Official Sony Vaio Fit multi-flip PC Owners' Thread

You can upgrade the SSD yourself, however as its a NGFF SSD they aren't readily availble in the shops. At the moment its probably cheaper to upgrade when you order.

I believe the RAM is soldered to the motherboard but may be wrong.


Martin

 

Thanks. I assume it is the 80mm format of NGFF aka M.2 SSD?

I am thinking of buying a 128gb model because it is available now, whereas the 256gb and 512gb models will be available much later.

 

I got my Flip 15 some days ago with 2880x1620 display, 16gb ram, Nvidia GPU and SSD... First impressions:


Sound: The speakers are on the back of the unit and sound like standard notebook speakers... A little bit brassy and with close to zero bass.

Display: Solid but not overwhelming viewing angles. The colours are good and what i expect from an IPS-panel. I have a little bit of backlight bleeding in the left and right bottom corners. There are no defective pixels. The resolution is a problem for windows: Interfaces of programs are sometimes too small to read or look washed out. But programs that support high resolutions look fantastic.

Keyboard: Yes, there is a lot of flex. But what i dislike much more: Keyboard-travel is close to zero on Vaio keyboards.

Touchpad: I have problems with all the stuff that Windows 8 offers, so i do wrong commands (like switching the program) quite often. But i think it's just a matter of time to get used to it. What i don't understand: Sometimes the touchpad doesn't recognize my input, even if i touch it in the middle and not in the corners (where Windows commands come into play).

GPU-Performance: The Nvidia-GPU is inactive in all programs so far (including OneNote with digitizer stylus).
Based on my testing, a GPU is crap in this notebook. The Nvidia optimus technology deactivates the GPU completely while at battery useage. You can't change that, since it's linked to the bios settings which you can't edit. You need to plug in to get the GPU to work.
Guild Wars 2 produces 20-30 frames in lowest settings, which is not enough for my taste.
The GPU will never activate for Onenote, even if i force it via nvidia control panel.

Battery: For battery useage i configured the "energy-saving mode" to maximum performance reduction. Like throttling the CPU to 50% max usage or reducing the hertz of the monitor. Everything is found in the windows energy options or options of intel hd graphics. The vaio control center just shows you these options (or better: reduced amount of options) with a new interface. So my tip: Ignore the Vaio program and go to the windows options directly!
I got 8 hours of light useage (downloading stuff and installing a program now and then) with my profile. I can still write with the digitizer in onenote without more lags and full hd videos are still without lags - even with the cpu throttled so much. The biggest difference is the load time of programs, Windows is 1-3 seconds slower with actions if you throttle the cpu so much. And: The fan doesn't kick in once... It's like having a big baytrail-pc. Low performance, but long battery.
IMPORTANT: Windows energy options allow you to set the CPU to "passive" fan behavior, so that your CPU throttles before the fan would spin faster. In that mode, the fan stays inactive 95% of the time, so keep that in mind if you need a save way to make it silent. Although that options makes the notebook really a lot slower, even Firefox needs 3-4 seconds to start (compared to <1 seconds with "active" cooling).
I only need power when i am at home or at a workplace, so i switch to high performance for that case. But well, that brings me to...

... the Fan: I have no high pitched noise, but the whirling is kind of... high pitched. It's exactly the same noise of the fan of the vaio pro 13 of my friend. And it whirls a lot if you punish the machine, like with gaming or... yes, even onenote (on high performance mode). But tbh, i come from an old Dell machine and the Vaio is still silent in comparison, but you better decide on your own. There is no bios update for the fan in my country (germany).
I can also say that the first booting is no indication of the later behaviour of the fan. Deinstall all the bloatware (especially McAfee) and upgrade to 8.1, after that i am quite happy with the fan, especially in energy-saving-mode, where it's off 95% of the time.
IMPORTANT: A deactivated screen made my fan spin up to 100% all the time and the reason was Windows Defender (the anti-vir program). If you have the same problem, try that:
Go to the start screen and type "task" and open the task scheduler.
In task scheduler you can find under Microsoft folder the windows defender folder, then the tasks and change them to be deactivated.

