Official Vaio Pro 13 Owners Lounge (SVP13 2013)

there appears to be a major performance difference between the 128 and 256 ssds. The 256 is the much faster one here, as seen by the serial numbers in the program.

 

are those two SSDs using the same interface? it seems like one is PCIe and the other is SATA to me.

edit:
just looked them up, it's exactly what it is. PCIe vs. SATA

 

are they only using pci-e for the 256? that would be disappointing...

 

no, they are using it for the 128gb as well. it's just some countries (europe confirmed so far) only get SATA. while the US, japan, and some other countries get the PCIe interface.

 

Going to return mine, the fan noise is just too much Too bad, otherwise I'm loving it.

 

Hi, i'm having the same problem since i updated the latest BIOS version :O

Didnt have any problems with my vaio (no noise, no wlan probs etc..), but now after updating the BIOS i can only turn it on when plugged in

Does any one have a solution? Sadly i couldnt find a downgrade bios version

Edit: Back on Windows it seems as if the battery is stuck at 67%


Fix: Battery reset (It is behind the sheet battery cover)

 

Can someone with a 128 benchmark it? I've only seen good speeds on the 256

 

Managed to find the battery reset button! (It is behind the sheet battery cover)

Worked!


@jcarrz: here's a screenshot of my svp13 120gb ssd german/europe version.

 

Thanks! It just happened to my daughter's Pro, could have been a BIOS update that triggered it.

Works fine now again.

 

Sony helped me with the battery issue too. Battery reset button.

(But I didnt do a BIOS update)

 

Anyone know if it would be possible to replace the wireless adapter in the Pro13 from the N7260 to the AC7260? Would be nice to have a/c networking on the device without the need for a separate usb dongle.

It's all well and good that Sony decided to use the N-7260 with 2.4 and 5ghz and not the 2.4ghz but I feel if you go the extra step to have dual band, why not just add a/c as well to the laptop.
ngs
Finally, I currently have a 2.4ghz router, would buying a dual band router speed things up or is there no point since the card only supports up to 300Mbps?

 

i'm pretty sure it's possible. at least when i was looking it up to do the same thing, it looks like it uses the same connection. i'm not sure if the dimensions are different though. because of how thin this laptop is, it might not fit due to the dimensions. i know the AC card is a tad bit heavier.

for your router, 2.4ghz, but which wireless standard? if it's G, moving to N would help. if you're not going to be moving that far (no extreme range requirements) from the router, then i would get a router with the 5ghz band. it's less congested so it'll be faster. but it will still be limited to a maximum speed of 300Mbps because the card only has 2 antennas.

edit:
found a teardown that someone did. for that person that was asking about the 128gb PCIe SSD, the pictures in the blog shows that it exists.

i see that the wifi card is near the USB port area. looks like there might be some room for that AC card after all. looks like it's easy to open, but hard to put back together. the guy didn't state if there were any warranty stickers to avoid or not though

Eyes on Mobile Tech: Sony Vaio Pro (One of the first Haswell Ultrabooks) Teardown, Upgrade How-to, Mini Review, & Benchmark

 

The router I have is a netgear WNR3500L.

WNR3500L

IEEE™ 802.11 b/g/n 2.4 GHz

I was thinking of getting either the netgear R6200 or R6300

R6200

R6300

I would be tempted to open the Pro, but I fear I will break something

 

yeah i think you're fine with what you have. it supports up to 300 which is what the pro supports right now. if you do upgrade your card to AC then, yeah i would get the R6200/6300. otherwise, there's no point really unless you're just looking to upgrade to the 5ghz, in which that router would work for that and sort of future proof (i say sort of because the AC spec right now, all the routers are draft spec which isn't really AC certified) your network.

 

A have posted this question in the Vaio Pro 11 forum, but maybe it also applies to the Pro 13?

