Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

I just received my s 15.5". And noticed that the cover for the hdd, battery was not on correctly. So just placed correctly and was thinking where is the quality control.

than I just noticed on the bezel of the lcd on the bottom I have large gaps running throughout the extent of the bottom edge. Does anyone have this issue. It is significant. Is the bezel glued on?

thanks.

 

I'm wondering, has anyone tried underclocking? As the i5 version runs at around 2.5GHz, an underclock to arround 1.4 (for example) would still be more than capable of browsing the web, and lighter productivity stuff, but should give far more battery life... Anyone willing to test and try?

 

Set the Power Management option to Silent and it will lock the CPU to it's lowest multiplier for you. In my case with i7-3612QM that is 1.2ghz.

 

I phoned up and managed to get money off the docking station and I also asked outright to get the i7 upgrade dropped from £50 to £30 and they did.

 

Does that give a significant boost to battery life?

 

I have done some digging around and found how sony measures battery usage, Sony Japan uses a method called JEITA-BAT 1.0: http://it.jeita.or.jp/mobile/e/battery.pdf
This method from what I can see is setting the display to the lowest brightness, sound off and then running a 320x240 mpeg file until the battery runs out. Now this is definitely not real world battery usage. However Sony Japan advertises a battery life of 7-8 hours for the s13 and 6 hours for the s15.

Now Sony Europe says they use Benchmark MobileMark 2007, to determine battery life, they give Up To 6 Hours for both the S13p and S15 and 8 Hours on the s13. Again this benchmark does not reflect real world usage. According to this article, Real life usage will just be around half of the claimed value when manufactures used Benchmark MobileMark 2007.

I have no Idea how Sony USA measures their battery life, they just say from internal engineering testing.
So really a better estimate would be up to 4-5 hours of usage on both the s13 and s15. Now Sony uses high battery estimates to make the machine sell better.

Now Apple on the other hand states that their own measurement which is stated below.

Wireless web testing conducted by Apple in May 2012 using pre-production 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro units and pre-production 2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i7–based 13-inch MacBook Pro units. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 50%.

Now that is a more to real life, so the up to 7 hours claim would be more accurate, however Apple's (13'' MBP) battery is bigger at 63.5Wh wheras Sony is 49Wh, hey every little helps.

 

SE's sheet battery fits perfectly with SVS15. Tested it last night.

 

I should hope it does, sony could have made more money and just flip the ports around, then you'd have to buy a new sheet battery.

 

Like they did with the docking station?

 

Hi everyone,

I commanded my S15 on the 29th of June, through a Sony Style store. My estimated shipment date was July 10th. On July 9th my order was still "Processing", so I called Sony Canada.

The order was just like it wasn't ordered at all, so the process of the order started only on July 10th. My new ETA is July 18th .

Did anyone else has trouble with Sony Canada ?

 

Can someone explain why the S15's battery drains so much faster than the S13's if they have the same exact battery? With light use light word processing with Wi-Fi on why does the S15 only last ~4 hours while the S13 lasts ~6?

Does the IPS display really drain that much battery?

 

Firstly yes you are on the right tracks, a 15'' panel is simply going to use more energy than a 13'' panel. Also IPS technology inherently uses more power too so yes it's all down to the panel, battery life will deteriorate more if you elected for the quad-core configuration. A GPU too will increase power consumption.

You can always get a sheet battery to double your runtime.

 

Yeah, but then there would be no point. With the sheet battery it would weigh the same as the Lenovo Y580, which is cheaper, has a 72Wh battery (which lasts a good 6-7 hours doing light work), and has an amazing screen (although can't compare to matte + IPS). Oh, and the GPU is much more powerful.

I wanted the S15 without the sheet battery specifically because of how light it is. But if the battery struggles to get 4 hours without the sheet battery there is no point in buying it for college use (in my situation).

I was interested in the S13 Premium too, but what is with everyone saying the display sucks? I can't make up my mind, every laptop has a flaw which makes it a dealbreaker for me.

