Sony Vaio Flip Multi-Flip 11a Owners Thread

It's the last brother of the family.
Just very new one.
All the owner's write your problems / suggestions / prices

 

I was wondering if this model has the same fan noise problem than the bigger models of the flip series (13, 14, 15)

I would like to buy this laptop but only if this model in particular doesn't have a loud fan noise

 

i checked the laptop in a tech store.
i especially went to check the fan noise but it was silent.
No fan noise...
very practically turns into tablet mode..
in Turkey it is sold with a celeron cpu ( i guess N2920).

 

On mine the fan and CPU setting is set on medium an at the moment I am installing word and surfing with Firefox. The little machine makes NO noise... After killing the crappy McAffy Antivir it runs deadly silent

I am wondering if there a screen protectors out there or if a normal 11 inch protector fits...

 

A little review about the Flip 11 with 4GB Ram and Pentium N3520:

Runtime on battery is about 5 hours with a 24 mWh REPLACEABLE battery.
Opening the Flip 11 works like on all models.

Fan is reachable for cleaning purposes and the WIFI is replaceable. RAM and SSD are looking like non replaceable so go with the space you need

WIFI: I heard about several WIFI issues on new Vaio Laptops. On my machine there is nothing. Same WIFI signal than my S13A.

CPU: The Pentium N3520 can handle several things at one time. Used Word, Outlook, OneNote, SPSS (computing a confirmatory factor analysis with 3 scales), PSPP (computing an explorative factor analysis with 100 Items), Firefox open with watching lovefilm and watching HD youtube. The Fan kicked in after some minutes, but the good news is, that the fan is very silent... for me it is just a whispering compared to my old T11 ^_^

GPU: Installed Kings Bounty - The Legend and with all details maxed out the game ran fluently.


For me this one is a very good machine for travelling. Build quality is on a very high level and the screen looks to me very bright and beautiful!

 

Thank you very much guys, your feedback is awesome :thumbsup:

This is very likely to be my next laptop

When i get it i'll be monitoring this thread to answer any question that you or someone else has about this model

Sorry for my english (Im from Panama)

Once again thank you

:hi2:

 

I have the N3520 with 8GB on order due for delivery later this week (UK). Thank you Valnar for the quick review, much appreciated. Very happy that the fan is manageable, had to return the 13A flip due to it's noise. One question, I'm sure I read somewhere the ssd was user-replacable, ie not soldered onto the motherboard - is this wrong?
Thanks

 

I bought my fit 11a in Turkey. (SVF11N16CTB)

But i am not satisfied with the Broadcom Wifi.
it's a poor connection speed.
my old samsung laptop scans more access points then the vaio.
and when i ping google sometimes packets are dropping.

you can test yours by running the command after pressing WindowsButton+R
ping http://www.google.com -t
if you see "request time out" it means packet lost.

I updated all drivers so I guess the WiFi is not fully compatible with European routers..

Share your WiFi experiences!
What is your current WiFi Driver version?
Mine is BCM43142
DATE: 28.9.2013
VERSION : 6.30.223.181

 

If the SSD is replaceable i can say it is not soldered.... but if you can buy a SSD which fits in the 11 Flip I cannot answer...

For your infirmation the Xirrix 11 inch netbook sleeve fits perfectly for Flip, Pen, VGA Dongle and Powersupply...

One question to you: Do you know a compatible screen protector which fits the Fit 11 perfectly... because all 11 inch protectors are a) to big (Vaio Duo or Vaio Tap11) or to small....

 

I am surprised there is not more buzz surrounding this ultra portable. I looks to me like the perfect solution out there if pen support is important.

Question - does Sony offer any apps for taking notes that work with the S Pen? I am an Evernote user and wonder if there are integration features like the Samsung Note tables, i.e. saving a note from the app to Evernote.

Keep the user review coming - I am right on the edge of picking one up. I was hoping for a little be more powerful processor configuration - thanks all.

 

There are several Vaio Apps preinstalled for taking notes!

