Review: Sony Vaio SA

WOW! 13.3 inches!!! I tought it would be 13.1 !! now it´s even better! 1.2kg! Man, my SA will have short life!

 

There's an error on that page. Its actually still 13.1 inches like the old Z! not 13.3!

 

I can't wait to see the price of the new Z on SonyStyle USA. I think the UK one is always more expensive =X.

Though, I've already ordered my SA, Z is definitely out of my price range.

Edit: My gosh I tried configuring on the UK website, w/ i5 2520M and the Power Media Dock, it's 2059 pounds. My SA w/ i5 2520m, AMD 6630M goes at US$1600 w/ my personal upgrade of 120gb SSD and RAM to 8gb

 

Processor: Intel® CoreTM i5-2410M 2.30GHz
Operating system: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
Language and keyboard: English (QWERTY)
SSD Flash drive: 128 GB SATA Gen3 Flash SSD
Memory: 4 GB 1333MHz DDR3-SDRAM
Power Media Dock: PMD with DVD disc drive
Display: 33.2 cm LCD, 1920x1080, webcam
Connectivity: No Wireless WAN
Security features: Security features
Battery: No Long-Life Battery
Keyboard Style: Backlight keyboard
Microsoft® Office 2010: Office 2010 Starter
Antivirus software: No protection
Adobe® Creation: No Adobe® Creation
Adobe® Lightroom®: No Adobe® Lightroom 3
Sony Creative software: No Imagination Studio Suite 2
Also Included
Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 3000
AC Adapter: 1 AC Adapter
Wireless LAN: Wireless LAN (802.11a/b/g/n)
Documentation.: Bluetooth® 2.1
Wireless Display: Wireless Display



Man, this is certainly the configuration I wish.

£ 1,909.00 inc. VAT
£ 1,590.83 ex. VA

1600 USD possible in USA?

 

how do you guys get the 10% educational discount for the SA? i have a .edu email address, but when i configure an SA for myself, Sony US store gives me only 5% discount (plus a free sheet battery, if that matters). Also, there should be free ground shipping on orders $75.00+ according to the online store, but i am being charged $6.50 for it.

 

Same. Some people suggested to get a 2-year service plan to get the 10%, but when i selected it I didn't get any additional discount.

 

yeah, i even tried the 3-year extended service plan, but that didn't change the discount (still at 5%). it's weird, since my sister bought a VAIO Z about 6 months ago from the Sony US online store (using the same .edu domain) and got a 10% educational discount...

 

You should call them about it. It's possible that the discount is only 5%, w/ free sheet battery. After all the education stores says UP TO 10%. But i went ahead anyway since the free extended battery sounded good and I didn't really want to get an extended service plan to get the 10%, since the end price will be about the same anyway.

 

$1600 sounds low for the Z. If this were the case, wouldn't people be returning the new SA in droves in order to get this?

 

SonyStyle USA is currently down...

 

maybe Z is coming to Sonystyle usa now! Damn i just bought my SA last week.

 

I also did purchased SA week ago. I just checked Sony UK and the Z with i7, 8GB, 128GB SSD 3rd gen, backlight key, Full HD screen came up to $3000 and that's without the Power Dock (extra $640). TOTAL $3640, That is INSANE. I'm assuming that in US it will be cheaper, let's say by $400-500.

My SA has i7, 8GB, 120GB SSD intel 510, backlight key, BD drive, 2nd 500GB HDD, Intel HD and 6630M card, extra battery for $1945 (edu 5% discount, $75 battery and $50 rebate for system).

 

Well at least people will stop saying "SA sucks, go get Z". The Z's going to have a much better Full HD screen, weigh 400grams less, but for that you're going to have to use the Power Dock for graphics performance, and fork out at least $1600 more. Might as well connect the SA at home for movies/photos, and use SA for its intended purpose: work/business, where the screen doesn't matter so much (except graphics professionals).