A few days ago my power light was blinking orange when the PRO11 was put into standby mode. Nice to see, moreover as I was used to this with my Vaio Z12-notebook. But I don't see it anymore. Does anyone of you know about this topic? Is blinking orange normal or don't you see a blinking power light when in standby mode? Is it maybe a setting in one or another app?

 

I just bought the R6300 and get incredible download speeds with a 101mbit connection.

 

Is this with the Pro 13?

 

you should be able to hit that with the normal wireless N routers as well. if i had that connection speed, i'm pretty sure i'd get it lol sadly i only have 50 down/50 up

 

should maybe but I couldn't. Best I was getting with my 3500 was about 50mbit and with the 6300 I get anywhere from 120-150.

 

Finally notebookcheck.com did their investigation (in German): Test Sony Vaio Pro 13 - notebookcheck.com

 

hmm that's weird. because tests show that the N speeds are the same as any other N router (it just has a little better range). i have a 3800 and 3700 to cover my entire house (inside and outside) and i can get those transfer speeds no problem. maybe you're just farther from the router?

 

Thank you for that, those images of the interior of the notebook made me think. We all know that the fan kicks in too early and thus do nothing but blow cold air. We also know that such small fans are nearly unnecessary as they cant blot that much air, and the small heatsink can only deal with that much energy. So lets assume that you can remove the back lid without voiding the warranty, then perhaps, just perhaps you could disable the fan without any decline of performance or crititcal temperatures. Disabling the fan seems easy enough, its just about removing that connector, and you can always attach it again should this prove not to work. I think we can safely assume that on idle, and when doing most of our work, the temperatures will remain eactly the same, the fan might not spin, but as there is so little heat generated that the heatsink can handle it itself, then so much the better, right? On more demanding tasks the temperature will rise a bit i suppose, like from 80c with the fan enabled to 85-90 with the fan disabled, but then again, this is still far within safe limits. We also know that the CPU will downclock itself if it gets too hot (Again, it does this far too early, which is a damn shame) so I think that the actual "risk" of disabling the fan is very small, worst case scenario, the laptop force shutdown itself, but if you're pushing it that far, it will most like shut down whether the fan is enabled or not.

I haven't got my own Pro yet, I hope to get it tomorrow, but do anyone know whether removing the back lid or not voids the warranty? And is there any way that Sony can see, you've been in there?

 

I'd really like to get a Pro 13 but I am seriously but off by the constant mentioning of this fan issue. Is there really no way Sony can do anything about it? What is the underlying problem- the fan turns on too early, or the CPU gets hot too quickly? The latter would be due to poor chassis design and not fixable.

 

Is there a major performance difference between the i5 and the i7? I just wanted to know to see if it was worth the money to upgrade

Thanks

 

Hey all,

I have recently got a 13" Pro. i7, 256, 4GB (AU spec).

I've uninstalled the original WIfi driver (16.0.1), and installed the one from the Japanese support site. It does seem to be working better, but I still "drop" every so often (2-3 times a day), its now tolerable, but still a little annoying.

Ive not had the change to trawl all 108 pages of this, but does anyone know:

1. Has sony made a statement about the issues and possible recourses?
2. Has anyone pinpointed what the actual problem is??

FWIW, I'm using a Cisco WAG 160N (with 2.4 and 5GHz channels), with an airport express as an extended for the further reaches of the unit. I travel a crapload for work, so certainly want to know what im in for when im travelling (fly out this coming saturday).

thanks.

 

Do you have the Haswell version?

 

These Pros must indeed have a troublesome noisy fan...

In addition to all the posters and reviewers who have experienced an for them unacceptable fan noise, I will add one comment from a buyer (who BTW also wrote a nuanced review); he made this comment at the end of some period of time on the Amazon's feedback site:

"[...] I unplugged the fan from the computer. I couldn't stand it anymore."

IMO this strongly indicates (to say the least) that there really ARE serious fan noise issues with this Pro model.

