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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yyrkoon - Saturday, February 26, 2011 - link
Sony's higher end laptops aren't particularly known for their reliability either. SO buying a budget laptop from them makes little sense to me. Things like support for different OS's backwards, and forwards are pretty important as well.Here Sony falls short as well.So when you can purchase a similar system at a lower cost, that *does* support multiple version of windows ( and perhaps even linux ): From a different manufacturer. It only makes sense. Especially if that company regularly has consistently reliable systems. To find these system however, one has to spend some time reading through reviews, weeding out the idiotic reviews, and then wait for the system to be sold at a reasonable enough price for them to feel happy. At $499 however; You can get an Asus with "discrete" nvidia graphics for $300 more. SO sometimes a hard judgement call to make.
And yes ! Anyone buying a budget laptop to be used as a tool to beat dents out of their car fender is not very smart. Seriously, when you buy any laptop, it should be treated with care. So why treat a budget laptop any differently ?
Sabresiberian - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
As you said, there is a place for the inexpensive, but I couldn't have said it better myself. Personally, I don't put up with people making whiny little remarks about cheap service and products all the time. "You get what you pay for" certainly isn't an absolute, but there's no substitute for buying smartly rather than cheaply.
;)