Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

Try doing a system restore back to a different day and see if that fixes your issue...could have been a windows update thing?

 

Can't believe how good the S13A screen is under direct sunlight (albeit on max brightness) - colours are fairly vibrant and I can actually read things comfortably unlike my old laptop :v

 

And what about contrast 'cause i've read somewhere it has a pretty low one.

 

Hmmm... Guess my LCD also affected by the dark screen on the right issue..

Just saw some texture background from some website, so I printscreen it and paste it at the left and right end.
I do can see the differences.

Anyone else can also check?

Thanks.

 

Well it does look compelling, It's vaguely upgradable like the S13p but has a an inferior CPU and GPU and you apparently lose dual-channel capability if you upgrade the ram yourself. However it has better screen (1080p too) and Bang and Olufsen speakers.

Note the 620m is is based on the GF108 architecture which we all know as fermi, there is no kepler variation. I believe that ASUS could have fit a nicer GPU in there such as the 640m but they chose not to, maybe because of cost or heat reasons, but I think all Manufactures try to slap any GPU in a machine just to appeal to gamers. I've seen some notebooks where the discrete solution is negligibly better than the intel HD3000.

For me both the ASUS i7 and Sony S13p are pretty much the same price and weight. I am also not a fan of the swirly lid and the fact that the display bezel is a light grey - it basically shows the thick bezel. Sony edges it only because it has the performance and power. So my choice is still going to be a S13p.

 

Doesn't look that bad. I guess its kind of freaky, but I do understand why they did that. I don't go around beating up my laptop, so I don't see it as a huge issue. And for your Edit3, the computer on the right is the VaioZ, not the VaioS.

 

Does anyone's hinge on their S13A squeek when you appy pressure on it?

 

So I had ordered a S13 Premium model. Got it and well not a huge fan of the gold VAIO emblem, it looked good. Then I turned it on.
I have to say, it must be a crap-shoot on the screens. The Screen I got made the one in my 13" SA model look like it was and IPS screen.
Grainy is an understatement. The screen looked bad, real bad. Colors did not pop, grainy, dimmer than I expected. I placed it next to the SA and what a difference. I must have gotten a real good Screen on my SA model.

So rather than risk it for under 1 LB I opted to move to the 15"

WOW what a great decision. This is a fantastic looking notebook.
Lets start with the touchpad. So far so good, it is smooth and fluid like my old Macbook Pro/ Air was. IF it was a glass touchpad I think it would be darn near perfect.
The IPS screen (ya the orange is there I can see it, but it does not bother me and I will adjust it) is just fantastic. The colors pop and it looks crystal clear. It looks nicer than my Dell M4600 (has Dell's IPS screen).
I7 12 gigs of ram 640 gig hard driver (no SSD for me as I run a number of VMWare machines for training and work)

Sleek and super thin. The think that I find amazing, Slot load DVD/ Blueray, under an inch thick and ways less than a comparable Macbook 15" and less than my companies standard of Lenovo T420/T430 notebooks.

Mine is black, but I bet the silver model looks amazing.

Battery slice and Docking station is incoming as well.

All I can say is Sony, about time you built a 15" notebook that look as great as the Z series.

 

to be exact, the gt620m is based on fermi but is a 28nm part in the asus ultrabook.

28nm means lower heat and higher clocks.

Actually, you do not lose dual channel because intel has a comparable solution for the soldered 4gb ram that
emulates dual channel. But every extra GB you add will not be dual channel.

notebookcheck:

Its core can be based on either the 40nm GF108 chip (similar to the GeForce GT 525M) or the new power-optimized 28nm GF117

The GF117 is based on the optimized GF108 Fermi chip (GeForce GT 540M) and offers 96 shaders

 

Can anyone comment on keyboard flex on the S15? I heard there's a lot of flex, but is it that bad?

 

I have not noticed any and do not type lightly.

 

I don't get any flex on the keyboard.

As for others with the S15, I just got my replacement and it also has the headphone jack issue (headphones only go 3/4th of the way in).

Fan noise/low humm is also present even when on power saver + stamina + no apps running.

 

Okay thanks. And is the material plastic or aluminum/carbon fiber. I saw one review and they said the former.

Also, is Sony support really as bad as people say it is?

 

After the headphone jack goes only 3/4th, do you get sound from both the earphones or only one ?

 

Yes I'm aware asus is using the 28nm version, but it is still a fermi which is not as good as kepler, performance per watt wise, but at the price of the asus I'd prefer the 640m LE

That's one weird RAM setup, but at least Sony kept it conventional, single channel until an extra dimm is added.

