To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more
The Sony Vaio Tap 11 is a Windows 8 tablet that comes with a keyboard so you can use it like a laptop. The keyboard is completely separate from the main tablet, with no cradle or magnets to hold them together just a tiny docking port that snaps the keyboard to the bottom of the main screen when you need to charge it. Annoyingly, this means you cant use the tablet while the keyboard is charging. As the keyboard is detachable, however, you can put it where you like. We separated the tablet and keyboard by roughly six metres before they stopped communicating, so you wont have a problem using it at a desk.
The detachable cover is a blessing and a curse. It makes the Tap 11 more flexible to use but wed rather be able to charge it separately, as you can with other Windows 8 tablets. Theres also an occasional lag between tapping the keys and the characters appearing onscreen, but this is barely noticeable unless youre typing long Word documents.
The keys are well spaced and provide plenty of tactile feedback, but theyre flat and have little travel, which can make typing uncomfortable. The small touchpad was also temperamental and prone to confusing two-finger scrolling with pinch-zooming.
The 11.6in touchscreen is a joy to use. With 10-point touch support, the display is very responsive, and we had no problem tapping files and folders at the screens resolution of 1,920×1,080.
Sony also includes a stylus for extra precision when using the screen. As with the Microsoft Surface Pro 2, the Tap 11s screen can sense the pen from roughly 10mm away, but we found Sonys tracking software much more accurate. The pens sensor didnt run away into the corners of the screen when we held the pen at an angle near the edge of the display, and the screen was quick to pick up the pens sensor when we hovered the stylus elsewhere onscreen. Unfortunately, theres nowhere to store the stylus, which made us worry about losing it.
The Tap 11s image quality is good. Our colour calibrator showed that it displays 84.1 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut, and its colour coverage is relatively even across the main primary colour groups. Greens, reds and cyans were a little deficient compared with other colours, but this didnt make much of an impact on our solid-colour image tests, as our reds, greens and blues all looked bright and vibrant across the screen. Overall, this is above average for a laptop and tablet screen.
Black levels were less impressive, as we recorded a relatively high reading of 0.46cd/m2. Combined with the strong blue and magenta coverage, this left blacks looking slightly purple in our solid image test. The contrast levels also left a lot to be desired. Despite a contrast ratio of 841:1, detail in some of our night shots was almost nonexistent. This is a shame because the Tap 11s wide viewing angles meant we saw a clear image wherever we positioned the screen.
The Tap 11 has some powerful hardware inside, which is surprising when you consider its just 10.5mm thick. The tablet is available in a variety of specifications, but our review samples 1.5GHz Intel Core i5-4210Y Haswell processor scored a respectable 30 overall in our multimedia benchmarks. This is roughly three times as fast as HPs Envy X2 and other Atom-based Windows 8 tablets, so it should handle everyday office tasks well. Its not as fast as the Microsoft Surface Pro 2, though, which scored 47.
The battery life of just six hours and 52 minutes in our light-usage test was disappointing. We expected more from its Haswell chip, and it pales in comparison with the Microsoft Surface Pro 2, which managed a further five hours
in the same test.
The Tap 11s thin body doesnt leave a lot of room for ports, but Sony has packed a surprising number round its sides. Theyre all located under plastic flaps, but youll find a USB3 port, a microSD card slot, a Micro HDMI output for connecting an external display, a SIM card slot and a combined audio jack.
The 8-megapixel rear camera uses Sonys Exmor RS technology, but our outdoor shots left a lot to be desired. They tended to show a good amount of detail, but certain areas were muddy, with blurred pixels, and there were visible clouds of noise. The camera didnt fare much better indoors, as there was a noticeable lack of detail in our low-light shots.
The Sony Vaio Tap 11 is an intriguing Windows 8 tablet, but its more expensive and less powerful than Microsofts Surface Pro 2. If Sonys keyboard were more responsive, the tablet could be a viable contender for Microsofts crown, but ultimately it falls short.