Chassis: I like that it's accessible, but it feels quite cheap on the backside. The is a lot of room betweek the plastic and metal potion on the back of the machine (where the hinge for the display is). Still better than not accessible hardware

Digitizer: It's duosense pen 2, so no suprises here. It works without lags in onenote (office 2013) and i am happy with it. I had no other tips for the pen, although there should be one. Sony gave me a 50 euro payback because of that... Very helpful service!
Something that suprised me: The pen doesn't work well at edges of the display, just like wacom units we saw in the past.
I don't like the feel of the plastic tip on the glass-screen. I hope there is a tip with rubber available for me somehow. Otherwise i will use a clear screen protector once they are available...

Wifi: Is working fine for me now, but my maximum download-speed is 250kb/s, so i can't test higher transfer rates.



Overall it's a good product. I like the size of the screen for working. But this is not a gaming device. Like all other ULV-processors, it's just very weak on the CPU-part and the weird GPU-settings in bios prevent the (also weak) Nvidia GPU to work while on battery. So bury your dreams for a mobile gaming device...

Btw... I played Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2 with the stylus. Well, it works very good technically, but it is not a good way to play such games. I miss the precision of a mouse very much, especially for scrolling. I also don't like that your hand/arm covers a large part of the screen. And my hand hurts after 15 mins of playing that way xD

 

I hate to double post but the shift key issue is a big deal, at least for me.

Is anyone experiencing this?

 

Short answer is "no". I remember wondering the same thing when I first took a look at the pen... but I've not touched it again since (about 2 weeks now!). It's time will come & who knows, may be then, I'll figure out what the different nib is for!

 

So wow the fan is loud! It was quiet when turning on and setting up windows, then suddenly..... WHOOOOOSSSSHHHHHHHH. Let's see if all the updates and stuff helps...

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

Where is this passive cooling option? I can't find it for the life of me and the fan is really reallllllyyyyy driving me crazy! My 4 year old vaio is so much quieter!

 

More tweak options here: How to Tweak the Advanced Settings of a Power Plan in Windows 7

Someone answered me in the other forum, that his fan was still spinning, even with passive cooling and throttled CPU. So i can't promise success for you


Some additional words to the gpu-performance: I managed to get constant 60 frames at really fu***** lowest settings in Guild Wars 2. But: The fan was on 100% all the time. AND ITS SO DAMN LOUD, i could not stand to annoy my neighbour at a lan party with that sound of a airplane.
And i tested the tip with the keyboard and i saw it too. In GW2 or WoW and other games where you move with WASD while you use skills, i often need combinations like shift+w+d+e (activating a shift+e skill while strafing right forward) and suprise... It doesn't work. shift+w+d+r works. Well, some combinations work, some not. But be prepared: The keyboard is very suboptimal for gaming due to that behaviour!!!

 

Hi guys,
I recently ordered a flip 15 and a seagate 600 SSD from newegg so I can replace the hard drive with the SSD. However, I am not sure if the warranty will be voided by doing so. Does anyone know what will happen to the warranty when we replace the hard drives by ourselves?

 

i got my 14a today and I'm having difficulty making sure I've done all the updates to minimize the fan noise

i followed the directions on the optimizing for diskspace thread and i've done enough updates to now have 8.1
i can't seem to download the bios update because "my system is already up to date"

but i still get significant fan noise (which occasionally dies down for a minute before getting louder)
and the bottom of the laptop is quite warm. warmer than my 2 year old samsung which has been running for a longer period of time

any suggestions of what to try?

 

Thanks. I don't remember seeing that option, are you using Windows 8 pro?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

Interesting. My 14" has a MQ01ABF050 drive without the trailing "H" in the model number. That makes all the difference as the H drive does have the 8GB of NAND flash while mine does not.

 

Hi guys, I have received my Vaio Flip 14A 8GB RAM, 500 GB HDD (not hybrid ). I have already noticed 3 dead pixels. has anybody had problems with dead pixels? what is the Sony policy on them (at least within 2 weeks after purchase?) The fan is fairly loud, but I consider it quite standard noise level for a laptop, once in awhile, not too much. Downloading windows 8.1 update - takes forever, somehow limited at 10MB/s, I don't know why? did anybody have this problem? windows 8 is new for me, getting used to it, overall I like the clean looks, good for touchscreens, might be a little too dumbed down. now, the BIOS updates - I don't see anything related to the fan noise (just the touchscreen critical update on the sone support site - is that it? or should it appear after the windows 8.1 update is over?) Finally, I don't have McAfee installed, just Kaspersky trial and the Pacman xbox trial - uninstalled. Which other massive bloatware programs or apps are there? I can't seem to find anything else easily identifiable as bloatware (except for Vaio programs, which might be actually useful). Thanks, guys.

