Sony VAIO TAP 20: A Brand New Kind Of Device

It would be fair to say that 2012 has been a year of line-blurring. Ultrabooks have turned the affordable laptop market on its head, touch surfaces have attached themselves to every available panel, and convertible tablets have left us questioning whether laptops are really even relevant any more. In a market which previously consisted of about three unique designs, things really have changed. Sony has been growing its own crop of game changers. The Vaio Duo 11 puts its Vaio design ethos into one of the niftiest sliding tablets we've ever seen, one that's more than ready to compete with any other tablet. Then there's this new device, which does something else altogether.

Sense check
It's a little mad, to be frank; the Tap 20 is, to all intents and purposes, a twenty-inch tablet. Twenty. Inches. Tablet. So the first thing you'll do is pick it up because, after all, it s a tablet made for a giant, and that s cool. It certainly works as described, hefting the full version of Windows 8 and all of its apps and features.


But you'll be unsurprised to hear that the Tap 20 is too big, thick and unwieldy to slot properly into the tablet niche, unless you re okay with carrying around a giant 5kg slab of barely grippable and highly expensive electronics. Packing in enough battery to power that massive screen — and the not-insignificant Core i5 architecture within — has led to some serious compromises in aesthetics. The Tap 20 is a pretty machine, but it's fat.

Maybe it's not a tablet at all, then. That battery is in fact a cheeky bonus feature which turns a mid-sized touchscreen all-in-one into a mid-sized touchscreen all-in-one you can carry around wherever you go in the house. Some might call it a gimmick. In fact, that's what we're going to do: it's a gimmick, and one that s going to have to fight to justify its existence.

Inside the beast
The Tap 20 is certainly fit for purpose — as an overweight tablet and as a touchable all-in-one — in the sense that it's built solidly, with a versatile metal kickstand and the usual unspectacular but functional wireless accessories bundled in the box. A quick mention here of the mouse: if we were cruel we'd say Sony apparently builds mice for strange alien claws rather than human hands. As it is, let s just say it's not the most eronomically comfortable device we've ever used.

The Tap 20 is pretty rugged, as far as this kind of machine goes, with a drop sensor and a splash-proof screen, and while there's no Gorilla Glass toughness It should be sturdy enough to withstand the rigours of family use.

Once you switch it on, it becomes apparent that the Tap 20 has a few chinks in its armour. Let's start with the screen a 1,600 x 900 resolution 20-inch panel, with a pixel density lower than many competitors. As soon as we reached touch-screen distance the lack of full-HD sharpness became apparent. The difference this makes varies from person to person - it might not bother you, but that doesn't mean a full 1080p panel shouldn't have been included. We feel corners have been cut compared to other all-in-one machines of the same price.

To the Tap 20's credit we found the touchscreen ten-finger sensing to be superb, and the viewing angle of the screen — while not world-beating — is perfectly adequate for just about every task you might throw at it, whether stood on the kickstand or, excitingly, laid flat on a surface.

Another corner has been cut at the top of the screen, where the webcam resides. It has a resolution of just 1MP (or 0.9 if you're using it at the same 16:9 aspect ratio as the screen) and produces disappointing, washed out images. This is far from brilliant considering that the curvature of the case will make clipping on a replacement quite difficult.

Looking past these initial disappointments — and its E1,000 price, for which you could pick up both an RT tablet and a decent Ultrabook or two slightly lesser all-in-ones — and you'll find a competent machine indeed, particularly among its direct rivals. It musters 720p video without the slightest grumble — though, of course, it can't do 1080p at full resolution due to its under-specified screen It runs Windows 8 without breaking a sweat, as well it should. The Tap 20 has swift connectivity thanks to its USB 3.0 ports, and seems to have rather good wireless range to boot. Wherever you put it to work, it performs just fine. With a keyboard and mouse, it feels like a rather nice all-in-one computer.

Gesturing to the crowd
When it comes to the touch interface, some of Windows 8's gestures feel a bit strange on such a large panel - to close an app you'll be sweeping your arm down as if performing elaborate semaphore — but it is at least helped by the fact that there's no physical bezel. There are even proper status lights, an essential feature which is becoming increasingly more rare.

It's a decent machine, but we keep coming back to the price. £1,000 is edging into premium gaming laptop territory. The fact you can use it as a massive tablet is hamstrung by the battery life — it lasted just 1 hour 12 minutes under our intense test. This isn't surprising, as the battery is powering a full desktop machine, not a cut-down low-power tablet. But it really limits the extra use you're going to get out of the Tap 20. If it turns out you're using it as a standard all-in-one most of the time, is it worth paying the premium for this extra functionality?

Let's give it its dues. The Tap 20 is as versatile as it gets. It has plenty of power under the hood, a 100 different places you could put it, and that screen is enormous in tablet terms. We don't feel, however, that Sony has genuinely chipped out a new foothold in the computing cliff face, but the Tap 20 is interesting, to say the least.

Sony VAIO Tap All-in-One Touchscreen SVJ20217CXW 20-Inch Desktop (White)
Intel Core i7-3517U 1.9 GHz
8 GB DDR3, 1000 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive
20-Inch Screen, Windows 8
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