 

There would be tons more buzz if this thing got 7-8 hours battery life. It would be mine if that were the case, no questions asked. It's perfect otherwise.

 

I have been using my 11A flip for about 1 week now and am very pleased with it. I have the N3520, 8GB, 128GB ssd version. I don't have the pen as I have no need for it at present. I used one previously with the 13A version and it was fine. The screen is nice and bright, as you would expect from Sony. I use this laptop for travel when away from the big monitor at home.

Most of my usage is ms word with various smaller programmes such as endnote and powerpoint. The CPU power is fine for these and everything loads quickly without problems. It is a world away from an old atom nettop I had. I didn't notice a big difference to the home machine (i5, ssd). I also use it to read magazines and watch films on the short flights I often take. The flip mechanism is a deal-clincher for me in these scenarios. My sweet spot for travel laptops is between 11-12 inches and this was one of the best configuration/features/price that I could find.

Negatives:
Very occasionally (twice in the week) the fan will spool up for ~ 5 seconds and then return to minimal/off. I previously returned the 13A version because of the noisy fan. I should state I am very sensitive to laptop fan noise and have no problems with this laptop. For some reason Sony laptops always have noisy fans but this one seems to be the exception. Perhaps a heavier workload than mine could get it spinning more.

The laptop keys are quite small (fine for me) but some might find them too small. I don't like this trackpad as much as I did on my lenovo yoga 2 pro, but is suffices well enough. The construction seems great for the £600 price in my eyes and I like the full size HDMI port. I plumped for the black version which is smart to my eyes, but my previous 13 inch was in silver and that looked pretty good too. Silver is better for fingerprints, but I found it clashed a little with the black border of the screen. The only other laptop that comes close it it IMO is the haswell Yoga 11s, but I can't live with just the HD screen. In some ways I wouldn't want a core i version of this laptop as I don't trust Sony to not screw up the fan!

I agree battery life is around the 5+ hrs mark, more than enough for me, but who doesn't want more battery life? The weight is almost the same as the 13inch version so they evidently couldn't add too much more.

In summary I find this to be a great little laptop for it's features. A core i x with a silent fan would also be pretty good, (for the bump in gfx), but if these are released I would recommend waiting for reviews checking out the fan noise levels and CPU throttling issues before I took the plunge.

Any questions ask away. Cheers

 

Hi,

I have been using my fit 11a for a week as well.
But I see that wifi connection is bad.
When I list the access points around with my mobile phone it's 3 times more than Sony Vaio Fit 11a.
So the wifi adapter is very poor according to a cheap mobile phone.
For the rest it's a very well laptop.

 

I've had this laptop for 3 days and I'm very please with it. I was concerned about moving from my Lenovo X220 (i5 -2410M) as I will be using this for mobile game development in Unity. The first thing I did when I got it was to compare times for some applications I use, these were the results:

Compiling a C# project, X220: 10s, Fit 11: 8s. My previous laptop had a standard hard drive, so I'm guessing the sdd made the difference here.

Rendering a scene in 3ds max, X220: 1:03s, Fit 11: 0.30s. So over double the speed! This makes good use of multi-core processors so the difference here is clearly the extra 2 cores.

Only negatives are the power in and power switch are a bit awkward to use and the volume control seems to be in the wrong place to me.

Other than that I'm pleased with the quality of the screen and I'm liking the pen. I don't have any issues with WiFi and have barely noticed the fan coming on, very quiet.

 

Looking good so far based on the current owner mini reviews of this laptop in this thread. Looks like the fan noise isn't too bad, a solid 5 hour battery life with great IPS FHD screen.

I do have a question and a favor to ask to the current flip 11 owners with the bay trail pentium cpu, can it play 1080p videos of any format, mkv, mp4 etccc smoothly with no lag either on wmplayer or VLC player or youtube??? Another thing, while it's playing, can you tell me what the cpu usage is on the windows task manager and what percentage while the 1080p video is playing?


Thanks

 

I find MPC-HC to use about 10 - 15% CPU for 1080p, VCL about 20-30%, 1080p youtube about 10-15% CPU. Haven't used WM player for a long time so not sure there. The bay trail performance is a world away from the old atom stuff.