 

Dead pixels should be under warranty, phone Sony up and complain. You'll probably have to send it in for repair.

You can also try the tips here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=738062

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

That's interesting, any combinations that include the shift key (ie Shift+Fn+RightArrow or Ctrl+Shift+T or Ctrl+Shift+P) don't work for me either. Does anyone else have this issue or better yet, knows how to fix it?

 

Hi there jdonalds

You and IQ2014 got non hybrid drives. Another member recently posted about getting a regular Western Digital drive as well. That sucks...
I remember looking at VIAO Fits about a month ago for my friend, and they come in two flavors : "Fit" and "Fit-E". The "Fit" has an aluminum body, the "Fit-E" is plastic. The only other significant difference between the two is that the aluminum Fits do get hybrid drives when ordered with a HDD, while the Fit-E gets regular mechanical drives. You guys should be getting a rebate because "Flip-E" models don't exist
I also read recently that NAND flash chips manufacturing plants have trouble keeping up with demand and there are only a few plants in the world where it is produced. Demand for SSDs is on the rise and hybrids are more popular than ever. Looks like the Sony plant has run out of 500 hybrids ; don't know about other sizes.

Just FYI for the curious/maniacs out there : while shopping the different sites on Black Friday, I came across an ad on NCIX, for totally new Western Digital hybrids, called WD Black² Dual drives. They are essentially hybrids with more NAND flash than we've ever seen :
WD Black²
Only one model is offered right now : it is a 1TB HDD + 120GB of NAND flash. Nice. I saw it priced at just over $300 the other day, so somewhere between 250 and 500GB SSDs. Note : you can get a 120 or 128GB SSD + a 1TB external drive for less money ; however, it is nice to have a "combined" drive I guess. But... they are 9.5mm drives, so no good for most ultrabooks (and Flips).
No news on the 7mm large capacity hybrids they annonced last spring.
===

Another observation I made while playing with the 14A : someone here mentionned the weird location of USB ports a few days ago. There are two USB 3.0 ports on the 14A : one on each side. The one on the right is located further back while the left one is about halfway. The Flips have those two rubber feet at the back and the long rubber strip near the front. The feet at the back help tilt the Flip upward a bit. The underbelly is not flush with the deck all the way : it starts flush at the back (near the screen hinge) and then tapers in as you get to the front. This means that ports located near the back are more easily reached than those not at the back ; with the slight tilt from back to front, I noticed that a bulky USB stick cannot be inserted into the left side USB port. When I say bulky, I mean a large Kingston Data Traveler Ultimate G3 (about 7/16" thick = 11mm). It does fit into the right side port, because of the increased ground clearence from the tilt (that port is further back). No clearence problem from the recessed position of the ports though, as the large Kingston drive clears the deck above. The problem is clearence below, not above. I don't know if thicker drives exist but if they do, they probably wouldn't fit and one would need an extension cable or hub.

The M500 SSD has shipped and should be here today or tomorrow. I won't have time to install it in the next couple days, but I will get to it ASAP.

 

Today, while browsing with Chrome I noticed sth strange that reminded me of your post.
In Chrome you can reopen a closed tap with "strg+shift+t"
Strange thing is, if you just press "t" on the keyboard, it recognizes it immediately, same thing with "strg+t" which opens a new tap, "shift+t" -> "T", but as soon as I press "strg+shift+t" I have to press the "t" button very hard to function.
I confirmed that this is not an issue with chrome, by using the on-screen keyboard and even an external one, where it works just fine.
Can anyone try this with his Flip pls

 

Hi Randy

Ok, a few people have asked about this in the last week. My answer : shouldn't be a problem. Sorry if my answer isn't a definite "no problem". This subject has been discussed many-many times before, but the bottom line is... check your warranty. For me, it's simple : unless there is a sticker preventing me from opening the case, I'll go in and swap a drive or RAM if I feel like it.
Convventional wisdom tells me this : keep the original parts for the period covered by the warranty, and put them back in if you ever need to send the laptop in for repairs under warranty. That's it.
If I am ever faced with a problem, I know I will argue until they... see my point
That's all I can and will say on the matter. Others may chime in with other opinions

>> I am swapping the HDD for a SSD and am not worried at all.

