Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

I think I'm going to pull the plug on the s15, but a couple more things. Is the build 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?

EDIT: In another thread, they showed how bad the "orangegate" issue is. Is it that bad, and I know others did some calibration, does that fix it so that "red" looks more red?

 

Damn, so I guess yields on the Kepler GPUs must be great if the 640M LE bins are OCing like that. I can see why Nvidia would want the OEMs to be locking the OC in BIOS with this kind of OC potential. They don't want people buying laptops with the cheaper GPUs and OCing them to be as fast as the expensive ones. This is good news for all of us who want to do some gaming on our laptops!

I don't know who said the laptop was plastic, but I guess it would be easily mistaken for plastic because when you tap on it, the material doesn't sound metallic. The outer shell of the laptop is entirely magnesium alloy except for a plastic strip at the top of the lid where the wireless antennas are. The keyboard tray and palm rest is aluminum.

Orangegate is as bad as it looks when it is displaying a fullscreen red image. Under normal usage, it's pretty difficult to notice unless you are specifically looking for it. I willingly bought the S15 knowing exactly what Orangegate was, having researched it pretty thoroughly before pulling the trigger. The Orangegate makes it impossible to do anything which requires precise color timing like photo editing, but I hope nobody does that anyways on their laptop screens unless they own an HP EliteBook or Dell Precision with the upgraded wide-gamut (92% of Adobe RGB) IPS panels on those laptops.

 

I have a 100% magnesium Sony minidisc player, and there is absolultely no way that my S15 is made from the same material. It feels like plastic. I plan on making one last video discussing these things.

 

So Sony's websites are lying when they say it's magnesium alloy? The sticker on the palm rest that says Mg is lying? I'm trying to figure out your argument here, Sony says the shell is magnesium alloy and you're going to dispute that?

 

Please. Give. Me. O_O

bios oc right? not some windows program like MSI AB?

 

Manage to increase the score a bit by OCing the Memory :


http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3879484?key=Lhg8qSoxbPC1UCz0QK5I1A

Guess it is bottlenecked by the DDR3 Memory.
It can definitely do more wonder with a GDDR5.

Scores on Par or abit higher than some of the stock GT650M.

 

Will you be sharing this BIOS mod sometime soon?

Sent from my GT-I9100

 

Nope, didn't touch the voltage at all.

It is very well stable on gaming and stress test.

It is BIOS MOD, not Stock BIOS unfortunately.

Yes, BIOS MOD.

Will share with everyone later by today I guess.

BUT PLEASE BE CAREFUL AND TAKE OWN RESPONSIBILITY!

 

Thanks, that would be excellent. Did you mod the BIOS yourself?

Sent from my GT-I9100

 

No prob.

Nope, got help from a MODDER from TECHINFERNO.

I am just a tester.

Big Credit to him!

 

Look man I'm just calling it like I see it, the removable plate on the bottom feels like plastic, and the material inside appears to be very rigid, but also of the same material. Maybe it has a coating, but in comparison to a magnesium minidisc player is obviously not even close to the same material. Perhaps it's because I chose a platinum silver S15?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Sony_MZ-NH1_back.jpg


Anyways, that's great news on the BIOS mod, definitely interested in seeing the difference before and after with BF3. If the 640M LE is stable at that level of performance this laptop truly is a bargain.

 

You have an S13P? This BIOS is for the S13 series then? Should I contact the modder and ask him to mod the S15 BIOS?

 

Wow - you didn't happen to take photos did you? How difficult was it? Did you need to tamper with any warranty stickers?

Petrov.

 

It might work with the S15.

BIOS tested : R0142C5
ISBSYS-00268785-1040.EXE

BIOS Compatibility from the source above :
SVS13115FDB
SVS13115FDS
SVS131190S
SVS13A15GDB
SVS15115FDB
SVS15117FDB
SVS151190S

Just opened a new thread, need 2 first tester before I share with everyone.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/677079-sony-vaio-s-bios-mod-gt640m-le.html#post8706585

ANYONE?

 

It's magnesium alloy. Yes it can "feel" like plastic however it is much stiffer (that's the reason it's used - aluminium parts are cheaper and easier to manufacture!), the "plastic" feel comes from two features of magnesium: it doesn't conduct heat very well and the exceptional stiffness makes tapping or otherwise handling it feel and sound "dead".
If it were plastic the parts had to be much thicker and have an array of ridges to get close to the same stiffness.

 

It is a magnesium alloy, it's like a dull grey/brownish colour, manufactures use this because it is not only stronger, stiffer and more tough it also keeps weight down. However the downsides of this material is that it doesn't conduct heat very well and it is quite brittle and as you said it feels like plastic.
Below is a picture of an IBM thinkpad magnesium alloy chassis/rollcage.

