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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
59 Comments
View All Comments
goobah - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
Thank you for the reply Jarred :)Much appriciated but I ment the castle name itself not the picture. That hilly out cropping on the sea is just so weird wanted to try google earthing it and look around:)
jmunjr - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
The se13fx/b is the original version of the SE series that is basically identical aside from some minor CPU/GPU upgrades on the new Se2. Mine has the i5-2430M, 4GB RAM, 6470M and same display... So yeah you can get this laptop for well under $1000 from a very reputable vendor.Oh and btw the Lenovo X220 with an IPS has sold for ~$750 on many occasions...
jabber - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
...seemed to give middling performance.Still seems to be a toss up between a really good TN panel or a below average IPS as the best options.
Not a good position really.
Snotling - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
My only beef with sony is the lack of availability of keyboards other than english on many of their models. Why the hell did they send a 5400rpm drive equipped unit for review is a mystery to me. Maybe they just can't avoid being stupid.effingee - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
"NVIDIA’s Optimus Technology switches on-the-fly between IGP and discrete graphics as needed, you can still get driver updates from NVIDIA and Intel without worrying about compatibility issues"Will those driver updates have to come through Sony? If so, it could take a while and they might only release a couple of them.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
No, that's the beauty of Optimus: all the major OEMs participate in NVIDIA's Verde driver program, so basically every laptop with NVIDIA graphics (Optimus or discrete only) can use NVIDIA's reference drivers. The only laptops that aren't part of the Verde program (AFAIK) are laptops with manually switchable graphics--like the old ASUS UL80VT (I think that's the correct model) or the early Sony VAIO Z with GT 330M.Zoomer - Saturday, April 14, 2012 - link
Manually switchable graphics does have an edge in compatibility. No software support is needed; but a reboot might be needed to switch graphics around.Christopher29 - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
That was really kind review for this laptop - I mean THIS quality (or lack of it), faulty cooling design, flexible screen and overal issues that this hardware has ... it is Amazing that it got Editors Choice.Well ... I highly recommend less "influenced" (biased?) reviews on notebookcheck.com. They do some serious tests and if something lacks quality, stablility (Anand do You really think that this laptop will not throttle down with this temps?) then it is always pointed clearly in bold, not "mildly mentioned".
I've also experienced many issues with those laptops, warranty policy is ridiculous, and there are (were) cases in court in my country regarding refuse to service laptops. Sony states that after selling laptops there is no their responsibility but only company that service for them is responsible and also decide whether free repair is granted or not. Also they will not exchange LCD if there are badpixels , less than three as I remember in "central part of screen". Servicing company for SONY is sued because they refuse to repair broken lcd (vaio hinge desing and lack of sturdines brought cracking tension to screens) here is link: http://www.twojeartykuly.info/rozne/laptop-sony-va... (Or english via GTranslate: http://translate.google.pl/translate?sl=pl&tl=...
JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
First off, while this is AnandTech, Anand doesn't review all the hardware. I wrote the review, and I clearly spelled out the potential concerns. The hardware did not throttle for most use cases. If you want to run Furmark or do heavy 3D rendering or video encoding, then I'd stick with other options -- Dell's XPS 15 comes to mind as a competitive solution that can handle a quad-core CPU.Claiming bias just because someone likes a laptop that you haven't even used or probably seen is... well, biased. As for Notebookcheck, all they have is links to external reviews of the same laptop, most of which give the SE an 80%+ rating. That's a pretty good score in my book.
Sounds like you just have an ax to grind with Sony, with your complaints about customer service, dead pixels, etc. If you buy a laptop in the US and you don't like it, you can pretty much always return it for a refund -- worst case you pay a 15% restocking fee. For Poland (I assume that's where you're from), maybe they're not as willing to take back hardware. But once again, you're biasing your review off of your own location.
VAIO SE summary:
Good IPS display, a display that's better than any TN laptop IMO, reasonable cost, good performance
Not perfect colors, questionable exhaust location, loose hinge
The editor's choice is almost purely for the virtue of including an IPS display for a laptop that costs less than $1000. There are many users who want exactly that. "OMG bias -- you like good displays!" Yup. Sorry.
Zoomer - Saturday, April 14, 2012 - link
The temps are likely a design decision, not random. The fan probably is running at the minimum speed while keeping temps below some threshold. Sony's engineers probably decided that 90-ish degrees is acceptable.Screen wise, some idiot manager/marketer probably forced that through to shave an extra 0.5 mm off the thickness.