Enjoy the Seagate SSD

 

Hey Guys, Im thinking in getting the Flip 4 customized but i have couple doubtS

1. Can i put an Samgsung EVO sdd?

2. Can i use WIDI with the flip 14 (i just got an LG Smart tv with WIDI Support) , not sure that the i5 4200 has WIDI support , intel webpage says yes, but lots os other web pages says no. (This is a keyfeature for me)

3. What is model of the wirelles adapter that uses the Flip 14 ?


Thank you ver much,
I hope you can help me : )

 

1. Yes you can use the Samsung EVO line of SSD's (just double check before you buy the SSD that it is in fact a 7mm form factor)
2. Yes the flip 14 does have support WiDi
3. Intel Wireless-N 7260

Hope this helps

 

People with the Nvidia GPU. If you suddenly have a decrease in FPS in games for no apparent reason, it might be due to the GPU throttling when the Intel CPU goes into Turbo Boost. To bypass this: go to advanced power settings > Processor Power Management > Change to 99%.

 

Thanks for the great news! I am also looking forward to trying the Flip with WiDi. On closer inspection, I am not sure that 2 of my "dead pixels" are truly dead pixels, its looking more like they might be on the surface of the screen, but I couldn't clean them with any wiping, although I haven't tried to hard, I am worrying that I can damage the screen. Does anybody have good suggestions to clean the screen well and safely? Also, anybody using screen protectors ? Recommendations?

I am waiting for my SSD, playing with it and liking it more and more. I love the split screen feature of windows 8, the beauty of the screen and the real estate. I am happy I didn't buy surface pro as I planned initially. 14 inch is almost perfect for me.

Another question, when you create recovery media with Sony Vaio care and then have to reinstall windows from it, do you have to download windows 8.1 update and install all office programs again?

 

Hello, before I needlessly turn in my laptop in hopes of getting a new one without the problem I think I'm having now, I decided to ask you guys to see if this happens to you as well.
I have 2 things that happen with my vaio flip 14a, 750GB HDD, 8GB RAM, i5 machine:
1) There is this very annoying chirping noise coming from the RIGHT side of my laptop. It's not the fan because the fan is on the left. I here this griding, chirping noise, very hard to explain, that sounds like morse code going on and off. I read somewhere that a chirping noise could be a hard drive failure, but I don't know if it's the same noise I'm talking about.
2) most people have problems with the touchscreen, I'm having problems with my touchpad. Sometimes the mouse disappears and I can't use the touchpad, but I can use the touch screen. I have to turn my laptop off and on to get it normal. I don't have to shut it down or restart it, though.

Just wanted to know if I have a defective laptop or if these things have to do with the software problems. I'm almost certain the chirping noise doesn't have to do with the software, though. Thanks guys!

 

Guys I have two questions:
1. I read that the SSDs have shorter life than the HDDs...but what does this mean? In 4 years will I have to replace the SSD?
2. I'm not sure how much RAM I need, if I have to run some big program in the future and I have not so much RAM, the processes will be slower or they won't even start??

Thank you

 

Thank you very very much from helping me that fast : )

Im just checked on the EVO and it is 7mm ..... so happy that you confirm me that is has WIDI (still not get why so many pages says this processor doesnot support it)

About the wierless card,I just went to the Sony Store web page, and specifically in the Flip 13 it says Intel Wireless-N 7260 ... however i am worried about the fact that for the Flip 14 VAIO Fit 14A | Flip PC - All VAIO Flip Sony Store - Sony US it says " Wi-Fi® Adapter : Broadcom® BCM43142 (802.11b/g/n) " ... any thoughts about it?
can somebody who owns the flip 14 comment this?


Just a final doubt, is it any link or part on the forum where i can see how to make the recovery copy from the hdd to the sdd ( i am an average user and never had an sdd so really do not know which program or how to make the data transfer betwwen the HDD and the SDD)

Once again thank you very !!

