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Sony unveils VAIO Flip 11A convertible; arrives in February for $799
It's almost as if Sony reads our laptop reviews! After testing out the VAIO Flip 15 convertible, we concluded that while the design was innovative, but didn't quite make sense for a machine that large. At the time, the smallest machine in the line was the 13-inch model, but that came with a different trade-off: At $1,100, it was the most expensive of the bunch. Now, Sony's going even smaller, and it's lowering the price of entry too: The company just announced the 11-inch Flip 11A, which starts at a more reasonable $799. Like its big siblings, the 11A has a 1080p screen that can flip back so that the display is facing away from the keyboard (yep, sort of like the Dell XPS 12). Speaking of the screen, this too uses Sony's Triluminos color-reproduction technology, which first made its debut on the company's Bravia televisions. All told, though, it might make more sense to compare the Flip 11 not to the bigger Flips, but to the VAIO Tap 11, Sony's first Windows 8 tablet. Both have 8-megapixel cameras using Sony's Exmor imaging technology, and both have an N-trig digitizer allowing for pressure-sensitive pen input. Also, both start around $800, which means you can expect similar specs on the inside, too. In this case, that means a quad-core Bay Trail (Pentium) CPU to start, though if you wanted, you could go all the way up to a Core i7 chip instead.
