Sony s15 premium review?

Hey forum,
looking to get a new laptop, and the Sony s15 premium with the IPS display caught my eye. I've been having trouble finding any kind of reviews for it though. Does anyone here have it/have any comments on it? I'm looking for something powerful but still portable for the next 3 years.

also, is it really 4.5 pounds? that seems very light for a 15". I also haven't seen a lot of benchies for the 640m LE, but it sounds like its more powerful than an AMD 6550m, which is what I have right now.

 

Having just bought one, I can give you my observations so far.

Yes it really is that light, yet it doesn't feel flimsy. The screen has the distinctive Sony design, namely it flexes a lot more than you're used to, but this doesn't actually seem to be a risk for the panel. Supposedly it's engineered to be flexible and thus harder to break... We'll see about that.

The screen is GORGEOUS!!! Any other laptop next to it just pales in comparison, except perhaps the Z line. Full HD and IPS are definitely the way to go.

I picked up the pre-configured model with HD IPS ($1399 retail) and I can share my WEI scores.
Processor: 7.5
Memory: 7.5
Graphics: 6.8
Gaming Graphics: 6.8
Primary Hard Disk: 5.9

Obviously I plan on replacing the spinning platter with a proper SSD. And it might be possible to swap out the Disc Drive for something more useful (in my case, I hate Optical Drives)

I haven't done any other benchmarking yet, just installing Skyrim now. The system itself is incredibly responsive though.

 

The 640LE seems to perform almost as well as the Kepler 650M. It's good enough to game on at 1080p with recent titles, provided you don't mind turning some settings down, and you can always drop down to 1600x900 or 1366x768 for a smoother experience...me, I prefer higher resolution. And from what I understand, the Kepler 640LE has a fair amount of overclocking headroom. I have the standard 1GB model, I reckon the 2GB model will do even better at higher resolution (and the only way to get the 2GB is to get the quad core i7, further increasing peformance).

And yes, it's really that light. I recently bought and returned an Ivy Bridge/650M Samsung Series 7 15" (loved the unit, hated the TN display), which I thought was light at 5 pounds.

The S15 feels like a feather compared to the Samsung. Part of that feeling is because it's a larger unit, quite a bit wider and longer than the Samsung, so the weight is spread out more.

I don't mind the flexing, it's a fair trade for the weight reduction, and you only notice it if you try to make it flex or open the display from the side...in actual use it feels nice and solid, the palmrest doesn't bow and the keyboard feels good.

To contrast that, my recent Samsung was tank solid on the outside thanks to the solid aluminum top, but had a keyboard tray that you could bend with enough pressure.

And I should mention it was the display on the S15 that sealed the deal for me. It is very nice.

If I didn't need it at once (want it for my 3 week work trip to London next week) I probably would have went with a CTO model. 500GB drive to be replaced with my own SSD, 4GB RAM for the same reason, quad core, US keyboard instead of Canadian bilingual, and of course the 2GB 640LE. The CTO model would have saved me $70 over the dual core i7/750GB HDD/8GB RAM model I bought in my local Sony Store, and been a lot more potent. Could have added Win7 Pro/clean install and still come out cheaper than the off the shelf model. But I didn't want to wait.

 

Croak, how are the drivers? Sony used to not allow you to install fresh drivers... is that still the case?

 

I think you'll still need to modify the .inf for Nvidia drivers. Not sure about Intel drivers, as it shipped with the latest revisions.

Laptop itself had a BIOS update ready the day I bought it, FYI.

 

I have one I got yesterday and Im comparing it to an HP DV6t Ivy Bridge I just bought a week or so ago... going to do a quick side by side comparison review. A bit torn right now, but leaning Sony S15... Will post soon!

 

Hah guys I picked up an s15 Thursday and I am loving it. The performance of the 640m Le way exceeded my expectations. The screen and build quality is amazing.
Has anyone taken off the full back plate yet? The bios lists that there is another hdd bay but I haven't found it yet

 

There isn't an extra bay, what you're seeing is the RAID controller. Sony makes a proprietary dual RAID 0 SSD (CTO only) that fits in the single bay.

 

Thanks for the infos, but could anone post a video review?

Btw, does anyone has seen the 15.5 silver one? Because ive seen the new 15 and the texture on the back panel is kinda ruggd and weird, not metallic

 

How do you do that? / Does this mean there's a relatively easy way to get up to date drivers?

 

Here is my initial Review of the S15 Premium vs the HP DV6T which I also currently have.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/671101-review-new-sony-s15-vs-hp-dv6t.html

Im trying to decide between the 2...

 

Fairly easy, you have to change a couple of lines in the .inf file.

 

Ah ok, makes sense.
And does the odd look like its replaceable? If its not I think I'll just grab a large ssd next year. I currently have a 120gb in, then using an external tb for steam/movies etc

 

I didn't tear into mine that deep, just removed the battery/RAM/HDD cover to install my SSD. Somebody was concerned that the slot loading drive appeared to be built into the chassis like an Apple device, but I suspect it is indeed modular (and therefore removable) since you can CTO order a DVD or BD-ROM or BD-RW so it only makes since that this is easily installed and therefore possible to be replaced with a HDD caddy.

Unlike a tray-loading ODD though, you'll probably be stuck with the a non-functional loading slot in the chassis if you do install a caddy.

 

Hey there everybody, thanks for posting your thoughts thus far. I am struggling with whether to keep my Series 9 15 inch I just got, or to consider this Sony.

I was wondering if anyone could comment on the fan noise when under duress, as when I tried it at a friend's place it was notably loud. I also remember reading the SB model ran relatively warm, so any info on that would be great. Thanks in advance.

 

+1

Cheers!

 

Would anyone have any thoughts on the differences between the 3310M vs 3320M i5 processors? Is it worth the extra $50?

 

I went with the 3320M since it was less than $50 to upgrade for me (after discounts) and didnt plan on spening major money for the i7.

 

Guys, a lot of these questions have already been addressed in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...fficial-2012-sony-s-series-owners-thread.html