I really do hope the screen that Sony is using in their S13p is a bad batch, if not well Sony will here from trading standards, hopefully they should teach Sony what premium means, A 'premium' screen cannot be worse than the ordinary screen. Sony could do this both ways either remove the advertising that suggests that it's a 'premium' screen. Or get better screens, I think all these crap screens come from LG, my HP has an LG in it atm and honestly is as you described it, and my hp the worst screen I've come across. LG should die.

I believe orange gate will be a non-issue once Sony depletes all its supply of the old panel I say this as it is very unlikely that LG would manufacture both the old version and the revised version. New HP envys have the revised versions.

 

Isn't that normal?

 

Well Sony sure is fast at shipping things out. Ordered my S13A with the extended battery and PS Vita yesterday (17 hours ago) and my sheet battery already shipped out.

 

The US is lucky you can get your CTO laptops within 3-5 working days, in Europe we have to wait 2-3 weeks, however I thank the US for helping to deplete the bad batch of 'premium' screens quicker as it seems that the US is going to stock quite a bit of Sony S13p so people can buy them from newegg .etc

PS Vita should be good, although you may want to get some protection for it as it is plastic and not gorilla glass.

 

I don't think it's a bad batch, I think they are all bad. Saw the S13A at Fry's and 2 different Sony locations (Stanford and Valleyfair mall) and the displays on all of them were equally bad.

However, if it does happen to be a bad batch and this can be confirmed by side by side testing, I'll immediately return my S13A and purchase another one, once the bad display thing is over.

 

I think it is a bad batch, like all manufactures Sony tend to stock up on parts and won't reorder until the stock levels reach below a certain threshold. I don't think Sony operates a just-in-time system. I think these bad panels come from LG as Sony uses them in the S15 so it would make more economical sense if Sony ordered all vaio panels from LG until LG raise prices and Sony is forced to look elsewhere.

I will also mention it to trading standards and see what they say about it.

But seriously consider getting a screen protector for your PS Vita.

 

I won't even keep the Vita. Going to sell it for a quick $200 in my pocket.

Let's hope it is a bad batch. I can live with a bad panel, but if it does happen to be a bad batch and I am within my 30 day return window why not return it and get the better panel?

Edit: Yay, PS Vita just shipped out.

 

Fair enough since it would fetch more money than the 3% edu discount and the 8% extra discount.

I don't know Lisa from MobileTechReviews said that the S13p has a good screen, here's an excerpt:
"The 1600 x 900 matte display is head and shoulders above today's gloss displays for clarity thanks to the lack of reflections. It has rich colors despite the matte finish and slightly better than average color gamut "
So it must be a bad batch.
Although saying this notebookcheck.net states that this screen is only a mere marginal improvement over the 2011 SA series.
"Thanks to the lowered black value of now 1.21 cd/m2, the contrast of 188:1 is a touch better although both rates are only on an entry-level standard.
"It is similar with the color reproduction. While the Z range’s Full HD screen almost completely covers the AdobeRGB gamut, our test candidate already fails in sRGB"

So it's mixed, some people and reviewers say the screen is good whilst some say its of an entry level standard.

I guess it might be likely that my Christmas present will be an external display this year, Well I sort of need one for my raspberry pi too.

 

voyanger: I agree with you that the S13P is better in terms of pure power/performance.

And I also noticed that a lot of users on the Asus UX32VD report light bleed on that IPS display, though a variable one (from little to a lot of light bleed), but other than that I can't find where this computer is at a fault.

I think the S13P definitely looks better but 1800 USD vs. 1580 USD does make me tilt in favour of the UX32VD. And the 220 USD in between could almost allow me to purchase a Samsung 830 256gb and still be about the same price as the S13P.

 

I only get sound from one earphone if I just put it in.

If I put it in and kind of push on it, keeping my fingers pressed, I get sound on both earphones.

 

What does the $1800 cover?, If it is sony proprietary SSD, take it off and add your own samsung 830 or crucial m4, plus add your own ram from crucial. Then you could compare the price. The Asus Zenbook is the same price as the Sony s13p in the UK although it may be different in the US, (Base price).

The Sony S series is very easy to upgrade, you just have to remove 2 screws and you will have access to the Hard Drive, Ram and battery. However it may seem that the Sony S series screen problems may be putting you off, well that's sony's problem and loss.

Could you try another pair of headphones, if it reproduces the same problem I guess Sony is having some sort of minor QC issues.