S13P: Terrible screen apparently?
S15: Horrible battery life
Lenovo Y580: Perfect balance of high end GPU/CPU and battery life, but heavy
MSI GE60: Horrible trackpad, battery is beyond abysmal, but great specs
HP DV6t: Quality control issues, HP CSR's can't speak English and HP warranty is garbage
Every other 13 inch notebook decently priced: No dGPU, was hoping to at least play some BF3 while at college

 

I suggest you wait a bit for all this bad display malarkey to blow over, it could be a bad batch or simply Sony is using a v.cheap panel, only time will tell.

As a result I am waiting around 2 months before purchase, this is enough time for Sony to use all their current batch of display and sell them, I mean enough people are buying them.

No laptop is perfect, select one which suits your needs, I doubt the supposed mediocre display will be an issue for you unless your college course involves content creation e.g. graphics or filmography where colour accuracy is important, even then you should really have an external ips display that touts colour accuracy but these panels are v.expensive.

My experience with HP was OK, though it was a cheap G62, the screen was awful; it had backlight bleed, uneven lighting and inconstant colours (LG panel) resolution was also poor (1366x768) thus it has no room to do real work, keyboard was all mushy and had bad layout and battery life was around 2-3 hours, but that's expected of a cheap machine, it also quite well built and has no real issues. The caps lock light is temperamental it sometimes works or doesn't. So it depends on luck.

 

Hi everyone, I've currently having trouble reinstalling drivers for my S13A (I did a clean windows 7 install to get rid of the blue screen problem and stupidly get rid of all the drivers too) Hope to seek helps from experts here.

1. How do you get the keyboard combination thing to work? I mean mine is working perfectly, but for example: when you hold Fn + F3, it is supposed to turn down the volume, but after the clean install these features have disappeared. Is there any specific driver that reactivates these combinations?

2. In Vaio Control Center, it used to have a lot options for me to choose such as the fan diagnostic, keyboard, touchpad, and so forth. But after the clean install, they're mostly gone, the only remains are System Information and Display. I've tried installed all Sony softwares in the Sony Application (Various) tab on Sony website, but still can't get back these options. Did I miss something here? Should I uninstall and reinstall all drivers again?

Thanks in advance for any helps!

 

I ordered mine June 25, it took a week of processing, it took another week for building, I was billed this past Friday and it is en route via Fedex from China as we speak. Original estimated delivery date when I ordered was July 19.

 

I've only seen a select few people say the S13P display was terrible, they may have gotten bad screens. Most people seem to think the display is as expected from a computer in that category.

 

You will definitely get it either earlier or on that date. It will be on time or early, unless fedex mucks up.

Well to be honest most of the people don't use the laptop for graphics or anything that requires colour accuracy, also I beleive most people opted for the crappy 1366x768 option which some people think is actually better than the 'premium' display (1600x900) quality wise i.e. colours but remember it quality not quantity, so you can have less pixels that has nice colours or more pixels that are mediocre.

However my beef is that I am scared to receive a 'poor' panel where the competition simply offers better screens at the same price range, but sony offers the portability aspect that others don't so it is a trade off. I am not looking for an ultrabook in which everything is soldered to the motherboard so I cannot upgrade or service it, also I don't like ULV CPUs or GPUs.

 

Hi All,

I bought S15, Ordered Samsung 830 128GB SSD from Newegg and 4 GB samsung ram from Amazon. I would like to keep my 640 GB hard drive and swap DVD rom with samsung SSD. I got the norton ghost with samsung SSD. My question is Do I need to buy any additional mounting device to fit SSD in DVD rom place?? Do I need to buy any additonal stuff like mounting kits ?? Any suggestions plz...