And having browsing around: He is not at all the only one who is deeply troubled with this intensive and aggressive loud noise, which is emitted at least far too much of the operating time. (BTW, in that Amazon thread just mentioned, it also has been stressed that the machine really GETS warm or hot, so the fan activity is necessary in these situations, so "regulating" the fan can be a dangerous thing to do. And others also experience that the fan even blows out luke warm or almost cold air, so in those instances/situations the fan activity seems NOT to be necessary, just noisy and badly calibrated.

All in all: This Sony Pro device has many likeable aspects, but for me the noisy fan (level of kicking in, aggressive kind of noise (because so small a fan?), and perhaps also generally a rather sub-optimal cooling or heat dissipation construction from Sony's side, are all so important "limitations" or aspects making a strong day-to-day irritation for me, that I stay back regarding this model. But surely hope that all these clearly really serious issues will be taken care of in the next model, but that means perhaps a re-construction of some of the internals or of the "carapace".

 

no way, there's a red one? where'd they get that!

 

Yeah, i7 4500U

 

Hello, just have a quick question. I know from an earlier post that 8gb ram gets better graphics on the vaio pro. My question is, is the 4gb version good enough? If I can get graphics as good as my old vaio z (with nvidia 320M) I'm ok with that. I only need to play games like mass effect 3 and far cry 3, nothing too intense (I hope)

 

If you task the device with cpu intesive things of course the fan will get loud, but regular browsing for me, there is no significant noise where I would be returning the laptop.

heatsinks look fine
Test Sony Vaio Pro 13 SVP-1321C5ER Ultrabook - Notebookcheck.com Tests

It might be the fan being smaller diameter or perhaps it just spins faster than normal. Next, the fan is not blowing out cold air, it's warm, why would it be blowing out cold air? People are exaggerating on amazon. Next with normal use, the device does not get hot, sure it can get warm, but with such thin design, this is naturally obvious. There is not much space to maneuver about inside, it's pretty thin.

In the end, I'd rather the cpu remain better cooled and run for a longer period of time, rather than have no fan noise and the cpu borking out sooner than later.

There is no other version of the pro, it is a haswell ultrabook.

 

Has anyone uncovered a way of retrofitting more RAM?

Mine is a 4GB model (We cant get 8GBs in Oz), and I would love to up mine to 8GB.

is it soldered to the board? can the RAM module be replaced?

thanks

 

Yup it's soldered !
Made sure I got the 8GB although I would have loved a 16GB version for my virtual machines!

 

so is it accepted knowledge that keeping the max at 80% charge will increase the life of the battery, or is that more of an urban legend?

also it seems like the battery estimator isnt very accurtae...

 

Is the new Vaio Pro 13 a faster machine than what I currently have?

I have a Sony Vaio Z with 8 GB, 2.4GHz i5-520M, NVidia GT 330M and Intel HD, 128 GB SSD + 750 GB HD (Removed DVD drive), Win7. Mostly used for work (Large Excel files, Lightroom, Photoshop, Virtual Machines).

I'd get:
i7-4500U 1.8GHz/3GHz turbo, 8gb, 256 SSD Intel HD 4400 Win8 pro

Thoughts? Thanks!

 

Received my pro 13 on 8/2, and today the F1 key started coming loose and popping off completely.

I called tech support, hoping I might be able to get a replacement key sent out to me and see if that did the trick. The only option they would give me was to ship the computer out for repair with a 7-10 day turnaround. Seriously starting to consider returning this machine.. pretty frustrating.

 

Hey guys, got new Vaio Pro 13.

Just got a question for you all. I've noticed that when my laptop is charging it makes a quite faint high pitched noise when I am scrolling down pages etc. It does not happen when running on the battery or when fully charged.

Does this happen for anyone else? It seems to come from the top left of the keyboard area, where the fan is.

Thanks for any info!

 

No noise here...

 

I am using my IPhone 4s as a mobile hotspot. The Vaio Pro 13 is the first laptop that cannot connect to the wifi provided by the IPhone.
My other windows 8 machine and an older windows 7 laptop work just fine. Has anybody successfully used this connection?

