Sony EE34: Sony Makes Budget AMD Laptops?
by Dustin Sklavos on February 22, 2011 4:43 PM ESTAnother Bad 720p Screen
Given the budget nature of the Sony EE34 it's probably not unreasonable to expect a poor quality screen, but the one on this notebook seems uncharacteristically bad. My current whipping boy for bad screens is Gateway's ID49C, and as luck would have it the EE34 exhibits some very similar characteristics to that one. Dithering and latticing seem remarkably just as pronounced, and there even seem to be some minor issues with ghosting. None of these are dealbreakers, but know what you're getting into: unless you're really on a tight budget you're not going to want the EE34's screen to be your primary.
Part of the major problem with these 14" and 15" 1366x768 screens is that they just seem idiotically low-resolution. I was testing the EE34 next to the HP dm1z, and while they produce fairly similar (read: bad) numbers, the dm1z was much more pleasing to look at simply due to the smaller screen producing a finer picture. More and more 1366x768 seems just too small for a screen this size, and what becomes ever more frustrating is that while desktop screen resolutions really have improved somewhat (compare how small 1080p screens get against how small the 1920x1200 screens did), notebook screen resolutions and accompanying quality seem to get worse year over year. Did we really regress so far back that we're going to accept 768 pixels of vertical space again?
But that's not entirely fair to the EE34. Given that with a coupon on NewEgg this notebook can be had for under $600 the complaint becomes more of a general one than specific to the model. Viewing angles aren't completely terrible on the EE34 either, though you'll still spend some time futzing with trying to find the sweet spot (an issue a finer resolution seems to actually improve a bit).
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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!