 

A few points: 1) Lenovo's own website is claiming up to 5 hours of battery life. Where did you see 6-7? 2) The Lenovo starts at 6.2 pounds. I might be mistaken but I think the Sony even with the sheet battery might still be less than 5. 3) I have the 13a and I don't have any problems with the screen. Sure the vertical viewing angles are bad, but no major problems. 4) If you want to go for an underdog, the Gigabyte U2442 should be released any day now. It has potential to be the perfect balance of everything but might be an epic fail.

 

1. Go read the Lenovo Y580 thread. People are claiming 6+ hours with the iGP. I believe them. 72Wh battery after all.

2. The S15 with the sheet battery is close to 6 lbs

 

No people who already have this laptop report about 4-5 hours usage time Lisa from MobileTechReviews got around 6 hours in her usage tests, note the machine is probably in stamina mode doing nothing intensive, the sheet battery effectively doubles that run time. However not many people have the sheet battery. You would only get the 5 hours on sheet battery if you were taxing the machine.

The gigabyte ultrabook is nice but I have main concerns about temperature and the trackpad which most manufactures neglect. I mean sony s series trackpad is nice and responsive and the machine itself remains quite cool. Not like the Asus zenbook with a fermi 630m, that thing hits 90 degrees Celsius.

Well I'm sure you can always man up and carry the extra weight, after 1 week you'd barely notice it, however I'd understand if you have back problems.

It seems that you're leaning on the Lenovo, I'd say go for it if it meets your needs. if you're a student you can always get the Free PS3/ PS vita offer from sony.

Go for the laptop that meets your specific needs and you will be happy about your choice.

 

I was going to order the S15 but now after I read these things about the battery life, I am not too sure about ordering it... Too bad, because I like the screen a lot and now I will probably go for the Y580..

 

It ultimately depends on what you're going to be doing with your laptop, get one that suits your needs, only then you will have no regrets and be happy about your choice. Face it you're pretty much parting with $1k

 

I think you confused my comment about weight with my one on run time. I thought the Sony s15 weight might be less than 5 pounds with the sheet battery, not less than 5 hours of runtime.

 

Doing graphics on a 13" display? I wouldn't even try that.

I am wondering which competition offers better screens. I seen people mention the MBA screens as better which I find hilarious. I come from one of those screens and they have the most blown up colour glossy screens I've seen.

 

Indeed I have, but I'll leave the comment there for people to read. Weight for me is not really a big problem, it's only really size, I would like to carry it around and commute with it, Sony s13p, 13'' MBP or Dell XPS 14 ultrabook (though it has a ulv cpu). I already have a HP that I did commute with that was 2.2 kg ~ 5 pounds, it was really only too thick and bulky, it was too big for most of my bags. Looking to replace it soon though.

 

1. No thanks, I have a laptop. I believe you though. Just odd that a laptop is actually getting better battery life than the company claims. Usually it's the opposite.

2. Yeah I see that. The Sony would only be 0.5 pounds lighter than the Lenovo. Although you would always have the option of shedding 1.5 pounds by removing the sheet battery during the times you didn't need it.

Anyways, just offering advice. It sounds like you're pretty convinced on the Lenovo. I wasn't aware of that one when I was shopping, but I would have seriously considered it. Being under 5 pounds was one of my priorities though. Good luck in your search.

 

how do i charge it w/ the laptop bec. when the laptop was 100% it wouldnt charge the sheet battery also is charging the laptop overnight bad?

 

Read the first post of this entire thread in its entirety.

Petrov.

 

Well lenovo's battery is larger at 72 Wh and Sony at 49Wh, now lenovo says up to 5 hours of productive usage.

Sony bases it on either the jeita-bat 1.0 test or mobilemark 2007, both of which do not provide realistic usage times so, around half-ish is what you should expect so about 4-5 hours. The only way you're going to get 6-8 hours battery life on the Sony is lowest brightness, SSD drive and typing a word document or idling.

* I have no idea how lenovo does battery tests, I can't find their methods.

I believe an accurate battery usage test would be wifi on .etc 100% brightness and run 3dmark until the battery runs flat, that should give an idea what a notebooks battery life is. If it give 3-4 hours be happy as 3dmark is intensive on CPU and GPU.

