Do you enjoy using the Vaio Z's screen for Illustrator or Photoshop work?

Hey everyone,

How many of you enjoy using the 13.1" (1600x900) screen on the Vaio Z for Illustrator or Photoshop? Do you all plug it into larger monitors before using any of these or other Adobe Creative Suite applications? I do a lot of complex Illustrator work that requires attention to detail, but also some light Photoshop work. Other than that, my use of the laptop would be limited to MS Office, Firefox, and iTunes.

Further, would you prefer a 14.1" (1440x900) screen for Adobe CS work, without an external monitor? Does the extra inch and lower resolution make much of a difference?

At this point, this is the only thing keeping me from hitting the order button on either a somewhat expensive, yet powerful Z (plus an extra monitor, mouse, and keyboard), or a relatively cheaper, albeit less powerful Lenovo T400S (without an extra monitor or other accessories).

(The T400S's beautifully thin (0.83") profile is also rather attractive in comparison to the Z's bulkiness.)

I did do a search on this, but I didn't find anyone asking the same question nor anyone sharing one's experiences using these applications on the Z's small screen; thus, any thoughts or personal experiences regarding this would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Vince

 

Nobody can really enjoy it but you can do some work. 15`,16` that is minimum in my opinion for regular use. However with Z you have max flexibility. There are always some displays around so you can throw the tools there and use the Z for the main.
IBM Lenovo are excellent notebooks best build of them all and absolutely useless for Adobe CS due to sh...st displays ever made. Also the difference 13 vs 14 is not much.
Vaio Z or MBP 15 or 17` are the only serious options, each good/better in its own way, Vaio FW would be great if there was better chassis but it is very consumer level, not really meant for professional use of any kind.

 

The Z has excellent contrast and bright vivid colours, but lacks colour correctness. If adjusting it with a colorimeter (like I-One or Spyder), you can get the perceptual colour differences pretty OK, but the actual colours will be off. So if you compare with actual photos, or try to match the colour to an original, it's not the best choice.
Also, the screen is only 6-bit, (262,144 colours dithered to 16.2 million, not 16.7 million real colours as in 8-bit displays), which means that some colours will show up with visible dithering.
Finally, like almost all laptop displays, it's a TN display, which means it will display hues at the top of the screen different from at the bottom, because the viewing angle is different. Only by sitting at an infinite distance from the screen can you get the angle difference to approach zero. This may or may not be a problem, depending on how good your brain is to compensate, and how still you keep your head.

All in all, I would suggest using an external monitor for Photoshop work (and if colour correctness is an issue, even a top quality CRT instead of an LCD). The Z is an amazing little machine, but it's not ideal for that particular kind of work.

 

ORLY?

How about the Dell Studio XPS 16?

 

Asking me? Seems like you know way more about the subject then myself ( of the a vi ray it is mainly audio, video is my secondary work). I wouldnt take Dell for free,since I make my living using notebooks and Dells are massive sells office and consumer oriented, too many issues due to cheap components. However from what i heard regading displays there is "blue" issue.
Z,SZ of Vaio range and MBP because of build quality,displays and components-like TI chips. Indeed Thinkpads are the most solid - not pretty like Mac and Sony but unbreakable, great cooling,can run for days at 100% but Ricoh chips and pathetic displays eliminates them. Once they start using better displays I might reconsider(the second HDD instead of DVD, when you need it, is great too)

 

Thanks for those details Arth; I had no idea that those slight differences existed.

Is the real estate on the Z usable for such work though (excluding the correctness issues you mentioned)? As in, even though the screen is small, does the high resolution award enough, usable, not eye-straining space for detailed work? Can I (with good eyesight) sit at a reasonable distance and not have to zoom in and out of Illustrator or Photoshop workspaces to see details? As a counter example, consider the 13" Unibody MacBook Pro, which has a rather low 1280x800 resolution that makes it impossible to work on Illustrator -- since both the screen size and the resolution is low. Does the Z correct that 'imbalance', because, although the Z is 13" as well, it has more real estate from the higher 1600x900 resolution?

I mentioned the Lenovo T400S's 1440x900 14.1" screen (low-to-mid size screen, medium-to-high resolution) as it would be the middle ground between both the Z's (low size, high res) and the 13" Unibody Macbook Pro's (low size, low res) screens.

I apologize for the detailed questions, but I don't have a SonyCentre, Apple Store, or Lenovo retailer near where I live to try this out myself.

 

The T400 S apparently has a better screen than older IBM/Lenovo models. I'm not sure what brand screen it uses, though. It was and is designed to display blu-ray movies, because it is possible to configure it with the blu-ray drive (in some countries, at least), so I imagine they used better screens for the T400S.

 

Quality comes at a price, if you serious about PS , Illustrator you must buy serious notebook and only premium Apple and Vaio will do. The cheap models are meant for Starbucks surfers. there is a thread somewhere here with details about various Apple and Sony displays. Personally i only know 17` MBP, and premium Z, SZ, AW have usable displays. Cheap Macs, like Vaios are cheap for reason, quality displays are not cheap.