Personally I change all my mkvs into mp4s (no conversion so no quality lost) with MkvToMp4(freeware). This allows me to play the videos via the windows video app on the start screen. Anandtech did an interesting review on various players such as VCL and MPC-HC compared to the built in app, the results suggesting the run time was significantly better on the MS video app. Not sure if I am allowed to link elsewhere but recommend having a look at what anandtech found.

Main thing I dislike about the laptop is the poor positioning of the external volume control, but otherwise love it.

 

Cool. So all 1080p videos played smoothly with no slowdowns or lag or stuttering or delays? How about the day to day movement in the desktop like opening folders, opening programs, multitasking with multiple tabs, is your bay trail pentium smooth at 1080p resolution?

Reason I'm asking is that I use to own an 11.6" with the amd A6-1450 quadcore and the resolution of the laptop was 1366x768 and it was too slow and anemic even with day to day basic task like surfing or opening folders/programs etc... Which explains my dilemma with a pentium bay trail cpu being able to handle a fullhd resolution.


Thanks

 

Yes all videos play without lag or stuttering for me. I have no problems with multiple tabs open etc. I don't know too much about the current amd CPU/GPU, other to say they're well known for their low IO power, and often they are paired with HDDs due to the low cost laptops they are usually placed in. The difference between a SSD (eg the sony flip) and a HDD is prob alot bigger than the IO power difference between the amd and baytrail. I assume your amd laptop was HDD?

I suggest seeing if you can get your hands on a baytrail flip to try out or have a play with one of the 8inch windows baytrail tablets and see what you think. They have some pretty good reviews for IO performance with a TDP of around 2W (the flip baytrail is 7.5W). The review at Sony VAIO Flip 11 Review - ComputerShopper.com gives some IO figures for you to compare if you like.

 

can anyone comment on "Tap 11" vs "Flip 11A"? Which one is better in terms of
1) Notes Taking

2) Some sketching

3) Battery life

4) Watching/streaming movies

 

I checked Tab11 in the tech store. I sorta didn't like the magnified keyboard. If you can not gently locate the keyboard to the tablet keyboard is not being charged.
And as far as i know the only way to charge keyboard is attaching to tablet.
So not practical to use..
but if your daily usage consists of using tablet and rarely using keyboard then tab11 must be your choice.
if not choose flip11a..

 

I’d like to raise a techie issue. I am looking for my next machine to be a full desktop replacement. I was planning on getting the Duo 13, but I was hoping that Sony would make a new Duo 11 (which they’re not). I started looking at the Flip 11, but I don’t think the Bay Trail CPU can handle my needs. The Computer Shopper review said that it was seriously lagging when graphics tasks were introduced to their tests. Since Sony said that they will make i7 versions available, I have been trying to get an idea how an i7 Flip 11 would perform with CPU/GPU/battery issues.

I have tried to put together a matrix of features that seemed to have a strong effect in performance reviews for various machines. I am assuming that the i7 CPU that Sony is referring to is the i7-4610Y. Here’s my data. All models have SSDs, so this is not a discriminating factor.

1. Current Flip 11 with N3520 Bay Trail CPU – gets about 5.5 hrs. battery life; has 4 GB RAM and 2 MB L3 cache (this is important)

2. Tap 11 with i5-4210Y Core CPU – gets about 4.5 hrs. battery life; has 4 GB RAM and 3 MB L3 cache

3. Current Duo 13 with i7-4650U Core CPU – gets 8-10 hrs. battery life; has 8 GB RAM and 4 MB L3 cache

4. Future Flip 11 with i7-4610Y Core CPU – gets ??? hrs. battery life; has 8 GB RAM and 4 MB L3 cache

In reviews of the Tap 11, performance lag was attributed to its crippled 4 GB RAM maximum limit. The Flip 11 doesn’t have this restriction. Furthermore, throttling due to heavy video/graphics demands has been shown to be linked to L3 cache. Given that L3 is the same for the future Flip 11 above and the Duo 13, I think this would enhance performance dramatically. The question remains how this would impact battery life. On one hand one could say that it would have to be less than the current Flip 11 just based on higher-end components, but on the other hand the RAM and L3 don’t seem to be big power drains, AND with such an optimized configuration as in the future Flip 11, there would be less thrashing due to constant adjustment of the throttling.

