11-inch laptops, their price range is from $599 to about $1,000.
Sony’s new 11-inch Vaio E is a good case to get back at these types of laptops, it is relatively cheap, its body is solid just like in every other 11-inch laptop, it is also capable of doing every basic thing. Vaio also has an AMD approved graphics from the former ATI. Sony will also release a 15-inch Vaio which is similar to the 11-inch version in look and appeal, but it has a better graphics card and different colour choices. The 11-inch model will have to face competition from Apple’s 11-inch Macbook, which weighs about 1 pound less, is thinner and it has been doing well on the market thus far.
The Vaio E does have its fall backs though: the key board is not backlit, it doesn’t have specially assigned multimedia keys (users have to utilise the Fn+F-assigned short cu key to do that) which is not very convenient for users. It is also thicker and heavier than the 13-inch model, and the CPU on this one is not very fast. On the other hand it does have a few good things about it, it has a sharp design, it is reasonable priced, it has good graphics and a long lasting battery. With all that said, the 11-inch Vaio E is a cheaper alternative for travellers who want something small, and yet still have reasonable graphics.