Im really having hard time deciding between this Flip 14 and the Ativ Book 8

 

IMO:

1) That is true, they have a shorter life span.I believe Samsung warranties their 840 pros for 5 years. Will it fail in 5 for certain, no.
2) 8 gigs should future proof you for the next few years, unless you doing professional type things on it.

 

So I'm confused. I ordered my flip about 3 weeks ago and Sony put a temporary authorization on my credit card which expired after a few days. It went into manufacturing about a week ago and today I got an email that said it shipped. However I didn't get any tracking information and they haven't charged my credit card. I find it hard to believe they'd ship it before charging me. Anyone else have a similar experience?

 

I opted for 6 months 0% financing. The agreement was actually started until a few days ago for some reason, so although it originally said my first payment was due 12/11/13, my next (2nd) payment is now due in January and the agreement has switched from pending to active. Maybe they charge it once delivery has been confirmed? Seems strange.



Fan is still loud, haven't yet done the 8.1 update and wasn't able to install the BIOS updates showing on the UK Sony Support website. Seem to be having a few touch pad issues, occasionally its not registering when I tap the touch pad. I find all these issues very odd considering that they're not present at all on my 4 year old Vaio VGN-NS30E. At the moment I would even consider the flip laggy and slow compared to my old one (which I'm currently using to type because I haven't got the hang of switching apps easily yet. The high res screen does look good but for things like skype the text is tiny and I can't make it any bigger. I tried downloading the "desktop" version but this resulted in blurry text and some things in the preferences menu didn't display properly at all. I'm not happy with the whole apps and desktop programs as separate things, and I definitely don't like being unable to "close" apps. Haven't tried out the touchscreen much or the stylus yet.

 

I got a Flip 14A with 8GB ram, 500 GB HDD.
This is very nice looking, well built lap top but extremely weak wifi, laggy mouse touch pad and touch screen irritates me.
Wifi card is BCM43142, not N7260. Bios update, driver update, win8.1 update didn't change anything better.
I don't care much about fan noise, BUT wifi sucks big time and it makes this pc useless.
I'm very disappointed.

 

Hello, before I needlessly turn in my laptop in hopes of getting a new one without the problem I think I'm having now, I decided to ask you guys to see if this happens to you as well.
I have 2 things that happen with my vaio flip 14a, 750GB HDD, 8GB RAM, i5 machine:
1) There is this very annoying chirping noise coming from the RIGHT side of my laptop. It's not the fan because the fan is on the left. I here this griding, chirping noise, very hard to explain, that sounds like morse code going on and off. I read somewhere that a chirping noise could be a hard drive failure, but I don't know if it's the same noise I'm talking about.
2) most people have problems with the touchscreen, I'm having problems with my touchpad. Sometimes the mouse disappears and I can't use the touchpad, but I can use the touch screen. I have to turn my laptop off and on to get it normal. I don't have to shut it down or restart it, though.

Just wanted to know if I have a defective laptop or if these things have to do with the software problems. I'm almost certain the chirping noise doesn't have to do with the software, though. Thanks guys

 

I think that noise is coming from HDD, I remember my macbook pro had similar noise from HDD shock protection. I'm not sure if Vaio Flip has HDD protection though.

I don't have touch pad problem like you described, have you try to re-install driver?
You may update all of driver, BIOS and firmware if you haven't done it.

 

I have a Vaio flip 14 inch, and I had a lot of problems with the touch screen acting up and registering touches without anyone touching the screen, but was able to fix it using the calibration tool on Sony's website, however I am having an additional problem with the touch screen where the bottom right corner and the edges in general are very unresponsive to touch. Sometimes they will respond but often it takes multiple tries. I have updated many of the drivers but cannot figure out how to fix these semi-dead corners

 

I believe the Flip 14 has HDD shock protection. Mine has a software setting to turn it on/off.

 

Anyone able to tell me how I could configure a three-fingers tap on mouse pad to show me the desktop?
Command lines I know from xp don't work anymore here..

Could someone also tell me why there are a grand total of 6 partitions on the hard drive of this machine? Overall windows 8.1 is such a mess compared to windows xp. Did Microsoft fire every design engineer with understanding of the intuitive things?

