Questioning Sony VAIO Build Quality and User Experience

I bought a brand-new VAIO sz-220 made in Japan back in 2006 for around $1400. Since then, I've experienced the following problems:

optical drive broken
speaker hissing
fan has unusual whizzing sound
fingerprint scanner broken
trackpad randomly fails to work (buttons/trackpad sticks, I've never spilled liquid, always have clean hands when handling the computer)
ac adapter broke
windows randomly goes into restart/shutdown sequence and freezes midway
laptop runs at 94C when placed on a desk and freshly internally dusted
laptop does not reliably turn off after initiating shutdown sequence (sometimes it freezes midway)

EDIT: forgot to include-- my battery lasts for 3 minutes. if i want to switch outlets/rooms then i have to run.

In addition, I had to deal with the frustration of a clean install right after unboxing. I don't know if Sony has improved support, but back then performing this task involved at least an hour of research on this website.

Is this a normal user experience for Sony VAIOs? If so, why do people keep coming back? Is it the superior design? I know this was the reason why I chose the VAIO over other PCs back then.

 

That's a lot of issues for a 3 years period.What a mess

 

i owned my sony before 13 months now !! and SONY is best till now ( i tried asus for 4 years and it's great too but sony has more feature and great screen )

 

What a mess. I bought my sony vaio sz3 in the beginning of 2007 and so far only one of the hinges broke because I dropped the laptop on the side. However everything else is still working fine. I had no issues with the fingerprint reader nor the dvd drive. So I can't say that Sony has quality issues. On the other side I had to replace the dvd drive of my dell d610 latitude 3 times during the first 3 years.

Best Regards

Numer0bis

 

I think there was something wrong with your Vaio - I don't know, bad component, forgot thermal paste, but this is not normal behaviour.

Or was it refurbished?

Also - things like broken plugs - assuming you used them "normally" - it shouldn't happen.

I've an SZ7 and its been through a fair bit of stree over 1 year and doing well

One piece of decorative aluminium around the on switch started bending upwards out of nowhere... thta's the only flaw I found.

Trackpad - I do get a static problem, but that's me being electrostatically charged...

So overal, very happy with my Sony

 

This member also got a lemon (I think):

VeEuzUKY
Notebook Consultant

Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 155
Rep Power: 3
Vaio Z, the worse laptop I have ever owned!
I am beyond appalled at the bad quality of Sony products these days, specially as they are by far the most expensive laptops on the market to day.

My Vaio Z VGN-Z27GN is 5 months old. I think Ive taken it out no more than 5 or 6 times and this thing is taken care of mintly without any stresses being applied. In this period of time:
- One crack on the plastic rounded bezel where the Stamina<--->Speed switch is showed up.
- Both plastic bezels on both sides where the the power plug goes in and the power button is, got loose.
- On both batteries I have (stock and extended) the plastics got cracked in more than one spot.
- After 5 months of usage, I get 1 &1/2 hours on the stock battery and about one hour more on the extended.
- Batteries drain (we all know about this issue)
- My internal wireless network card got fried and stopped working
- 3 white spots (brighter areas the size of pees) showed-up on the screen revealing lack of illumination uniformity from the LED panel.
- Originally I had bought a corded VAIO mouse that shorted after about two weeks worth of usage (I started getting a "current overload error on USB device" before I realized it was the cord that was shorting itself close to where it entered the mouse assembly)
- I replaced the mouse with a Vaio Bluetooth that simply never worked properly.
- AND FINALLY, last night while typing, the left-clicker on the mouse pad broke inside and the button sank in and does not click.

I don't even care about trying to repair this computer anymore. I just want to take my SSD that I upgraded the laptop with out and smash the whole laptop against the wall. If I was not so busy Id start a complaint process with Sony far beyond going to have all of this properly documented and repaired, but, I will be wasting my time.

This is positively the very last Sony product I will ever own. The fact is, from my HD camera to my LCD TV and even older products, there has never been ONE Sony apparatus in the last few years that ever worked as they should... enough of my interested for Sony's design which is always in the end what attracts me because past that, this brand is a joke.

 

I just got my new Sony SR about 2 weeks ago.