Well you should try the Sony Vaio Z 1080p screen, it covers around 90-95% of Adobe's RGB colour gamut, it is a very good display, the best I've ever seen on a laptop. It also beets many of the consumer ranges of LCD screens with the exceptions of the Dell Ultrasharp ips range and its direct competitors. But seeing that you're in business you get access to screens we don't.

 

So the problem you have with it is that they called it a premium display? The display is far from the worst display compared to other manfucaturers displays at the same price point so I don't really understand why this have become such an issue for people. I suspect it's due to what you are showing, people got too high expectations from the word premium.

The S15 is made from magnesium alloy and you really feel it is.

 

Are the BIOS the same for all S series sold worldwide? I'll be a tester if the BIOS will work on mine, it's a North America (US) S15.

edit: For anyone who cares, I downloaded the BIOS files from the CA and US subsections of Sony's support site. The MD5 checksums match, so the files are identical. If you're not sure if the modded BIOS will work on your model, you can do the same thing with the BIOS for your region and the CA region BIOS.

 

yes, Battlefield 3 is the best program for stress/stability testing overclocked GPUs. i also suggest whoever is overclocking his GPU to play a round or two of BF3 and to watch for crashes, hangs, or artifacts.

 

How do we install a new BIOS? Just run the .exe?
And if we need to come back to the stock BIOS? is it possible?

 

Do not use the one I linked.
That one is the original BIOS.
I will share with everyone later once the two tester manage to flashed theirs without any issue.

And yes, you can flash back to the stock BIOS if you want to.

 

Yes but they also extend the 'premium' into their Z series which is fair enough, the Vaio Z screens are impeccable. I agree the screen is better than average compared to other manufactures but by no means is it a 'premium' display, I wouldn't mind if they left it as the vaio display plus or advertised as more premium. The word premium is defined as - of exceptional quality or greater value than others of its kind. Which the S13p 900p display clearly isn't of exceptional quality it is reported of having a screen "comparable to entry-level models" - notebookcheck, some users reported banding when testing the panel here, infact some users have said that the ordinary 768p screen produced better colours .etc
Something that is advertised as premium cannot be worse than something that's standard.

If you look at many notebooks/ultrabooks in the same price range the S13p 'premium' screen is worse. Such comparisons were made between the Thinkpad X230 (Matte), Dell XPS 14 Ultrabook (Glossy), Asus Zenbook UX32VD 1080p (Matte) , Samsung Series 7 Chronos (17'' & Matte) and maybe HP envy 14 spectre (Glossy). I've seen all of these too and all had superior screens, but none of them can match the sony S13p superior performance (CPU and GPU wise), so it's a trade off.

Yes for me my main concern is that the display is advertised as 'premium', Sony should have just left this display as 'plus' like they did with the 2011 SA, in fact the new 2012 display is only slightly better than the older one.
http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/3708/ad2b.jpg

Now if the display was indeed advertised as 'plus' instead of premium people would not have complained so much.

It shouldn't be a problem as the 640m LE, 640m, 650m are essentially the same chip, but they may have been taken from different parts of the wafer with varying amounts of quality. So the chip I believe is based of at V.Bios level.

I believe furmark is a very good GPU stress testing tool, in fact it was designed to be a stress testing tool.

 

Which Samsung Series 7 Chronos? The 15,6" is pretty bad...really. If even that screen is better I won't be interrested in the S13P any more. The 17" chronos screen is quite nice.

 

I should have made it more clear that it is indeed the 17'' version I've seen, it has better blacks, higher contrast and that's what makes it better from the S13p but, the sRGB colour gamut is similar, but the Samsung Adobe RGB gamut coverage is a little better than Sony's. so colours should in fact be similar or slightly better on the samsung. The overall Image may look better on the Samsung as Sony's S13P has Lower contrast and worse black levels.

It may be more expensive than the Sony S13p but I take into consideration the 17'' size which makes it more expensive to produce.

The 15.6'' version I have heard it's terrible though I've never seen the 15.6'' version. Now on paper the 15.6'' version has a worse screen than the Sony s13p, in fact on paper it looks like the worst screen put on a laptop at that price range.

Just to further clarify even though the Lenovo Thinkpad X230 screen covers less sRGB than the sony S13p it makes up for it by having much better black and contrast levels, as a result the screen overall looks better.

And yes the Asus Zenbook I'm talking about is the UX32VD 1080p which has the 620M GPU.

Dell XPS 14 Ultrabook screen is glossy so it made the screen look better as it appears to have richer colours and better contrast and black levels.

Apple macbook pro screens cover more colours than srgb and have better black and contrast levels.

No notebook in the world currently defeats the vaio Z 1080p screen, that screen is the emperor of all notebook screens.

