New Vaio S Series Premium Laptop Colors - WAY OFF!

Hello All,
So I finally pulled the trigger on the New VAIO S Series premium. Customized it with the works: SSD, 12 gigs of RAM, i7 etc....

However, I noticed right away being in graphic design that the colors being represented on the screen are wayyy off. For example, dark orange/yellows and peach colors look Neon Yellow and the same goes for greens. Its actually obnoxious to look at. Ive played with the settings multiple times and have not been able to get the correct colors.

Has anyone else noticed this? It seems S Premium Series 1600x900 res specific as everyone of my other computers + every other VAIO laptops from 1080p to 720p screens look correct.

Vaio support is worthless and offered the option to update my Vaio Care support manual as a fix (who the hell do the hire over there?) lol. So before I return this computer which I love otherwise, I wanted to see if anyone else has run into this problem and was able to fix it.

Someone recommended buying the Spyder 3 calibration tool. I have not yet but maybe someone can tell me if that would work.

 

When you want to do graphic design go for the Z or the S15!

The S13 has a bad screen. Look at the test on notebookcheck!

 

s15 is wors with orangegate. Actually maybe you do have a defective s13a unit...

but nonetheless, return the s13 and buy the VAIO Z . 92% aRGB adobe coverage... godly screen i must say

 

The display on my S13 Premium is like that as well. I tried using Windows 7's built-in display calibration tool, and while it helped, the colors are still off.

I'm also considering picking up a Spyder calibration tool, but I'm not sure if it'll be worth it. I'm curious if the display is inherently limited or if it's possible to improve it with professional calibration tools?

 

i'm using a 2011-model SA which has a display that is loathed by the SONY forum dwellers. i am using an ICC color profile produced by one of the forums members when he calibrated his SA's screen, and the colors look MUCH better and natural compared to the stock one. granted i don't do professional photo editing or video work on my laptop, but even to my untrained eyes, using a calibrated profile is worth the trouble.

 

It never ceases to amaze me that professional graphic designers and the like buy machine's like the S series! Send it back immediately!

 

Orangegate is so over rated issue. S15 has one of the very best display in its category.

 

i find it hilarious that up untill that notebookcheck review, all previous reviews plus everyone in the owners thread has generally said that the s13 display is better than average.

one review comes out saying its not that great , and all of a sudden everyone starts calling it a "bad screen"

 

I wouldn't say it's a horrible screen but the colors could be better. It's certainly not bad enough for me to return the laptop, but then again, I do my design work on a desktop, not on my laptop.

 

Where's the notebookcheck review? I've looked and all I can find are the older ones...

 

^Its on the German notebook check

i was more referring to some of the other posts here, which seem to completely write off the s series screen totally.

perfectly understandable for a graphic designer to be more nit picky

 

Link for the german review?

Notebookcheck just released review on the old sandy bridge version of s13. Not sure why they decided to review the old one; however the screen seems to be a big disappointment.

 

Test Sony Vaio SV-S13A1Z9E/S Notebook - Notebookcheck.com Tests

basically they just say they weren't blown away. keep in mind their opinion was in context with the fact that their review model was a maxed out 3000euro version, which is why they express a little dissapointment as that brings it in line with a specced out Z series.

i dont really see how people are interpreting this as saying that the S series screen is "bad"

especially since all the other pro reviews were largely positive about it, and say that it is a large improvement over the display in the previous model

 

I agree. The way I read those color spectrum graphs, the S series isn't more than 10% short of the Zenbook Prime's color gamut. That's a bleeding fantastic laptop screen, especially given the cost/performance differential with the Zenbook.

And that beats the out of the old (admittedly red/orange issue) Envy 15's screen - which I've heard hasn't improved much beyond fixing the red/orange issues. It just isn't the Vaio Z, which gets all of AdobeRGB instead of "merely" covering sRGB.

The Sony review

The Asus review

The HP (same screen as the old S15) review

Edit: The S13 also has miserable contrast, 180:1 vs 800:1 on the envy/s15 and vs 1000:1 on the zenbook. I'm not sure how bad that looks in practice.

 

Sony Vaio S 13.3 Review - Notebook Reviews by MobileTechReview

Lisa Gade MOD • a day ago • parent
Color gamut is just average on the S13A-- nowhere near the near full Adobe RGB of the Vaio Z. it's about 62% of aRGB, which is average among laptop panels.
0 •Reply•Share ›

Hans Hanse • 17 hours ago • parent
Lisa Gade: Thanks for these precisions. And compared to sRGB what is is it ?
0 •Reply•Share ›

Lisa Gade MOD • 12 hours ago • parent −
Hans Hanse: sRGB covers only a sub-section of Adobe RGB, so many displays have an easier time matching sRGB (and they're designed to meet sRGB). The Vaio does very well with sRGB coverage.

 

Also interested to see how this affects things - as long as the black level drops significantly at lower brightness it'll be good enough for me.

