Vaio laptops were locked into a Japanese-only market for four years. Now they are available in the European market again, with a range of business-focused devices.

Sony previously hit the market with Vaio laptops, which were considered fantastic high-end laptops, known for their quality, reliability and performance. Despite the success, in 2014 Sony decided to take Vaio devices off the market. However, Vaio had not been completely eliminated. After Sony took Vaio laptops off the shelves, the engineers and product managers, responsible for Vaio within Sony, purchased the brand rights and established it as an independent company separate to the Sony conglomerate. Vaio was then taken to Japan and sold off to Japan Industrial Partners.

A review has scored the new Vaio SX14 97% for performance, which is ahead of the Dell XPS 13, and the Microsoft’s Surface Book 2. Vaio laptops have an attractive and professional look, although a review of the SX14 claimed “the device felt too flimsy and flexible”. Another downfall is that the display is not up to scratch for any graphics professionals – the screen covers 86% of the sRGB colour gamut, which isn’t terrible but it is arguably not good enough for professional photo or video editing.

A positive is the portability of the new Vaio laptops, weighing just 1kg. A further upside is that the SX14 is fully accessible, meaning that all internal components can be easily accessed and thus arguably repaired and replaced. Adding to this, the new Vaio laptops come with good connectivity including three USB ports, a USB-C port and an HDMI port, (a very handy addition).

The new Vaio laptops have the option for Intel Core i7-8565U processors and a max 16GB of RAM, which is a very decent good spec for current-gen laptops. However, for this, there is a high price of over £2,000. Pricing for the new Vaio laptops are currently set between Housing Justice website launch →← Confidential data sold by Avast! antivirus