So my case stands Sony cannot advertise the s13p display as 'premium' when it isn't, all Sony really has to do in this respect is give maybe around 60-70% Adobe RGB coverage and vastly improve black and contrast levels, then it can become the 'premium' that Sony advertises, but they won't as it might cannibalise into the Z series sales.

That's my only issue, it's they way they advertise it. I didn't really expect this display to be good if it was just a marginal improvement over last years SA 'plus' screen.

 

I am still letting my S13P getting tortured by stress tests. Currently running FurMark 1.10.1 Link
Getting around 68°C to 70°C after some time. notebook is closed and running over an external monitor.
What are u guys getting as a result?

Only thing I am not that happy with is the fan noise. Running ventilation mode is quite audible.

Btw if any1 cares the headphone jack is working flawlessly.

 

Well that's nice temperature for such a slim notebook, try stressing it when the screen is up.

Fan noise is alwasys going to be audible when you're pushing the CPU/GPU, I mean fan noise isn't much of an issue for me, My desktop PC always has the fan on as a result there's a constant low hum, hard drives also contribute to this.
Smaller fans are more high pitched so it may be annoying.

 

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!

 

Tbh I wouldn't say the Zenbook display is better. The backlight bleed on it is TERRIBLE. I haven't had a chance to test the other you mentioned though. I will take some time to check out the screen when I get my computer on monday. I thought my Macbook Air screen was okay to use for some gaming and every day use but the colours was really blown up. I can compare my fiances MBA screen to the Sony when I get it.

 

Yes, very interested in seeing BF3 scores before and after. Will this BIOS work with the S15? What are the odds of the system being bricked?

 

What about battery life with i5 3210m and Hd4000 or 640m?

 

To be frank all displays in this day and age have backlight bleed, on the Zenbook I saw there wasn't any noticeable bleed but again that signals to ASUS to improve their quality control, I wasn't referring directly to the actual quality of the screen, rather the picture quality.

Well aside from any physical defects the UX32VD I experienced and saw has a brighter display coupled with good black levels and contrast levels, photos and movies looked great on it.

Here is some physical data that notebook check collated.
Asus Zenbook UX32VD
Maximum Brightness : 388 cd/m²
Average Brightness : 355 cd/m²
Brightness Distribution: 86 %
Black Level : 0.34 cd/m² (Lower is better)
Contrast Ratio : 1053:1
Coverage of SRGB : 96-99%
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sony Vaio S13p
Maximum Brightness : 235 cd/m²
Average Brightness : 225.2 cd/m²
Brightness Distribution: 86 %
Black Level : 1.21 cd/m²
Contrast Ratio : 188:1
Coverage of SRGB : 70-80%
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't think the macbook air's display is that good, colours may seem blown up due to the nature of glossy displays, this also enables the macbook air to achieve better black levels and contrast ratio, this alone gives a user a richer experience. It might have been a different story if it was matte display though.

In fact Sony's S13p panel is not too bad (better than average but low down in its price class) it just desperately needs better contrast and black levels and then the screen would have been better than most of its competition. And it it could achieve around 60-70% Adobe RGB gamut coverage then it would have easily been the second best display ever on a laptop, first being the vaio Z.

I can live with a bad display, my HP G62 has a hideous (LG) display it has crap everything and has physical defects such as back light bleed and uneven lighting.

The main issue for me is that Sony dares to advertise it as a 'premium' display in which it clearly isn't. I wouldn't be ranting if Sony still advertised it as the Vaio display 'plus' as it was in last years model only then I would understand. I am going to get the S13p as the power/performance ratio is most important to me. It could even be Sony is using a bad batch of screens.

I'm going to point fingers at LG, I've never seen a nice panel or product from them.

Depends on what you do, users on this forum have reported around 4-5 hours of web browsing on stamina mode (intel HD 4000). Lisa from mobiletechreviews got around 6 hours in her usage test again in stamina mode.
In speed mode (nvidia gt640m LE) you can expect a decrease of 1-2 hours in battery life.
If you're gaming regardless of mode battery life is only going to be about 0.5-2 hours tops.

 

Yeah, of curse the Zenbook display have some ups when it comes to contrast and such, it is a IPS panel after all and they are generally quite decent. The problem with using an IPS in such a small notebook is the fact that the backlight bleed gets worse with the thin IPS panels compared to the thin TN ones.

I would never get the Zenbook for other reasons though, Asus seem to have major QC issues these days.

We'll see how bad I find the S13P display after longer use than just checking it in the store. I'll put it next to my Dell U2412M and my fiances MBA and see how they all compare.

 

Please give your opinion on it. I don't really mind if it is ips or tn. I'd prefer an ultra TN display (Vaio Z) over a mediocre ips display any day. IPS VS TN doesn't mean very much today - apart from vertical viewing angles.