 

here's some multitasking performance
YouTube - ‪DSRocker - Sony Vaio SA alle Pogramme auf, läuft bestens‬‏

 

I was thinking. Will the new Z dock have it´s own powersupply? When you connect the main unit to the dock by the lightpeek connector, probably it will not send energy by that cable, so you will also have to connect the main unit to power manually or you will run out of batteries. Otherwise the dock unit will be powered but the main unit will not, different from a regular docking station (like SA´s), which also powers up the main unit. Am I right?

 

^ The dock powers the main unit as well

 

How? Since it´s only connected by a lightpeak cable?

 

the optical is a dual connection cable, so that the psu of the dock is inevitably connected to the z

 

light peak cables can carry a maximum of 10w of power, which is used to power up stuff like USB harddrives, or other usb peripherals (low power). It can never carry enough power to power up a core i5/i7 90w laptop. The inverse is also not possible, i.e. the main unit (laptop) powering up the dock (since the 6650 GPU will certainly use more than 30w of power, as I said impossible for a light peak cable).

 

It has been said the complete setup (pc+dock) has 2 psu's. A small one for the pc and a larger one for the dock, the smaller one is for on-the-move and the larger one is for static situations and can power both units.

 

I looked on Notebookcheck and the GPU inside the dock is only marginally better, ~8%. The only thing the Z has going for it over the SA is screen and weight (and lightpeak), and I would much rather have a system that weights an extra pound that has a GPU inside.

 

What he's saying is that the connector has two connections. One goes into the usb port for the light peak connection. The other goes into the power jack. Note how close the power jack is to the rear usb port.

Sony VAIO Z hands-on - Engadget Galleries

So the cable actually has two separate connections running through it I'm assuming.

 

what the above poster said, and to complement, the optical cable that sony uses aint lightpeak, but rather based on it, and they are emphasizing that due to lawsuits, from the USB consortium.

So to follow is that no optical can provide electricity to anything, thus as I said the cable is a dual socket, you will connect to the whatever sony calls that port + the dc in.

Another mistake is that the tdp and power consumption are also wrong, the tdp of the 35w cpu that the sony uses is well, 35w, if you have the actual power consumption from that chip be kind to share with us.

The 6650m is probably a 15w tdp chip, much like the 5650m before it. However we dont have any hard numbers on that since AMD havent released those. We also dont have numbers on the power consumption either.

Thunderbolt indeed can carry 10w of power, although that is using the copper implementation, or rather what intel has released, a dual cable where there is a copper wiring in the middle of a fiber line is what intel is thinking of doing next. However there arent working prototypes from that cable, and it would need to be backwards compatible with the existing thunderbolt connector, which is basically mdp. Although I do think that what sony did is something similar, although not that complex.

 

Shouldn't this thread be concerned with the SA and not with the Dock of the Z? (There are two other threads to talk about those things).

My new SA arrived today and I've just installed the SSD. Now I just have to wait for the windows installation etc. to complete. So far i really like the quality of the SA. Yes the vertical viewing angles of the display aren't that great but apart from that I don't see any problems so far. I will later try to calibrate the screen and post you my results.

 

Is it SATA 3.0 or 2.0? I'm gonna change the HDD too, but i dont think im going for the newer, more expensive, SSD series with SATA 3 if the SA only have a SATA 2 interface..

Looking forward to your results of the screen calibration

 

It is definetely Sata 6GB so Sata 3rd Generation. My ocz vertex 3 is running fine

 

so yes, you have to manually connect 2 cables, not just sit it over a docking station like we are used to. I like very much how docking stations works. You just lay down the notebook over it and that´s it, no need to connect any damn cable, just sit it over. New Z is bad at that. You have to connect not only 1, but 2 cables. SA with it´s regular docking station is much better based on that. The only thing the SA´s docking station miss is a the AUDIO plug. I like to use my LCD monitor or external speakers when I´m docked. SA´s dock don´t have audio OUT.

