Sony Vaio E 14P – Preview

Time for a paradigm shift – Sony is widening its Vaio E line of notebooks with a 14-incher complete with eye-catching design and some interesting new features.

Backlit keyboard and outsized trackpad are just the beginning. The new Sony Vaio E Series 14P won’t be mistaken for an ultrabook, weighing 5 pounds and measuring 22mm in thickness.

It runs a 2.3GHz Sandy Bridge i3-2350M with 4GB RAM and a discrete AMD Radeon HD 7670M discrete graphics card, so we’ll excuse the extra thickness and weight. There is a 500GB hard disk, no word on whether that’s a 5400rpm or 7200rpm version yet, and as much as seven hours of battery life. Bet that figure doesn’t include using the dedicated graphics card for even a second. The screen features a 1366 x 768 pixel resolution.

But its most revolutionary feature is the gesture control functionality, allowing users apps by making hand signals in front of the camera. Sony promises users can swipe left or right through galleries or web pages, or lower a hand to pause music playback. Rotational hand movements can increase or decrease playback volume. So far the gesture controls of the Vaio E 14P are confined to Windows Media Player, IE9, PowerPoint and PowerDVD, but let’s hope it opens up a new world of gesture control on laptops. Who needs touch control when you can mime?

For connectivity WiFi and low-voltage Bluetooth 4 are provided, and a brace of USB-3s and another pair of USB-2 ports makes a decent set of sockets. Pricing details are as yet unannounced, but it’s pretty safe to say this won’t be a budget model. Now I guess we’ll just have to wait for Microsoft’s IE9 team to upgrade humanity to a more complete set of gesture controls. Sleep mode? Or just point to a link?

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