Sony VAIO SE: An IPS Laptop for Under a Grand
by Jarred Walton on April 3, 2012 5:40 PM ESTSony VAIO SE Gaming Performance
As we’ve noted in the past, we’ve updated our gaming test suite as well as our target settings. We’ve ditched testing at Low/Minimum detail for most laptops, as that often results in a subpar visual experience and we’d rather set “Medium” as our baseline. If you don’t care much for gaming, you can skip straight to the next page, but here are the scores from the VAIO SE. We’ve lumped the Mainstream and Enthusiast results into the Value charts just to save on space, but you’ll want to stick with our Value settings for acceptable frame rates in most titles—and you can forget about 1080p gaming at anything above our Value settings in most games.
* DiRT 3 run in windowed mode on VAIO SE because of driver issue
* ASUS G74SX tested pre-1.4 patch with older NVIDIA drivers
There’s really not much to say. At our Value settings, only Battlefield 3 fails to break 30FPS—possibly because the VAIO SE has an older driver and AMD has definitely improved performance in BF3 with later driver releases. Also worth mention is that DiRT 3 has a problem with the current drivers and refuses to run in full screen mode, so we tested in a window. That probably knocks off at least 20% from the performance, but until/unless Sony releases an updated driver this is all you’ll get. 1080p Value incidentally has almost the same “playability” result as 768p Value—only BF3 and Civ5 can’t break 30FPS, and in the case of Civ5 it’s still fast enough since turn-based strategy games aren’t about twitch reflexes.
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peterfares - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
1 4GB stick of RAM costs $20 or less. Just order it without any RAM stick and put the 4GB module in, leaving you with 2x4GB=8GB. 2GB soldered on would have been horrible. I'm already sick of 8GB and want 16GB in my laptop. I will when I get a sandy or ivy bridge laptop. My arrandale only supports 8GB.piroroadkill - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
A perfectly serviceable specification and a great display, for a reasonable enough price.Everyone else needs to pay attention..
bunnyfubbles - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
the screen, relative light weight (you'd be hard pressed to find any other 15+" lappy @ 5.4lbs let alone 4.4), and price really were what sold it for meI was going to go with the 13.3" S series for its portability, and while the 13.3" S series 1600x900 screen was definitely a cut above all other PC laptops that are stuck with 1366x768, the 1080p IPS of the SE really was that much more gorgeous when comparing them side by side in store.
The HDD is a disappointment, however I just upgraded my desktop from a 128GB Crucial M4 to a pair of Samsung 830s, so I was able to plug that M4 into the laptop, as well as replace the 2GB module with a 4GB (was less than $20) for 8GB total. Those two simply hardware upgrades along with a reformat with only the essential software and drivers (all of which can be found pretty easily and conveniently from Sony's support site) lead to a very awesome overall computing experience.
The last upgrade I did was grabbed an external USB DAC. The Speakers on this laptop are extremely anemic, and the onboard sound leaves much to be desired. I have a Creative X-Fi GO! (was less than $30) for when gaming and chatting (has both plugs for headset and mic, laptop itself has only one jack so you can't have both headset and mic, and thus would have to rely on the built in mic on the laptop which is passable but not ideal) and my trusty FiiO E7 when just watching movies or listening to music
The 128GB SSD might not seem like much, but its certainly enough for the OS and apps, and no laptop will be able to satiate my gaming like my desktop, so very few games get installed to it anyway. Anything else (mostly large media files such as music and movies) can be handled via portable USB HDDs and flash thumbdrives, of which I converted the 640GB HDD to a portable drive with a portable 2.5" USB3.0 enclosure.
jigglywiggly - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
I'd take the tn panel 95% ntsc color gamut (The clevo one you were talking about) I have one in my np8130 and it is absolutely amazing. Contrast and brightness is most important thing imo, then viewing angles.piroroadkill - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
I disagree. You're not going to be using a laptop for serious colour sensitive work, but you might have a laptop out to watch a video with a few friends sat around it.charleski - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
On TN panels the gamma changes (usually dramatically) with even a slight movement off-axis. They're completely unsuitable for colour-sensitive work unless you're going to lock your head at the optimum position.There certainly are people who need a decent portable screen for reviewing images, but the available options are very limited.
Stacey Melissa - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
I'm not quite as worried about the hinge, but after three months with my base SE, I agree with the rest of the review, for the most part. I immediately swapped the HDD for a 128GB Crucial M4, and did a clean Win7 install, so performance is pretty good. I only get about 4 to 4.5 hours runtime, but I'm running the screen at fairly high brightness (82%) and turned off a couple obscure power-saving tricks. I'm very picky about noise. Luckily, fan noise is very low for my typical use, which involves browsing, Visual Studio, and video playback. I usually use a Targus wedge laptop cooler, which I don't plug in. Clicks are noisy. The trackpad is placed too far to the right, and I really miss two-finger scrolling. The keyboard is excellent, except for the spacebar, which often doesn't register left-side presses. It could use dedicated volume buttons. I like the manual graphics switching, except that it takes several seconds.Bugs: Scrolling usually quits working after waking from hibernation. To fix, open the mouse control panel, and click OK. The BT hardware sometimes quits working upon resume, even after the driver update that supposedly fixes it. When running on battery, the DVD drive switches on and off regularly and often, which causes the standard hardware attachment/detachment sound notification.
The screen is easily the best I've used on a laptop. It also bests my old Dell 2405 desktop S-IPS in brightness, contrast, and of course sharpness, but not quite in gamut or accuracy.
adece - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
...is actually appealing! What do you knowMrMaestro - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
I bet Dustin wouldn't have minded getting his hands on this laptop to review, how did AnandTech decide who had dibs? Coin toss? Rock-paper-scissors? Fight to the death?JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
Dustin got the Z2, I got the SE... wasn't sure which would be better, but ultimately the Z2 is too costly for what you get and the keyboard doesn't appeal as much.