My laptop rattle. It will not sit flat. I try many flat surfaces already. Sony is sending me 6 pack of rubbers to try below the laptop.

Then another user who also have a new SR got his DVD latch very loose. You can go to the SR thread and read about 10 pages back and see the photo.

Quality control from China are not that great!

 

...somehow it sounds a tad unbeleiveable... or he was expecting a toughbook and didn't get one...

I mean, acidents do happen (my battery failed) but this sounds a tad - hmm... outrageous?

Also - 2 failed batteries is odd too except if the laptop was destroying them...

Edit: This is about the Z on the second post above.

 

I have an SR....screen has a defect....I experienced the battery leak problem but it was temporary. Fixed it by taking out the battery. No other problems.

 

There will always be something as nothing in this world is 100./.
The only thing that makes one go bezerk is paying a lot of money 4 it and all sorts of problems start happening.

 

True...

And the problem is - whom do you blame if expensive electronics go wrong?

Sony didn't make the CPU/HDDD etc.

 

I would blame myself 4 buying $$
That's life in the big city

 

I've had... 7 VAIOs (still have 3 of them, Z505, Picturebook C1, TZ150). The only hardware problem I've had with any is when I dropped a 505G a month after I bought it. It was $1200 new and Sony Support wanted $1300 to replace the display. Fortunately, I've got a rider on my home insurance covering my electronics, so I bought a 505F to replace it.

I haven't always been happy with Sony's driver/OS support - they were a pain in the butt about changing the OS in their early years, going from Windows 95 to 98, 98 to 2000 - but I've always been happy with the hardware quality. Imo, they've always been at the leading edge of the PC ultraportable market, and the Picturebook remains a stellar achievement in portable computing to me - way ahead of it's time in 2000, the father of the current netbook craze.

Oh, and my TZ150 is fine, though I skipped the recalls.

 

Have an SZ18GP bought in April 2006. So it's coming to 3 and 1/2 years now.

So far, two problems i have experienced.

1) fan scraping noise after about 2.5 years.
2) battery died after about 1.5 years (will not last for more than an hour even when fully charged).
3) green dots start appearing on the lcd after about 2.5 years, but i took it apart, massaged the internal cables a bit and the green dots are now gone. I have done this twice and in both times, the green dots disappear. It's a temporary solution though as i think some cable must be slightly damaged.

Wished a notebook can last for more years like a good TV should.

Overall am happy with the SZ (although i wished the keyboard was of better quality and the battery would fit snugly)

worth noting. bought a toshiba portege 3410ct in 2001 and it's functioning!! toshibas from those days were of impeccable build quality, in particular the porteges. quite an amazing piece of work....it's even thinner than most netbooks!!!

 

The first thing is: the warranty was voided the minute the SSD was installed by someone other than a Sony-authorized tech.

Who knows what damage might have been done to the wiring during the user upgrade? Was a surge protector used at all times during the use of this unit? Was the unit subject to unprotected surges during an electrical thunderstorm, for example?

The fault of all of these issues is not clearly with the manufacturer; we do not have enough information to determine that.

The minute there were signs of anything electrical going wrong (fried wireless card? shorting mouse?), one would have contacted tech support if one were serious about anything.

The casing issues tell me that someone (maybe not the one posting) dropped that Z at some point or other, but the electrical issues alone would suggest that there were stresses placed on the entire unit and that a professional technician should be consulted.

There is such a thing as responsible ownership -- and this doesn't appear to be an example of it, unfortunately.

P.S. The insertion of the words "Nokia Surge'>" before the words "surge protector" in my text above is another one of those incredible intrusions on our comments made automatically by the software set-up of NBR. I am in no way endorsing that product.

 

I just received my Vaio FW490CTO and I noticed that the top "frame," the whole part that has the camera embedded in it is somewhat loose. Also, the BluRay drive seems loose as well. Are these typical? When I first put in a dvd it was making a LOT of noise then I pushed on it a little and the noise decreased to a level that I would expect.

 

Got 5 Sonys in the family, from old Pentium to C2D machines and have not yet needed to complain. We are lucky.

cheers ...

 

SR should be assembled in US. I just checked mine. My model is 490pbb