The question that remains is why wouldn’t Sony introduce such a model to start with if what I say is true. I believe that is because of price. Such a future Flip 11 would be priced very high, and it seems Sony wanted a competitor to MS’s Surface Pro 2. After a few months, they will add the techie options for those who are willing to pay more. My guess is that battery life for such a future Flip 11 will be the same as the current model, ~5.5 hrs. This means real-world use would be about 7 hrs., which is what I am looking for. So, what do you think?

 

An 11" laptop can not be a full desktop replacement.
Up to 12" screen size laptops hold out ultra mobility with low performance.
So you have to consider your requirements.
If you want a high performance laptop then bigger sizes must be your choice.
Laptops focuses different profiles and in your case it's like you wanna buy rain boat for gym.

 

Not exactly. It depends on use case. That's why I said I would go with an i74610Y, but not N3520. In desktop mode, I plan to dock whatever I get (11 or 13) to a large monitor. I just would prefer an 11 over a 13 for mobility. As far as 12" being the cutoff, that's not true. The 1st Gen Duo 11 was a fully-capable desktop rep., but it wasn't executed as well as the refreshed Duo 13. Sony just never decided to make a new 11 before they decided to sell the business. Actually, I think they chose the Flip design over the Duo design for an 11 model because it looked more like a traditional laptop, which would attract a broader consumer interest.

 

Are you sure about this? I looked at SONY Europe where you configure 11A model and they are offering N3520 with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD. There is no i7 version. I don't think that they will put new processor as they are leaving this market.

 

Also The N3520 processor is a Pentium Processor not Intel Atom (Formarly knowns as Bay Trail)

 

fast cpu's need bigger fans which needs bigger laptop cases for air ventilation. besides mobility focused laptops need less power where bigger ones have more battery cells. for me flip 11" is mobility focused laptop

 

If you search YouTube, you can find reviews from CES in January with reviewers quoting Sony that the Flip 11 will eventually be available with up to Core i7. The N3520 is called Bay Trail-M Pentium. You cannot configure the Flip with the Core CPU as of now, but I would guess it will become available when Sony does its last refresh of the Duo, Pro, and Fit lines in Apr/May. That was also announced at CES. I think they knew they were going to sell the business in January, but this shouldn't change scheduled refresh dates. I didn't quote the current Flip 11 with 8 GB RAM because the only serious review was the one from Computer Shopper which had 4 GB. The N3520 runs at 2.1 GHz, i5-4210Y at 1.5, i7-4650U at 2.9, and i7-4610Y at 1.7. So the i7 Flip configuration sits in the sweet spot without sipping too much power ... if Sony still makes the option available as they said.

 

Check this article
CES 2014: Sony refreshes laptop line, shrinks VAIO
where it says

in the same article you can find

 

So, is the 256gb option not available for US markets? And if battery is user replaceable, what about a larger battery?

 

From
MobileTechReview Forum, News and Reviews: Sony Vaio Flip 11 First Look Video from CES 2014
It says:

In the video, she specifically mentions i7 I believe. If not, it was another video review from CES.

 

Well Lisa Gade just reported what SONY representative has told her. ie

Many times Representatives are not fully reliable. This also happened in case of Fujitsu where one of their representative told that T732 and T734 are totally different and not just processor upgrade. However it turnout that T734 is a just processor upgrade and RAM downgrade over T732.
I also visited local sony center to confirm this and they also told me that there is no i7 processor for this model in near future. So its upto you.
I am going to buy this as I am getting it in 870 Euro(8GB RAM and 256GB SSD) which is a very good deal for me.

