Sony VAIO Fit Multi-flip 14A review

We can’t fault Sony for trying to find new and innovative ways to make interesting laptop-cum-tablet hybrids, but not all of its experiments pay off. We largely liked the Sony Vaio Duo 13, with its novel hinge and outstanding battery life, but the tablet-laptop Sony Tap 11 failed to leave much of an impression.

The Sony VAIO Fit Multiflip 14A is the company’s latest attempt to bridge the gap between laptop and tablet. Push the Multiflip 14’s screen from behind and it’ll flip over so that you can lower it over the keyboard, turning the laptop into a powerful Windows 8 tablet. The action is similar to that used by the Dell XPS 12. It’s a simple movement in theory, and one that Dell accomplished very elegantly, but the Multiflip manages to make it one of the most awkward and fiddly transitions we’ve ever seen. You need a decent amount of space at the back of the laptop to flip the screen smoothly, and you must lock the screen in place with a switch because the screen is likely to flip round again when opened if you don’t.

Happily, the Multiflip 14’s touchscreen is very responsive. Windows 8 gestures all worked perfectly and we were able to open and close internet tabs accurately, even at the Multiflip 14’s high resolution of 1,920×1,080 resolution. The screen’s image quality was also promising, as our colour calibrator showed it was displaying an impressive 95.2 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut. This is the highest reading we’ve ever seen from a laptop, even Apple’s Macbook Pro laptops, so you can be sure you’re getting one of the most accurate displays around. As a result, our solid colour image tests looked fantastic, with reds, greens and blues almost jumping out of the screen.

Sadly, it’s not all good news, as whites were surprisingly grey, which highlighted the screen’s poor viewing angles. We’ve seen this effect on other Sony laptops, such as the VAIO Duo 13 and the VAIO Tap 11, and we are disappointed that the Multiflip 14 is the same. Indeed, there was a noticeable shift in contrast that cast a grey shadow across the top of the screen when we tilted the screen back.

Unfortunately the Multiflip 14’s contrast levels weren’t much better. Even though we measured a good contrast ratio of 708:1 with our colour calibrator, all the our night shots in our high contrast test severely lacked detail. This is a real shame because it spoils an otherwise beautiful display.

We weren’t big fans of the keyboard or touchpad, either. The keyboard is too flexible, and the keys felt spongy. This made them feel flat while we were typing, and while they were well-spaced, we would have preferred a lot more tactile feedback. However, the large all-in-one touchpad performed Windows 8 shortcuts accurately and responded quickly to our multitouch gestures.

Our biggest concern, though, is the flexibility of the Multiflip 14’s chassis; wiggling the bottom corners of the laptop produced a crunching noise from the keyboard. The keyboard tray also felt flimsy, and it bounced when we typed. We also noticed the touchscreen’s digitiser was pressing against the LCD display, which created a distortion effect in the screen’s corners that looked as if we were pressing a screen too hard with our finger. This is unforgivable on an £860 laptop.

This is all the more disappointing because the Multiflip 14 is pretty well specificed. Our review sample had a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-4200U processor and 8GB of RAM. It performed a fraction slower in our PC benchmarks than other laptops we’ve seen with this processor, scoring 45 overall rather than the more common 47 scored by laptops such as the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 15. However, it’d be difficult to notice the two point deficit in everyday use.

You’ll certainly have no problem using the Multiflip 14 to browse the web and use office productivity software. The Multiflip 14 can even handle fairly modern 3D games, as long as you lower graphics quality settings. At a 1,280×720 resolution, no anti-aliasing and with graphics quality set to Low the Multiflip 14 produced a smooth average frame rate of 40.3fps.

We were disappointed to see a below average performance from the Multiflip 14’s battery, which was surprising given the laptop’s energy-efficient Haswell processor. The Multiflip 14 lasted just 6 hours in our light use test with the screen set to half brightness. We expect most laptops at this price to last around nine or 10 hours under the same conditions.

A further source of disappointment is that scarcity of ports. Those that are present amount to two USB3 ports, an SD card reader, a HDMI video output and a combined headphone and microphone jack.

Like the Sony Tap 11, the Vaio Multi-flip 14A is an interesting experiment in hybrid design, but ultimately it has too many flaws to justify its price. If you want a screen that can rotate to create a Windows 8 tablet, you should pay more for the superior Dell XPS 12. If £860 is your budget’s upper bound it’d be worth paying less for the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 15, which we think is a better buy.