 

1800!?!? what were u putting in the S? If you don't buy their ram/hard drive then where are you getting this high price? Don't forget you have 1 day left to pick up your free PS3! (hows sony looking now)

 

The screen issue is kind of funny. I've heard many people say they thought the S13P screen was bad because laptop X's screen had colours that were "popping" more. I think many complaints with the screen is due to people gotten used to the crappy glossy panels with overblown colours sitting in many laptops lately. My fiance noted the same with a picture she took that looked way more exciting on her MacBook Air screen compared to my IPS Dell screen. Thing is my Dell portraited it much closer to reality instead of blowing up all the colours, which of course made the photo not as exciting.

 

Completely agreed - the screen is more than capable of displaying gorgeous (if not accurate) colour if only people would take the time to change the intel gpu settings.

Like any matte screen it looks a bit dull and grainy on the same settings that look nice on a glossy screen.

That being said, the viewing angles and contrast are definite issues.

 

Yes. The fan never turns entirely off on the S series laptops, even when it's not needed because the laptop is idling. I don't really know why, my Thinkpad T400 is entirely silent while idling because it turns the fan completely off. I guess this isn't that big a deal, though I want to crack my S15 open and see if adding some dampeners where the fan screws down to the frame makes it quieter.

 

I don't think that's the issue for me anyway as some people say the ordinary 768p screen had better colours both of them are matt. You should also try comparing it to the Z series (1080p), I consider that a benchmark display, it almost covers adobe RGB colour range about 90-95% and well it shows. The display is absolutely stunning, that said you do get what you've paid for.
But I wonder how the S series 900p panel compares with the 900p Z panel.
If you compare the 900p panel from the S series and compare it to the Thinkpad X230 ips display although 768p it triumphs over the S series 900p display.
Basically the 900p display on the S series has nothing 'premium' about it and well frankly it does not match Sony's Advertising. http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/3708/ad2b.jpg
edit: all panels have some coverage for adobe rgb

I use a matt sharp monitor 17'' which has colours and contrasts that beat most of panels offered on laptops and cheap monitors today. That monitor was from 2005, still going strong, I also have a 19'' Asus from 2007 matt panel which isn't as nice, colours are more dull and skews towards violet, but both have 1280x1024 that resolution is nice but non-existent now. At uni they use the iiyama T2250MTS which is glossy and 1080p but it is a nice display but it is also more expensive than average.

I can most definitely live with the orange-gate display but I'm not looking for another 15.6'' laptop, it's not the weight that matters to me, it's the actual footprint and size of the laptop. I reckon the orange-gate problem will disappear after a few months when Sony receives the revised panels from LG after they've used up current stock (of course). I doubt LG is manufacturing the old panels any more as it would be counter productive.

 

Hopefully someone comes up with a way to control the fan manually through software and/or a tweaked bios - thermally it could probably get away with a slower or intermittent fan on near-idle stamina mode.

Even though it's very quiet, it's a more annoying fan noise than some in quiet environments. Perhaps I'm just not used to it..

 

Does this happen to anyone's S13A? I'm not sure if I should get it exchanged. I think I will have a more difficult time considering I'm located in Canada.

 

Yes, the plastic bit creaks like any plastic when pressure is applied.

Opening and closing is fairly silent+smooth however

 

I wasn't aware Sony used plastic (maybe apart from the screen bezel), I thought they used a Magnesium alloy chassis, aluminium palm rest and carbon fibre lid. I can only assume Sony skimped on the hinge and made it plastic.

 

I've tried 3 different pairs of headphones. The stock iPod headphones, my Klipsch S4 headphones and then some generic headphones I had.

Something is wrong with Sony's headphone jack in the S15.

 

You probably just have a bad jack port, contact Sony for a replacement/repair of your s15 laptop since it is bothering you and the speakers on the entire vaio range are mediocre at best. Sony can make good speakers but they choose to neglect sound quality on their vaios.

 

voyanger:
This config of S13P costs 10 819 NOK, which according to google is 1771 USD.
Gun Metallic
Intel i5-3210M
W7 Home Premium
SATA HDD 7200 RPM 500GB (Can't afford an SSD for some time yet)
12 GB RAM (Offer in Sony store: costs me 78 USD for 8g chip)
Deselected software that Sony was so kind and add automatically.

Memory for 78 USD is marginally cheaper than adding a 8gb chip on my own. The Asus UX32VD (with GPU) is about 1475 USD. Adding 8gb RAM for a total of 10gb and not 12 as in the Vaio is another 80 dollars. That's a grand total of 1555 USD. (All prices lowest possible in Norway through Norwegian online retailers)

That's 216 USD that divides the two computers. And yes I know that the CPU/GPU in the S13P is a lot better than the ones in the UX32VD. But as gaming and great processing power isn't needed I think the UX32VD is a better choice for me.