 

Did you look at the pictures I posted? The dock has one cable but there are two things on it. Think of it as prongs on a plug. Just because a plug has two prongs doesn't mean you have to plug in two things right? They are attached. they go in together.

Yes you have to plug ONE cable in to connect the dock as opposed to resting it on a standard dock. I don't see the big deal, with a dock you have to line it up correctly as well.

But yes the SA is awesome. I'm extremely surprised there haven't been any professional reviews yet

I have a USB audio interface that's connected to my speakers so the lack of audio out on the dock doesn't bother me. The one case where being into audio makes things more convenient lol

 

Sweet. We're all waiting for you custom color profile Thanks in advance!

 

sorry I didn´t look with the necessary attention. I understand now that sony was clever enough to "attach" the 2 connectors making it work like one. +1 point to sony. So now i´m more convinced about new Z. If sony wasn´t in such a cash run and had used an at least decent screen in SA I would never consider the Z, but with such a low quality display I might consider replacing my SA in a trip to miami in the end of the year. Yes Z cost a lot more but it´s like a jewel. SA is not a jewel, we can say it´s well rounded but it should cost something like 1000 USD (HDD) to justify it´s display. Z is so light and small and cost so much that I believe I would be afraid all the time on damaging it or being stolen.

 

Well, by reading you last comment I started thinking about Z like it is for show off only. Why would someone drop over $3k for something that has only nice screen and is pretty thin.

Please let me understand what are you using your laptop for. I hope not for watching movies only, 'cause it would be very expensive portable dvd player. I'm not sure how picky you are as far as screen quality but I like good quality screens too and you know what, I think screen on SA is quite damn good.

Sorry for my tone but I'm seriously tired of listening how poor SA screen is. That is totally not true and BTW if you are so dissapointed with it either return it or file a lawsuit (who knows, you might get lucky and won couple millions $ for your suffering).

 

well niebyl2002, you must understand that you can´t convice everyone to think the same as you. Many people in this thread, including the author, doesn´t agree with you about the SA´s screen quality. There are some people who likes the screen, but always say they never had a Z and/or are not picky about screen, there are some bad reviews and some terrible reviews. Judging from the brightness and contrast numbers you can say for sure that the screen is a crap. As I said, if SA´s cost was around 1000 USD the screen would be ok. But sony is asking a premium for it which is doesn´t deserves with such a poor screen. My use is work / gamming and that´s all. I don´t watch movies. My main concern is my eyes, cause I know that poor brightness/contrast do force the vision. Since I use the laptop 10+ hours a day that´s important to me.

 

Contrast and viewing angles might be average but brightness is quite awesome (above average). I do also work over 14 hours a day on computers (8h on desktop at work, 4-6h on laptop).

I'm not trying to convince anyone to SA awesomeness. It's not a perfect laptop but which one is. My point is that the SA screen isn't really that bad. Let's face it, screen is average, which mean that it isn't total crap and at average price of $1500 I think is a very good buy. Before I purchased SA I was considering T520 and X220.

 

Hey all,

Thought I would drop my three week SA review. My quick summary would be: Although the screen viewing angle isn't great and the image quality isn't spectacular you won't find a better buy that has the same performance, battery life, and weight around.

I still think the screen could be better due to the limited viewing angles, lack of contrast, and limited blacks. I use it just for taking notes in class so the imited angles and such aren't a real problem. I someone had to do some serious video work on it I could be a problem. I did find that tweaking the brightness, contrast, etc did improve the images on the screen. I used my blu ray calibration disk and the image quality and contrast improved significantly. I have never seen the screen on the Z but in comparison to my Dell it is still nowhwere near the image. I understand part of this is due to the matte screen. One good point about limited viewing angle is that others cannot snoop what you are doing.

Performance-wise though the machine rocks. I have a Dell XPS1640 and this thing blows it away. In start up times, time to load web pages, doing some statistical number crunching, and just alll around use it is much quicker than the Dell. Even when playing blu-rays the thing can fly.

