Poor sound quality on Sony Vaio VPCF12S1E

Hi guys (oh and girls)

New to the board but have browsed many a time in the past.

I'm looking for recommendations (preferably from personal use) of a high end laptop with good speakers. What do i mean?

I just got myself a Sony Vaio VPCF12S1E and its nice but the speakers are just pathetic. Theres no distortion and they are clear but lack something terrible.

My old laptop was a Toshiba P300-19P which had Harmon Kardon speakers and sounded excellent with a bit of bass and good tones. I tend to have audio alot of the time whether its for work, listening to music or watching something when I am away. The Toshiba made this a pleasure and the Sony is just, bleh!

I like everything else about the Vaio but the speakers are that bad, I've held off selling my Toshiba with the intention of selling the Vaio to get something else.

Have considered the Logitech Z305 but defeats the portability side a bit and after paying this much for a laptop i wouldnt expect to have to pay more for decent sound quality.

Any recommendations?

 

Didn't you get noise cancelling earplugs with it?

 

Yes they are trash all Sony laptop speakers i have heard till now are pathetic.
Whenever you buy a new laptop make sure they have some hardware sound company associated with it. What i mean is Dell has JBL, HP has Altec, Alienware has Klipsch and Toshiba has Harmon.

Buy from such a spread and you will not be disappointed because they are much better than the normal laptop speakers.

EDIT: SRS/MAXX/etc are only enhancers...

 

You can't expect much from tiny laptop speakers. If you want good quality sound, connect an external speaker system.

 

I got Sennheiser noise cancelling earbuds with my Z11 and I must say, they rock. I can listen to my stuff without annoying co-passengers (e.g. on a flight) and it cuts down the ambient noise by a fair bit.

Everyone agrees that the built in speakers are pathetic. If you have a ceiling fan going, the noise of the fan drowns out the sound from the speakers; if you are watching a movie you can't even hear the dialogue, even with the volume turned up to 400% (VLC player).

 

Try the default Windows audio driver, it might give you a volume boost.

 

I don't think there is any Vaio that you will find has good sound unfortunately, not that I've heard them all in person, but that seems to be the consensus of owners of each laptop. Most people use external speakers, which like you said make it less portable, or headphones of some sort. If you want a laptop with good built-in sound, you'll have to look at a different manufacturer than Sony.

@anytimer The F does not come with earbuds.

 

thanks to all that replied, much appreciated

i didnt take into account the possible poor speaker scenario on high end laptops, the toshiba was my first as i was always a gamer / desktop man before.

the fan on this machine is not that loud, i did read about it online (after buying) and had some concerns but its ok .... and i can be a fussy ******* as you can tell with the speakers! haha

anyways will weigh up keeping the sony with consideration about losing a usb socket (oh yeah and it looks like it sticks out a lot) and having a speaker hanging off the screen or stick with the toshiba until i find a better alternative.

thanks again to all

 

well some Vaios did/do have good speakers like the AW and the current F2. But most Vaios have very weak sound, much worse than other manufacturers.

 

My audio needs are a bit more demanding than what my laptop can give so I use either headphones or small speakers.

I have these little rechargeable speakers. They last a couple of hours on a charge and are 10 times better than what my laptop speakers output.

X Mini Max II

They do come in black, red, or white. I've had my pair for almost a year now and they still work very well.