 

Could also someone please tell me how to activate the pen??? I have put the battery inside, but nothing happen when I click with the pen on the screen. Do I somehow need to activate it? Or connect it? God, I am so lost.

 

You can configure the touch-gestures in the Driver, look in the tray-bar, there is a Icon from the touchpad.

There are 6 Partitions, because of the recovery and uefi. Someone listed the partions in this thread.

And Windows 8 is much more intuitiv than Windows xp. You only have so much experience with the unintuitiv Windows xp that you think different ;-)

 

Just got my tracking number for my new Pink 14A laptop and expecting delivery Friday. If all goes well and if my luck doesn't get in the way I will have the most perfect laptop to play with come this weekend.

woohoo.

If you wish I can post the tablet to show what the pink version looks like for those who wish to purchase one.

I have a 17" and if all goes well, I might use that laptop as a backup and use this one as my primary.

I do now regret not getting the i7 though. I bought the i5. Does anyone notice a difference between the i7 and i5?

I did get the full 8 gb of ram for the system though.

 

Actually I have always noticed a sort of... click. Not quite a chirp, but a click that comes from the laptop everyonce in a while, especially when I move it. I have no idea what this is. Although I have noticed that if I am playing a game and here this... click.... then the game freezes for a moment. So maybe it is the drive?

About the touchpad, it is pretty weird, try pressing Fn+F1 it will turn off the tochpad and then do it again to turn it back on, maybe that will fix it?

 

I had the exact same problem, touchscreen was compltely useless. Go to the sony driver site and download the "Touchscreen Callibrator" tool or whatever its called. It runs a command prompt that tells you not to touch the screen for a minute and then says its done. After running the tool the touchscreen is absolutely perfect

 

I have a question regarding the build for other flip owners--
there's a significant amount of flex with the lower part of the laptop

for example where the sony label is, below the release/lock slide, i can push in quite a bit
On my keyboard, the back of the keyboard (the board) has a great amount of flex.
the amount of space/depth between the laptop and the keyboard is not uniform.
the keyboard also appears to be slightly "bloated" toward the middle

does anyone else have this flimsy structure issue?

 

I spoke to a friend of mine whose job is to fix computers and he said that the sound is the hard drive "heads" that read the information scratching the hard drive, and that it's something that can get worse over time and mess up your information. I am going to exchange mine and if you are under 30 days I suggest you do the same.....

 

Interesting. My old VAIO makes the same noises (although the fan is never as loud) and so far the hard drive has had no problems in the 4 years that I've had it.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

If it happens when you move it and causes a brief freeze, the hard drive may have shock protection. I had an HP a few years back that had the same thing. It tries to detect if the laptop is in motion and positions the drive head so it won't crash on impact. You can test by intentionally moving your laptop quickly and see if it engages.

 

Actually, 4 gigs will be enough for everyday usage, development and a little gaming.
Plus, an 8gig stick of 1600mhz low-power ram costs about $80 (here in Canada) where the Sony Store upgrade costs to 8gb costs $100

 

My Flip is in the air, due Friday!!!!!

 

Hi all,

I have the Vaio Fit13A and I had a question in regards to the display when waking up from sleep mode (or sometimes a cold boot). Randomly, when I awake the computer, the tiles on the Start screen will be in a different order, and the icons on the taskbar will be smaller. Each time, I have to go into the Control Panel's appearance settings and change the Orientation to something random, then revert it back to the original "Landscape" setting to get the icons and tiles back to their normal size/order. Any reason why this may be happening?

 

This happened to me also, flipping the Screen to presentation mode and back was a quick fix. However can't say that it happened again after the BIOS update..

 

I could understand that, my friend checked for that but mine does it when it is using the hard drive, so for example if I copy something from one folder to the other, that click becomes a constant whir until it stops copying. It doesnt matter if you are moving it, it doesn't affect the noise from my computer whatsoever. And now it randomly started screeching really loud without me doing anything to it. I dont think in my situation it is the shock protection.

 

Would you be so kind to write here the url for the drivers? Ty a lot


Inviato da mio iPad utilizzando Tapatalk

 

It depends on the model you have.
Here is the link for 14A for Win8.1: Sony eSupport - SVF14N13CXS - Drivers & Software