 

Docking stations are different from batteries in that their compatibility is broken by motherboard chipset change. Sony has to then make connector incompatible to prevent an accidental use of wrong docking station.

But Sony did screw up battery compatibility when going from VGN-Z to VPC-Z where otherwise laptop body and batteries where similar.

 

I will say this a second time now. Lightness comes with price.
If you want more battery life out of notebook, then settle with Sony sheet battery or get glare screen bulky Y580.
However, i wouldnt recomend Y series to anyone. They have been extremely bad quality notebooks in past and i doubt that they are much better now.
Heck, even our IBM/Lenovo official reseller doesnt want to take them in to RMA.

 

Tbh I would only buy from the thinkpad line, High end Sony, Apple, Dell XPS, and that's about it. Thinness doesn't have to come with a price I mean the MBPr is thinner than the s series but has better battery life than the s15.

Basically Sony could have squeezed more capacity out of the battery by using Lithium Polymer batters instead of lithium ion batteries (Flat cells vs cylindrical cells), but that would have pushed up price.

 

I don't think getting a QC processor would affect battery life tbh because all the available processor options have the same listed 35W Max TDP. So technically they should all draw the same power...i think.
There is the additional heat that QC processors would generate though

 

More heat = less efficient, so in essence yes the quad core will use more energy to perform the same tasks even though it is rated as a 35w TDP.

 

I like how you are contradicting yourself. But yes, the QC will generate more heat and thus draw more power.

 

Hiho

Is there a way to increase the sound volume of the new S15? Seems a bit low

 

You can try messing with the Xloud/dolby presets or turn the effects off, or just get headphones or external speakers.

 

Ahh yes...that's true...forgot to consider that one.

 

I just got my laptop last week (got a black 15.5" w/blu-ray drive and added an extra 4GB of memory myself). I just got around to worrying about the red push issue today and went int the intel graphic options and then went to color enhancement and changed red gamma to .8 and green to .9 and I have a really good general calibration now. Later I'll do a full scale cal with my colorimeter and post the results.

 

SV-S13A1Z9E/S Notebook - Notebookcheck.com Tests

German review of the S13 Premium! It has all the information we need

Kinda disappointed with the screen results tho... That and the battery life with wifi... 4.5h? Seriously? I understand I can add a battery sheet but to me it's just an extra thing to carry.

The rest sounds top notch tho!

edit: Screen is still above average tho. I've seen much worse for a 13" panel, but I think for a "Premium HD+" screen it's not really that Premium.

 

Looking forward to reading your results...

 

Not really it clips onto the bottom of your s series and it can just stay there, nothing extra to carry at all, however it does add bulk onto the device.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot... The S13 doesn't support SATA III right?

This laptop seems to get worse by the minute.

Sent from my GT-I9100

 

Ivy Bridge supports SATAIII natively, but Sony disabled sata III as they want to sell you their ludicrously expensive raid0 SSDs. I'm sure someone can hack the bios one day to enable SATA 3.

 

It's not disabled if some people have been reporting intermittent SATA 3 speeds - I'm tempted to blame the cable

 

Mine comes with 128GB SSD. I could save the bios for you, if there is any tool which can do that.

 

Hi All,

New guy here. Based on all the great feedback from this forum I took the plunge and ordered my new 13.3 S Series Premium with 1600x900 in Gunmetal. Delivery scheduled for 7/19.

I plan to order a new SSD and an additional 4GB of memory and upgrade it myself. Any suggestions on a good/affordable SSD?

 

You can try a different cable unless it uses a proprietary connector, I don't think it's the cable as the 2011 model did have SATAIII but was disabled later, also the people with intermittent sataIII speeds are using the same cable. But face it sony does not want people buying 3rd party SSDs which are cheaper, so they limit the speed thus more people would pay for the raid0 SSD that sony provides which is v.expensive hence more profit.