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IFA 2013 | Sony introduces the VAIO Tap 11 Windows tablet

Teaser
Billed as a PC in tablet form, the Tap 11 has Haswell inside

Sony has announced a number of new products at IFA this year. Many of them were hinted at by leaks over the past weeks, but a new Windows tablet came as a complete surprise. With a design that looks to be inspired Sony's own Xperia Tablet Z, the VAIO Tap 11 packs high end internals into an impressively thin frame (9.9 mm or 0.39 inches).

Windows 8 tablets are a mixed bag. They are either relatively heavy and suffer from poor battery life (like the Surface Pro), or they offer very poor performance due to the use of older Intel Atom processors (like the HP Envy x2). Sony may be the first to break this pattern.

The new device features an 11.6-inch 1920 x 1080 Triluminos display, 128 or 512 GB of internal storage, a micro HDMI port, a full sized USB 3.0 port, NFC, an 8 MP back-facing camera, an IR blaster, and an N-Trig active digitizer stylus. For the processor, Sony is offering a range of choices including Haswell Core i3, i5, and i7, as well as a Pentium (perhaps a new Clover Trail model?).

The Tap 11 is meant to be a laptop replacement. It has a kickstand and a keyboard cover that look very similar to those on Microsoft's Surface tablets. The keyboard is a conventional Bluetooth accessory, so even though it does attach magnetically to the tablet, it can be separated and still function.

We're still missing some important details about this intriguing new product such as RAM and battery life, but we do know the Tap 11 will be available in both white and black.

The VAIO Tap 11 will be available in Europe this fall. Pricing and availability in other regions have not yet been announced.

*Update: Sony has confirmed that VAIO products with active digitizer pens will now be fully compatible with Adobe Illustrator Creative Cloud and Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud.

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Craig Munro, 2013-09- 4 (Update: 2021-05-18)