Gadgetory

what's up cries five fans I'm Brian Tong and this is a battle between two of the top 13 inch laptops we're slim is in it's a prize five punch-out between Sony Vaio Pro 13 and Apple's MacBook Air 13 now our judges for this fight our senior editor Dan the man Akram and senior associate editor Scott the bottom line Stein and Brian can't go wrong Tom will take all three judges blind scores and average them out to the nearest tenth each round the final prize fight score will be an average of all rounds using the same system let's get it on round 1 is designed Sony brings one of the sleekest blade thin windows laptop designs with its magnesium alloy body that's light as air and a carbon fiber construction that may not be as sturdy as a MacBook but is more than half a pound lighter at only 2.34 pounds its 1920 by 1080 resolution screen best the air and it has a thinner bezel but its hinge is not as solid and it definitely feels a lot more flimsy now the MacBook Air is still a very classic and iconic design with its sturdy aluminum unibody that's rock-solid with zero flex and a smooth superior hinge that allows you to open it with ease it still feels very premium but it's getting a little dated with a thicker bezel around its 1440 by 900 resolution screen both designs have their pluses and minuses and we're calling this a tie at for round two is features these two laptops come with different levels of CPU and RAM configurations and they're very closely matched systems with the same USB ports and SD card reader slots you'll also find a multi-touch trackpad and backlit keyboards on both as well but what separates Sony Vaio pro 13 from the MacBook Air is its 1080p display that's also a touch screen for full windows 8 support and it feels more and more natural to interact with your screen that way even while web browsing there's a native full size HDMI port here NFC capabilities and they include an addition a USB port on the power adapter as well now Apple has always been very selective about what it includes and it hurts them here with no touchscreen you'll need a dongle to get any video out without an Apple TV and yes the faster 802 11 AC Wi-Fi is here but you'll need a router that supports it now one benefit is that you can install both Windows and the Mac OS on an Apple machine but Sony crushes them here with the 4.3 and Apple gets a three after averaging two rounds the VAIO Pro leads by seven tenths of a point round three is performance Sony sent us a 1.5 gigahertz core i7 CPU with eight gigs of RAM for our review model and the MacBook Air we're using is loaded with their 1.3 gigahertz Core i5 processor with 4 gigs of RAM now we know that's not exactly equal but both bring the latest Intel Haswell processor chipset now in our performance test you can see that the MacBook Air just tore through our multimedia multitasking test and also perform better in the iTunes encoding test while the viol pro took the Photoshop cs5 image processing test and it was pretty much a push in our handbrake multitasking test bottom line these machines perform pretty similarly between the two you won't see any major speed gains from last year's ultrabooks and other third-party benchmarks have supported that as well we're calling this round a tie at for next round is battery life in our CNET video playback drain test the sony vaio pro 13 clocked in at an impressive eight hours and 53 minutes now sony gives you the option for a $150 additional battery add-on if you want compare that to the MacBook Air 13 which clocked in at a mind-boggling 14 hours and 25 minutes of battery juice which just can't be touched and is the new industry standard Apple takes this round with the perfect 5 and Sony gets a 4 so after averaging 4 rounds Sony still leads by just a hair the final round that decides at all is value these two machines are really closely matched with core i7 options but this will ultimately come down to your preference Sony's vaio Pro 13 base model with a core i5 processor starts at 1000 $249 and that includes the 1080p touchscreen now Apple's MacBook Air decided to shave off $100 off the starting price of a 13-inch air with a core i5 processor at 1099 dollars now we know your price can start adding up with customizations but Apple clearly has the value edge right out of the gates for a machine that lasts over 14 hours the MacBook Air gets a 4.3 and the viol pro 13 gets a 3.7 so lets average out all five rounds and in a throwdown where Sony LED almost the entire time Apple fought back hard in the last two rounds and just edges out the Sony Vaio Pro 13 for point 1 to 4 and the MacBook Air 13 is your prize buy it winner this battleground is still fierce and the real decision might just come down to which operating system you prefer i'm brian tom thanks for watching and we'll catch you guys next time for another prizefighter