Mid-2013 Apple MacBook Air 13' vs. Sony VAIO Pro 13 Haswell Ultrabook Comparison Smackdown

Check out our written review of the mid-2013 MacBook Air 13":

Check out our written review of the Sony VAIO Pro 13:

[ilparola]

i think that generally the important things are:
1- OS
2- What i need to do.

in term of ULTRABOOK i prefer the one with better battery life

[detective]

still runing my 2014 Sony Vaio Pro! Love it, even better with Windows 10!

[vaiwalker]

I got this vaio 3 months ago and i cant be happier. carbon fibre, lightweight, ssd drive, it takes 8 secs to load even till now. i dont even have to put it to sleep or hibernate. i just shut it down everytime cuz when i need to urgently power it back on, it takes less than 10secs! and the touchscreen helps scrolling through websites easy.

[SuperSaanta]

Currently a macbook pro users. I switched from sony to apple three years ago. Sony has the worst motherboard ever. If you are a heavy user, forget about vaio. Sony vaio just doesnt worth that much. Two vaio's motherboards burnt in my hand. Both had the same reason, OVER HEATED (it had persistent Cool Master fan along.) But it stills. 

[Awayze]

MacBook's use some of the best contrast ratio screens on a laptop.

[feykroTV]

Basically, Sony Vaio isn't as good as the mac because you pay more for an HD screen that you can't use 100% of its capacity because of the limitation of the CPU and GPU as we saw on diablo 3. And W8.1 is a bad OS that takes more ressources than Mac OSX, so even if I am a pro windows when it comes to Gaming, for a note book i'd say that the apple one is much better on almost all points .

[christianmitterhuber]

This rundown answers about all the questions I needed to be answered before maxing out my credit cards ...

[elvinsuleymanli]

I bought sony becouse it has a touch screen and it's very light and handy. I love it

[jjbwbc]

Thank you so much. I have a MBA 2013 and was considering exchanging it for the VAIO Pro and this review was exactly what I needed to see. I'll be keeping the Air for now as certainly this VAIO is not the solution I'm looking for. I think it's been an exciting year for electronics, the Retina Pros are only about a year old which is amazing and now there are so many awesome displays on devices. Thanks again.

[mobiletechreview]

Perhaps your display driver is messed up or you have a defective computer. Pinch zooming and other multi-finger gestures work fine on our Vaio Pro's display.

[itsmichaelboy]

I just bought the Sony vaio pro 13 with i7, I like it but it's expensive, overall a good job from Sony, by the way my sister bought a MacbookPro 13 inch last year, Mac vs Windows....

[mobiletechreview]

With PCs like the Vaio Pro you can use WiDi to wirelessly send movies and whatever you want to the TV.

[taltigolt]

this is a continue to my past comment

what i like with the vaio pro 13 touch

1.it has absolutely no flex unless you press really hard not at all as bad as some say
2.the design is amazing
3.i love the fact that theres hidden physical touchpad buttons under the touchpad
4.the sound is pretty good
5.the stickers are black as the laptop not blue as some reviews has shown i love the attention to details from sony
lastly it is dropdead gorgeous if it wasn't for the screen i would be happy

[briangorg]

I like the sony pro 13, but I prefer Mac... I have to say that I'm a huge fan of Sony and Apple, but the Sony Vaio Pro 13 comes with windows, and for me, that's the main problem... MacOS X Mavericks is better than Windows in so many ways.... Well, that's my opinion... but both are great products :)

[HowToDrew]

Very good review Lisa! Covered everything on both the laptops and gave me a better insight on both of these machines. Fantastic job!

[elohelreh]

doesn't matter as i cannot afford either ha!

[mobiletechreview]

Very few ultra-thin laptops are lap-friendly if you're playing 3D games or processing HD video for export, these two included. But they're both fine if you're working on a Word doc or streaming HD video for playback. BTW, it's better for the laptop to put something between you and it so it can dissipate heat, even if it's just a magazine.

[savedfaves]

I haven't used the Vaio, but the 2013 Air is amazing. Went from an iMac to the Air and haven't looked back. The battery life I'm getting is nothing short of mind-blowing.

[mobiletechreview]

This doesn't look like the typical TN panel (they're generally terrible). Like previous Air models, viewing angles are quite good with little color and brightness shift. The only angle that's bad is if you view it from below, which isn't a positon most folks use.

[jzizzles]

The frame around the MAC display is over the top huge.  Very distracting.  The SD card sticking out of the Mac Air is also distracting.