One positive supply is the output to a seperate monitor or TV. I use a HP 24 inch IPS display and I was worried the video card did not have the power to drive the display and reproduce accurate colors and its native resolution of 1900x1200. The laptop does it with ease and to me on the monitor looks better and provides better output than the Dell. I don't have the equipment to test vs. the Dell but the contrast and blacks actually look better.

Now to the best part. Battery life in this thing is amazing! In stamina mode and the wireless turned off I am consistantly getting a projected battery life of over nine hours! I regularly use for three and a half to four hours straight and have constantly used less than fourty percent (average use 38% when used for three and a half hours) which calculates out to a batttery life of over nine hours! I have never had a need to use it that long yet without being able to plug it in so I haven't confirmed the exact life. Also when using the wireless on stamina I am getting a projected life of over six and one half hours. When plugged in and using speed mode and watching a movie battery life is around three and one half to four hours.

Is the machine perfect? No. Does it suit my needs afterall? Yes.

I really wonder about the new Z. The fact that to get display performance and use an optical drive you have to use the external box, which to me would make it nearly impossible to use on the go. Yes, I am sure the display is better than the SA but is it worth the trade off of having video card performance and an optical drive in its own box that doesn't travel very well. I think sony could of put a premium display in the S series and not stepped on the toes of the Z as it seems the new Z is all about lightweight portability.

 

Could you link me to a bad and a terrible review please.

Also is it common to be able to swap-out displays in laptops for superior ones, or is this a real rarity?

 

I finally got to play with a Vaio SA in-store for a bit, and to be honest I was surprised at how thin and flimsy the display and hinge felt. I like almost everything about the laptop, but I'm afraid that something around there will break with a few years of heavy use. (My family's had a few bad experiences with Sony's durability.) Has anyone noticed any sort of durability or build quality issues with their SA?

 

Just for reference, I have a VGN-SR220J/B.
How does the SA screen compare to this screen

 

Did you have to update the firmware at all Stormblade?

I actually have my new SA here today and my OCZ drive is showing up in a couple hours so I am in the same boat as you are I think.

 

Just read this topic and you will find it.

 

People usually compare new products they want to buy with what they've had previously. If people find the screen quality good then it's their opinion. Who do you think you are to say your opinion is correct and everyone else is wrong? Numbers isn't everything, people can make up their own damn minds.

 

It was first running on OCZ firmware 2.02 without any problems but I updated to 2.08 nevertheless. Still running without any major problems. If you run into any problems try the LPM fix.

 

are you retard? It´s not me trying to convince anyone. It was exactly my point to niebyl2002, that people have different opinions. What I say is that there are plenty of people here saying the screen is bad. I just read what people are saying and I´ve come to some conclusions.

 

Hey, I just found this video on youtube of world of warcraft being played on the SA screen. After seeing this, I don't think I will be getting this laptop.

YouTube - ‪WoW on Sony VAIO S series‬‏

 

And yet you say there are "bad reviews" through this forum/topic. Those are called opinions. Your opinion isn't anymore right than anyone else's.

Stop contradicting yourself.

 

Has anyone tried to professionally calibrate the screen? It looks like the Gamma may be too high.

 

lololololol

This is not even SA, it is an old Vaio S series.
And this video shows nothing.

 

The gamma IS too high. Sliding the gamma down to the very bottom will make the screen look much better. The SA doesn't have the best screen in the market, but it certainly isn't "bad". Still, it could've been better.

 

Yes it is way too high. Please wait a second for my calibration data!

 

VPCS11X9E

Wonder if he'll notice

 

of course my opinion is not better than anyone else. The fact you don´t see is that I´m not even speaking my opinion cause I don´t have an SA in hands yet. What I´m doing is reading this thread daily I can say for sure that the GENERAL opinion is that the screen is bad, or at least worst than what was expected for a vaio with this price tag.