If the backlight bleed is too bad then who knows, I might head back to the S13P again... despite the price.

 

Well, have you actually gone to a store and looked at the screen? When I did I wouldn't say it it was incredibly bad. Viewing angles were as any TN panel, not too great but functional. The matte display wasn't more grainy than other comparable screens and so on.

The Z do have a nicer screen of course, but adding that kind of money on anything usually gives you something better. Comparing to other notebooks at the same price point I wouldn't say the S13P screen is really bad. I will check more on monday when my S13P arrives.

 

Would appreciate if everyone who owns S15 report whether the headphone jack is almost unusable with only 3/4th headphone going in ?
I will be going to fry's on Sunday and I will take my earphones with me and will report here.

Sent from my iPad 2 using Tapatalk HD

 

I tore mine completely down today for the purpose of repasting the CPU/GPU.

Love it when the rest of the post didn't! FYI the fan is IMHO securely attached to the bottom of the lappy which is also the frame. Don't see any way to apply dampers or other quieting fixes that won't restrict airflow. Also the teardown is NOT for the faint of heart...to get the fan out you must pull the mobo!

 

I tore mine completely down today for the purpose of repasting the CPU/GPU. The fan assembly is quite firmly secured to the the bottom of the case which is all the frame there is in this machine. Didn't see anything that would decrease fan noise other than a slower fan speed. :-(

 

I did contact Sony for a replacement. This laptop is my replacement...


Both the original one I had and this new replacement have had the headphone jack problem...

 

Yes I have 2 Sony Centres near me. I feel that the display is only average out there, nothing special it certainly does not look like a 'premium' display, I wouldn't have mind if Sony left this display as the Vaio display plus, I don't know what crossed their minds, maybe LG promised good screens but didn't deliver.
Don't get me wrong the s13p screen is much better than my HP G62 screen (LG panel), but I felt it wast a major improvement over my Sharp 17'' monitor in terms of colours and blacks, but that panel was from 2005. I think displays nowadays have more quality control issues such as with uneven back-lighting, back-light bleed then there's the glossyness. Glossy screens are a cheap way to cover up sub-par screen technology, this saves money whilst providing displays that look better to most people.
This became an endemic when LED back-lighting was introduced. I preferred the cold cathodes, but I suppose LEDs give much better battery life and again cheaper to implement.

Matte displays today are a rarity, I miss them. Now the vaio line doesn't offer a true matte display, it is a glossy display with an anti-reflective coating.
Matte displays won't be coming back any time soon.

I can imagine display manufactures just providing see-through glass displays in the future because it saves them money because they don't have to implement any sort of back lighting system.

 

I guess you have no choice but to send it in again, if you're feeling brave you could always solder in a new jack. Or you could get a USB soundcard from ebay or something.

 

I can put it in 3/4 with little effort, with sound coming through both ear pieces, and its not about to fall out. But it can also go in "all the way" if I push harder and then taking it out is a bit of effort.

I tried it with just some crappy, generic earbuds.

 

Headphone plug on my S15 gets hard to push right about 50% of the way in, but it will go all the way in and works. I have other laptops that are similar (but also some that are really loose). I think the tolerances are just really close on the S15 making it really snug. I don't think it's a fault.

It's loosened up after the first couple uses now, and works just great.

 

The lack of redness is noticeable but not a huge issue. I was aware of this issue before getting the laptop, but the specs of this laptop were too good to pass up on.

For non-professional use, your eyes will adapt to the lack of red while viewing it and you won't miss it.

For professional use, I have yet to see a laptop with an acceptable colour range and reproduction for print use, and for web use, honestly, it doesn't matter that much. Any 'artist' that is being paid for their work should be using a calibrated desktop monitor anyway.

my background: former graphic artist in both print and web. Currently I'm head of marketing and I review a lot of advertisement material that eventually goes out to print. SO I have quite a bit of experience in this...I have also spent some time in traditional print shops and have experience adjusting CMYK on actual presses so I am VERY colour sensitive.

 

New Result :

Stock (500MHz) :


NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3520M CPU @ 2.90GHz,Sony Corporation VAIO score: P1397 3DMarks

VS

OC (900MHz) :


NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3520M CPU @ 2.90GHz,Sony Corporation VAIO score: P2231 3DMarks

90% Overclock!

 

^ that is one insane overclock, and the temperatures are great as well.

 

Wow! What an overclock! Did you touch voltages at all, and is the OC stable? Hell, can you even do that on the 640m LE's stock BIOS, or did you mod it?

I have got to learn how to do that so I can do it when my S13A arrives. Those are almost 650m scores!