 

no noise here. my laptop is pretty quiet. i do get a sort of clicking noise in the track pad area though. sort of like there's an air gap between the pad and whatever is under it. and it would sometimes stick/unstick making the sound.

i don't have an iphone, but i use my Nokia N9 as a wireless hotspot and it works fine.

 

Same issue with my girlfriends iphone 5 and Lenovo laptop..

My Samsung s4 and pro 13 tethered on Wifi for almost 7 hours no drops or issues

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk 4

 

Keep the Z1, its a way better machine. I wouldnt even be here if my Z1 didnt break

If you want to spend money, get a bigger/faster ssd and have fun.

You want to loose out on everything just to spare .8lb?

lol

 

clean install driving me crazy, wondering if its even worth it lol

i tried to make a recovery usb and it froze, and now i cant even see recovery options in the vaio care center

 

I had the exact same problem. Also I noticed that I couldn't connect to other networks either than mine. When the error occurred, I used the windows "troubleshoot problems" (or what is it called?) and after that all wifi networks including hotspot with iphone 4s has been working perfectly. So perhaps it just requires some calibration from your computer. It took almost five minutes if I recall correctly

Hope this helps.

 

So it seems there is an official carrying case for the pro 13, model is VGPAMCP13, 59 bucks plus tax, which is pretty hefty. I myself bought the duo 11 slim carrying case and depending how good the pro 13 case is, I might end up switching the duo 11 case for the pro 13 case.

Also something that surprised me entirely, it seems one can now order a custom Vaio here in Poland price wise it came out to about 100 or so more dollars, which is not bad.

 

Just to let you know, a couple of updates have appeared on the Sony site for our laptops

One of which is a Bluetooth driver update:
Bluetooth Driver (Intel) Update

What does it fix?
Fix Bluetooth off/on switch function on certain OS language.

AIO Image Optimizer Update Program

What does it fix?
Fix the problem that the output images of MP4 file took by Microsoft Camera App were mixed with some irregular green squares when it was played.

VAIO Movie Creator Update Program

What does it fix?
Fix the problem that VMC failed to upload file to PMO Server.

Fix the problem that the output images of MP4 file took by Microsoft Camera App were mixed with some irregular green squares when it was played.

Fix the problem that some unexpected gradation bandings appeared in the background image of the main user interface when the Panel Self Refresh(PSR) was switched on.

 

bluetooh on/off buttons works now

 

Suitable / compatible Power Charger:

In case it helps anyone, the Sony VGP-AC10V8 appears to work fine. (10.5v 4.3a)

I ordered one: Wholesale Sony VAIO Genuine Original Adapter Charger 10.5V 4.3A 45W 4.8x1.7mm | eBay for c£20 inc delivery which took 8 days from Hong Kong to the UK. It does appear to be genuine as advertised.

It doesn't have the USB outlet the AC10V10 has and it requires a C8/'figure of 8' power lead instead of cloverleaf but, as a spare, it seems fine.

The Targus universal chargers don't work. They have compatible tips but don't go down to 10.5V.
Also this one from kenable.co.uk: Universal 48 Watt AC Adapter Kit with 5 x DC Tips for Netbooks - 48W-UNI (and lots of similar/identical unbranded products) have the right tip but the voltage switch does NOT actually have the option for 10.5V (even though the instructions and packaging say that it does).

Hope this helps others.

 

RMA'd the machine back to newegg today, hopefully the next one is trouble free. I could deal with the less than stellar drive health on crystaldiskinfo, but I couldn't stomach a key falling off in the first week of ownership. Ironically I spent way more on this laptop than I have on the last several computers I have owned, but I have never had issues like this with any of the cheaper machines. Will report back with details when the replacement arrives.

 

I may have missed it when scanning the last 110 pages but do you feel the speed bump in the i7 vs i5 is worth the extra $150 or so?