Sony VAIO S Series: All Day Consumer Computing
by Dustin Sklavos on September 9, 2011 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- AMD
- Intel
- Sony
- Sandy Bridge
- 6000M
- VAIO S
- Switchable Graphics
The Mediocre Matte
The Sony VAIO S' default screen quality is, to put things generously, problematic. While it isn't the worst notebook screen we've ever reviewed, it's not one of the best, and for some reason this one struck me as having particularly poor viewing angles. Sweet spots are notoriously hard to find on these small screens, and the VAIO S is no different.
There are some bright spots, though. The 1366x768 resolution is at least reasonable on a 13.3" screen, and thankfully the VAIO S uses a matte instead of a glossy panel. Those of you that demand more from your notebook will be pleased to note that Sony also offers a matte 1600x900 panel for the VAIO S series in custom orders, though we can't say whether it's of higher quality other than increasing the resolution.
As you can see, the VAIO S' numbers are pretty stunningly mediocre all around, with a terrible Delta E and a contrast rating below 200:1. Even in regular use, shades that were normally easy to discern on other monitors required me to tilt the screen just so.
Our viewing angle photos really just reinforce it: the VAIO S' screen is bad. Hopefully an upgrade to the 1600x900 panel will alleviate most of these problems (higher resolution screens have historically trended towards being higher quality in our experience), though that resolution will completely overpower the meager AMD Radeon HD 6470M.
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hp79 - Friday, September 9, 2011 - link
But I'm returning it because there were several problems with it.First unit had a bad bezel, not aligned/glued properly, and the 500gb WD Blue Scorpio 5400rpm made a click noise every time when idle. Returned.
Second unit came with almost perfect bezel, and the hdd was a Hitachi, and was very satisfied. Then my Alps touchpad stopped working. When I place my hand on left palm rest, then it would work. One day later, it started working again. I decided not to keep it even though I had such a great deal.
The screen has a very narrow viewing angle. I think it's even worse than the Acer 11" $200 netbook I had. You can't keep the lid open all the way for long time because it blocks the vent. The lid doesn't open too much either, so you'll be using it with the lid close to almost all the way to get that perfect viewing angle.
I liked the laptop a lot if it weren't these problems. I had 8gb ram, and samsung 256gb ssd in it. It was blazing fast. AMD graphics did make a lot of noise though.
duploxxx - Friday, September 9, 2011 - link
dude how can the AMD graphics in this laptop create noise??? the heatpipe of the gpu is connected to the cpu with single fan. Seen few Vaio passing buy from friends all those fans are horrible.hp79 - Friday, September 9, 2011 - link
You know what I meant there. I forgot to put "Using " in the beginning of that sentence.Of course they are connected to a heat pipe, duh.
When using intel graphics, I never had any complaint about the noise because it was mostly quiet.
waldojim42 - Friday, September 9, 2011 - link
I never had a problem with the screen blocking the exhaust. But mine did die a very early death. How much fighting did you have to go through for a replacement? I ended up on the phone for many, many hours trying to understand their system. "We don't have authority to do that, customer relations does." Followed by "Nope, sorry, you have to talk to the San Diego tech department." Who never answered the phone...hp79 - Friday, September 9, 2011 - link
Sorry to hear your experience. I just had to speak with Microsoft support person who was handling my case. When I finally said I want to return it, she said she'll email me a prepaid return label. No hassle at all.waldojim42 - Sunday, September 11, 2011 - link
That is good to know, going through a third party may be the way to go from now on.icebox - Friday, September 9, 2011 - link
I got my wife a 13'' vaio one year ago as she travels a lot. We had exactly the same problem, slow system, hdd was writting all the time. I reseted twice, uninstall everything I could it was still dead slow.It finally annoyed us so much that I went and bought a seagate momentus xt (she has to much files for an ssd to be an option) and installed windows off a standard oem disk (I had to call Microsoft's hot line for the activation but they were helpful and it worked) and only installed the needed drivers and nothing more (jumpy launchers, media players, demos, trials be damned) It's working fine ever since
dingetje - Friday, September 9, 2011 - link
yep, 16:9 is useless for anything except watching moviesDustin Sklavos - Friday, September 9, 2011 - link
...except you can get it at 1600x900, which is a higher resolution than we ever got in 13" or 14" notebooks. I agree the native resolution is crappy (although reasonable for a 13" notebook), but how is 16:9 at 1600x900 worse than 16:10 at 1440x900?MobiusStrip - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
Why?