Sony EE34: Sony Makes Budget AMD Laptops?
by Dustin Sklavos on February 22, 2011 4:43 PM ESTBattery Life
When we get to the battery running time we also hit probably the most pleasant surprise about the Sony EE34. We're used to seeing pretty dismal battery life out of most AMD portables, and with the remarkably small battery the EE34 is equipped with (39Wh? Seriously?) the prognosis really only gets worse. So surprise surprise, the EE34 actually doesn't do half bad.
Would you look at that: the 25W Athlon II P340 is actually able to pull nearly four hours of running time while surfing the internet! Not too shabby and a long way from the dismal numbers the other AMD-based notebooks (barring the nimble HP dm1z) pull. It's still not quite enough to bring it up to the running times of the Intel machines, but if you look at the relative battery life you'll see the EE34 doing a pretty stellar job with what it has given that it ships with a battery so small a netbook would be embarassed to be caught with it.
Heat and Noise
Given the integrated graphics and reasonably low wattage processor Sony ships the EE34 with, it should come as no surprise that the notebook actually runs fairly cool and quiet.
These temperatures are actually really good. We're used to seeing AMD mobile chips run hot, but the 61C on the cores is actually frosty even by Intel mobile standards. There may not be much to cool, but what there is, the EE34 seems to do a good job of cooling it.
The surface temperatures of the EE34 are all pretty reasonable, with the hottest point typically being the space above the memory access panel. The cooling system actually seems to be remarkably efficient; when placed under load the fan remains very quiet but pulls a lot more heat away, resulting in parts of the notebook actually running cooler under load than idle. It's strange, but overall the EE34 remains comfortable to use and nicely inobtrusive.
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Martin Schou - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
When I browse Sony's Danish website, I find 2 E-model laptops with AMD CPUs displayed: http://www.sony.dk/lang/de/product/vn-e-seriesThey're not hidden away or anything.
I suspect the reason they are hidden on the US website, is that their web designer is on LSD or some other mind altering substance, that makes him think we don't want to know what products they have.
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
It's more likely that intel got to him than he is on LSD.HangFire - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
The purpose of this laptop is obvious- to put pressure on Intel and show that Sony can make an AMD laptop if they want to.By opting out of the mobility driver program, Sony has assured it won't sell many, nor are they trying to.
Give it a real keyboard and support it with the AMD's mobility driver program, and I would be interested. As it is, I wouldn't even consider it at half price.
nitrousoxide - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
I've been using a Vaio EA200C for six months, the keyboard is great, almost as good as a desktop mechanical keyboard.The driver is of course the matter of concern here. I'm forced to use the crappy OEM driver provided by Sony, and they simply never update it after releasing the product. The dfriver itself is poorly built, many problems occur with H.264 decoding, Flash acceleration and OpenCL feature does not work properly.
Anybody who intend to buy a laptop should be aware of this: if you are a Stream/OpenCL/CUDA developer, or you really need these features in Adobe's CS5 package or other GPU accelerated softwares, skip Sony and consider other manufacturers who offer official driver.
futurepastnow - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
I just bought a similar machine, an HP G42-303DX ($429 at Best Buy with the Turion II P540). It'll be delivered on Monday; having played with similar machines my only real concern is with the screen quality and battery life.So why not wait for Llano? Because it's been repeatedly delayed and I wanted something now. I figure the performance of AMD's old platform will be "good enough". If it turns out to be a mistake, well, it's a very cheap laptop.
Thanks for the review of something so similar, though. There are a dearth of reviews of AMD's current platform as it seems almost everyone is waiting for Sandy Bridge and Llano notebooks.
futurepastnow - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
Incidentally, does this platform support DDR3-1333? Would faster memory impact the integrated graphics performance?strikeback03 - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
Nice to see a logical keyboard layout. Why does it seem so many laptop makers are allergic to having the arrow keys drop below the rest of the bottom row and instead do wacky things like have the up and down keys half-sized?Otherwise I think this is OK but would make a lot more sense with no Blu-Ray and $100 cheaper
jonyah - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
These AMD sony's are everywhere. the model you tested has been going for as low as 499 at places like frys, walmart, best buy etc. They have the new AMD fusion netbook/notebook that looks really cool.oh and i love my brand new z.
Etern205 - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - link
Saw a AMD based Vaio for around $500 at BJs around 2-3 weeks ago.Mr Perfect - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
This was looking like a nice machine, right up until Sony opted out of the AMD Radeon driver package. I just stopped reading at that point. I'm sure we've all been frustrated by this sort of vendor driver crap in the past, I'm not wasting time on it anymore. Nicely done article though!