 

Sony is only selling the celeron 2920, 64GB ssd and 2GB of ram sku here.
so the ram is soldered?
and the ssd is one of those pcie like on vaio pro?

 

This is not a case of a misinformed rep, this was sent by Sony to all tech blogs covering the release of the Flip 11a. For example, Sony unveils VAIO Flip 11A convertible; arrives in February for $799

Every announcement in January of the Flip 11 that covered the specs mentioned this. So, my question was not whether Sony was going to offer such a model, this already seems clear to me that they will by April. The question was a serious techie question. Given the RAM, L3, SSD combination of such an i7 model, what would be the expected battery life? I would be happy to hear from people familiar with such specs.

 

Well then If you are interested then I will let you know about my 11A with N3520 with 8GB RAM and 256GB.
One more thing. My local sony shop where I ordered my Flip 11A informed me that they will stop taking orders for Vaio laptops from May end.

 

BTW
Check Japanese website for more option with Pentium Processor

VAIO Fit 11A「SVF11N1A1J」VAIOオーナーメードモデルの商品購入｜ソニーの公式通販サイト　ソニーストア（Sony Store）

 

What kind of SSD is it using, because I wonder if it's user replaceable, because 128gb isn't enough for me, and it looks like 256gb option is not available in the States. Is there like a way I can import a variant with 256gb(with a US keyboard of course)?

 

A tad off topic, but I was on Lenovo's site and noticed that the Yoga 2 11 is comes with the same Pentium cpu and 4gb of ram as the Flip 11, but is paired with a HDD vs the SSD on the Sony. Lenovo is claiming about 6 hours of battery life for web browsing and for HD video playback on their site(a bit odd that both get the same battery life). On the same page the Yoga 11S, which is a Ivy Bridge(3rd gen) i core based model, and SSD drive also gets 6 hours of battery life according to Lenovo from the same battery. Both are 34w from what I read on their page. I think I remember reading there maybe a 4th gen i core model 11s, but I am not 100%, so I can't say how much of a difference battery life is there. I get the feeling that these particular Atom based cpus are not as efficient as they can be seeing as they are like getting the same battery life on what is pretty much identical machines, screen and battery wise Now how this related so the Flip 11 is, at CES Sony was saying that the Flip 11 could be optioned with a 4th gen I core cpu, up to i7. If that is the case I get the feeling that maybe if that does come to fruition the Flip 11 will get battery life closer to the 7 hour mark.

 

when i checked it at sony store, the ssd comes with model number axns381, which is adata. it is M.2 form type.

 

Mine has:
samsung mznte256hmhp

 

Maybe you guys can help me with an availability question, because I can't find anything myself past announcement news and sony-selling-vaio news.

I'd really like to look into buying this, but the Canadian Sony website has no mention of it. Does anybody here know if they're going to make it available for places other than the US or Europe?

I'm worried that, as the Vaio transfer is happening soon, they aren't expanding their sales any further and I'm SOL...

 

Where can find the 256gb variant in the states? Also I noticed in some of the videos they showed the battery is not removable, but others here are saying it is. Is it like regional thing? If so, do the models with the non-replaceable battery offer a bit larger capacity?

 

When you open the Vaio you can replace the battery. It is only fixed by some skrews... So long I know there is no battery available which fits in the 11A and offers a much larger capacity...
When you need battery power on travelling why you do not buy an external battery which can charge the Vaio when it is empty...

 

Where is the black version of this? The silver is a no go because silver keys plus backlit keyboard = cannot see keys. Shoulda been Silver all around then black keyboard.

 

For this very reason I picked up the black version, despite preferring the external look of the silver. The 11A is listed as not available on the UK site, not sure about else where though.

 

Is the black 8G/256GB version still available ? I can't find it anymore :-(

 

Aaaaaaand it's gone.
At least on the US website. Haven't tried calling that number yet, but I feel like they'd just direct me to other laptops...

 

What is real world battery life like on this model?

 

Thats the same model being sold here on Panama i want to buy it but only if i can upgrade the the SSD and the RAM

Anyone knows if its replaceable or its soldered?

 

Guys bad news

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