Trust me HP have much worse QC issues, their envy 14 spectre had a warp in it, this meant that the gorilla glass lid didn't sit fully flat against the bottom panel.

I honestly don't mind the Sony s13p screen I just don't approve of Sony's lubricious advertising.

 

Ordered today the S 15" Custom Performance laptop. Added the sheet battery, 12GB of RAM, Blu Ray burner.

Going to order two of these

Amazon.com: Crucial 512 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT512M4SSD2: Computers & Accessories

to replace the 640GB HDD and have 1 TB SSD RAID 0.

Any idea if that will work? what screwdrivers do I need?

 

Not what i was expecting to be honest This laptop is very attractive, but i'm really afraid of running out of battery just when i need it. On the other hand i think that 5 hours is enough for a full day at the univesity. I only hope this battery has a longer life than my old Hp one.

 

If you're that concerned you can always get the optional sheet battery, this will effectively double the runtime. Don't worry it's not an ugly battery that sticks out, instead it will add some thickness and weight.

I'm going to assume you're going to be using Microsoft word and stuff nothing heavy - you should get around 4-5 hours, with sheet battery it's 8-10 hours.

 

"Office" work is the base actually. My activities will be mainly web surfing, skype, light photo editing and running some programs like c compiler or Matlab. These are not very demanding software in terms of power consumption but my laptop should run almost all the time. I don't know what to do, my other options are dell xps 14 and macbook pro/air 13, but all these are more expensive and offers a low quality hardware (cpu ex).

 

I am sure someone will come out with a high capacity Japanese battery at some point.

 

Indeed, but how easy will it be to fit it inside the notebook?

 

They are no bigger than the usual battery only denser.

 

I don't think so, I've only mentioned that Sony could have used Lithium Polymer instead of Lithium ion cells as lithium polymer consists of flat cells and well take up less room then cylindrical cells. Now someone may make a 3rd party battery but I highly doubt it as the costs of manufacturing the battery will be prohibitive.

 

I have had high quality Japanese cells get 30% better life. They can be expensive though.

 

Finally got my tracking info - currently sat in Frechen, Germany. So guess I'm looking at a Tuesday/Wednesday Delivery.

Once it gets here my checklist before deciding to open it up (for RAM and SSD installation) is:
-Bezel fitting
-marks on casing
-Headphone jack
-Fan Noise
-Flickering / excessive banding / terrible screen in general
(I'm sure the screen is fine but flickering would be a bit of a bummer as I'm fairly sensitive to that)
-Memtest the soldered 4GB ram
-Prime95 for a bit to make sure all works OK as standard.
-make sure it can drive my external display with no issues
-If OK, take an ABR of the Windows Certificate
-Take HDD out and store safely for any possible return in the future
-clean install

Then spend the next couple of weeks getting everything the way I like it.

 

How do you backup the Windows certificate?

 

Using this.

It states for Vista but also works for Windows 7. I've used it successfully on both Dell and HP machines but never a Sony - I'm assuming its no different. Only works on OEM versions (I think) so wont work on a retail installed version.

Once I've clean installed a new version (and just skipped entering the licence key), you run the "restore" part and it activates. No phone calls, no online activation - its great and saves a little bit of hassle.

As far as I understand it, the licence key on the sticker with the machine is *not* the key thats actually used in the Windows installation thats supplied. At least thats the situation I've had on all previous machines. I'm guessing that manufacturers have some kind of "bulk" key they use for their machines. IDK.

 

The beta version of that tool worked perfectly on mine

 

Also I've just noticed with no audio driver installed there is a 'bass boost' option available under enhancements - with a fairly large boost (+15dB around 100-150hz) I'm getting much better sound than any of the sony/dolby stuff. It seems to be managing some kind of wizardry that keeps the distortion far lower than simply eq.

The only other alternative I've found is a program called Hear, but it causes significant audio latency, background cpu usage and interrupts.

 

That's stuff built into Windows, if you use the built-in Realtek audio driver.

I just wish there was a way to 'unlock' the Realtek HD Audio Manager so I can use that instead of the useless non-customizable Sony/Dolby stuff. Or if someone could hack the Dolby Home Theater v4 app so it shows all the customizations like full equalizer which are hidden to us.

 

Figured out at least partly why the Intel gpu colour settings (only assuming here that they are the cause) make things look better - it's applying some kind of subtle dynamic contrast (or HDR?) algorithm. Very clear when switching back and forth from winamp to my web browser - with winamp focused everything fades to washed out and back in Firefox it fades back to normal. Weird.

Not necessarily complaining though, it still looks nice and is completely unnoticable otherwise

 

Is there a compilation list of all available hacks/mods/unlocks for the 2012 S series? I'd like to try to do something to clear up some iffyness with the screen and tinny speakers. :I