In indoor conditions I can't focus on more than ~10% brightness (or whatever the ambient light level happens to be) without quickly wrecking my eyes so black level is all I care about really

 

Hello All,

So I tried using the Spyder4 Calibration tool and that was not helpful at all. Im still getting bright neon colors.

I took my laptop to the Sony Store in Manhattan and as suspected, it is not my computer that is the problem, but the entire model/series. EVERY OTHER Vaio's colors are more accurate. Even the lower end versions of the S (SB, SC, etc). For some reason this model does not display colors correctly and can not be fixed. The techs there agreed and theres nothing I can do here. Im so suprised Sony hasn't addressed or even noticed this.

While I do graphic design, Im not a professional, and even I can't bare this.

This computer is headed back to Sony. I will not buy another. And I dont like the Z (not a fan of the dock or the size). Good luck to them trying to sell a $3000+ refurbished computer. Not my problem anymore...

I guess i'll finally pull the trigger on a Mac. I dont seem to have any luck with PC's from Samsung, Asus, to HP and now to Sony. I definitely don't want Windows 8 (ive used the consumer preview and it's awful) so It doesnt pay to wait for better models of any PC brand anyways.

Mac land here I come...

 

i knew it was a bad screen when i saw it in store. everything is soo good about it, but the screen. UGH. i really wanted to get this one too. i loved my z11, now i don't have a laptop, and the s13a was perfect. BUT THE SCREEN. UGH!!!

 

I dunno, I've been on this forum for quite a while and most people here agree the SA's screen (back when it was the SA w/ Sandy Bridge) was pretty crap, although most people here had Vaio Z's and so, their expectations were higher, now if you were coming from a 720p 15" laptop, the screen might look good, but again, it's about the point of view, and the general consensus stands, the 900p "Premium" S's screen is nothing to write home about, bad review or not (I've never seen that review or seen a link of it in the year the SA has been out and I've heard the screen is bad)

I don't understand how you don't like the Z's size... and if you're simply a graphic designer... you don't need the dock either, AND, good luck graphic designing on a 13"... It's quite a pain. And if you go Mac, unless you go for the 15" retina one, all the other screen resolutions pretty much are sub-par. There are options for you out there, you just have to know where to look (or ask, like the "What notebook should I buy?" forum:
What Notebook Should I Buy?

Yeah... it's sad that Sony took the VPC-Z1 and split it into the SA, which was the same except no 1080p screen and mediocre 900p screen and the Z1, w/ the dock.

 

Damn I hope it's just a bad batch otherwise Sony didn't really improve screen quality much.
I hope to be purchasing one soon, although saying that, I have noticed Sony UK has put the price up 3 times by £10 increments so now it is actually more expensive for me to buy over a macbook pro.
The GPU power is quite important to me so it is quite a must.

I will not get an asus zenbook as the GPU isn't much more powerful than intels's solution.

Plus the new dell XPS 14 ultrabook is nice like the mac book pro but unfortunately it is quite heavy, uses a ULV CPU for no reason and uses a fermi GPU. It is also more expensive than a mac plus offers less warranty.

Lenovo x230 unfortunately has a stupid 1336x768 resolution which lets it down.

I cannot easily acquire sager/clevo notebooks without going to a distributor which has sketchy warranty support.
tl;dr basically I may join you going to mac land.

One question though does the screen on the S series fade out like the z series when going sleep? If it does Sony should have cut costs there rather than give the S series laptop with mediocre screens.

 

I made the mistake of buying without seeing one first...

I really didn't think that any £1000ish laptop from a big-name brand would come with such a disappointing screen these days.

It's almost as if they did it intentionally, so that the S series wouldn't outclass the Z series... after all, the Z will net Sony much bigger profit margins, as users are forced to pay crazy upgrade prices to get a decent sized (non-standard) SSD and RAM upgrades... whereas all us S buyers are going for the minimum RAM and HD spec, and doing great value aftermarket upgrades

It wouldn't be so bad it it was just poor colour reproduction, and/or not-so-great black levels - but it's that shimmering every time my eye drifts towards the top-right corner, where the min/max/close buttons are...

Was last years S-series really *worse* than this? I find that hard to believe - Without seeing it, I expect it was the same...

 

Here are a couple of calibrations for a F series created with a Spyder 3 and a Spyder 2. Play with these and see if you get a better look. If so, you may want to consider the investment into a puck. Calibration made all the difference for mine. Good luck.

 

Well according to reviews and people on this forum the display they used this year is only marginally better than last years. Note that the OP has said the spyder4 calibration tool did not help much. This is such a farce, Sony was so close to creating the perfect laptop but instead they decided to cut corners.

 

That's "the name of the game." The least cutting of corners happened with Z series; but even there they managed to do it.

 

Yes, it's true. I can't name one laptop that doesn't have at least one major and one or more minor flaws that make buying decisions so difficult. The Z1 in its time was probably the closest to "perfection" (still, it had those plastic painted palmrests and crummy speakers!) but Sony seems to have flaws built in to their design process. Someone famously suggested in these forums that Sony designs the perfect computer, then break a couple of things and call it...Z!