seeking advice: Sony Vaio X, worth it?

The Vaio X was discontinued in late 2010, but I'm thinking of getting one. Its most attractive feature, at least for me, is that it weights only 1.6 pounds (~750g). However, the processor is an Atom 1.86GHz or 2GHz, which is not that powerful. RAM is 2GB, and the HD is either 64GB or 128GB. The current breed of light laptops, such as the Apple MBA and other ultrabooks are, to the best of my knowledge, all over 1Kg.

So, it there any point in getting one? I need an ultralight laptop mainly for presentations, and light activities such as word processing etc..

Main questions:

* Anyone has experience with the 1.86GHz version of the Vaio X ? does existing software run on it satisfactoarily in terms of speed and responsiveness?.

* Since I might be getting a second hand, how good is the vaio x build quality?.

Will appreciate advice from actual users of this laptop.

TIA,
Mike

 

I owned a Sony Vaio P with 1,86 Z540 Atom.

For running Word/ Excel/ Powerpoint or doing some SPSS or R stuff it was running very well.

When it comes to utube or 3d gaming the GMA500 is worse...

If you just want a notebook for doing office stuff the X will be your choice!
Try to get one used on ebay, maybe with z550 atom and 256 ssd!

 

Thanks.

Can you comment on the build quality of the Vaio X? I heard some people complaining about recent Vaio models.

 

I played with the X in my local computer store. Because it is very very slim it is a bit wobbling when you hold it on one corner. Even the display is very thin an also very flexible!

I some tests they say, when you remove the battery the stability of the unit is getting bad, but the battery gives the stability.

In my opinion you get a flexible unit with less weight. Btw. maybe the Toshiba z830 will be something for you? Better hardware and not atom and gma500 crap!

 

I owned and used an X full-time for over a year and a half (I think) and I was very pleased with it. I used it mostly to Remote Desktop to a server for heavy duty tasks, and for browser / office apps. For development (Visual Studio 2010, web dev etc) it was not very pleasant, so I continued these types of tasks on my old Vaio SZ, often via Remote Desktop.

The X is not rock-solid rigid, but this is by design; the whole thing flexes but this makes it incredibly durable. Despite some serious falls and appalling treatment, I only ever managed to produce a crack near a screw at the back, which I repaired myself.

The battery life (medium sized battery came included) was good at approx 4 hours but not quite as good as 2011+ laptops which would typically have a minimum of 5 to 6 hours.

The fan was quiet but quite high-pitched, and would sometimes annoy in a very quiet room. Otherwise would not be noticed. Sometimes got quite hot, especially if not given adequate ventilation.

Internet Explorer 9 runs ok on the laptop, but Chrome gave the best performance for me. Firefox was dreadful. Youtube videos worked fine when windowed, but would drop frames from time to time at full screen.

Using Media Player Classic Home Cinema, divx and 720p MP4 and MKV video played back flawlessly at fullscreen. This stood the test on a 2 week holiday when a number of TV shows and movies were watched in a variety of formats and the playback was flawless. The single mono speaker however was not adequate, so external speakers were always attached. Listening via headphones of course was ideal.

Office apps (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, OneNote) worked great, and were the primary use of the laptop for me, alongside web browsing. The keboard remains excellent, and the touchpad was accurate and easy to use.

My old X has now been gifted to my mother in law who travels a lot and generally loves the thing, primarily because of size and weight (fits in any bag alongside everything else). However, recent Skype updates seem to be putting the CPU under pressure, and video calls are no longer practically possible on the X. Voice calls are fine, but my mother in law misses the video calling. If anyone knows of a solution to this I would love to hear it (I suspect the weedy GMA500 card is responsible).

Storage was not an issue with the 128GB SSD on board, and I think I would have managed fine with the 64GB version too since I stored most of my media and such on SD cards, which worked great off the internal SD card reader.

Generally, if I had a bit of spare cash and could get my hands on the model with the 2Ghz CPU I would get it again as a travel machine, or to replace my wife's aging laptop. It can be found at amazing prices sometimes (few hundred pounds) and I'm wondering if Windows 8 would run well on it. My dreams for Sony to develop a version of the X with a detachable keyboard and touchscreen have sadly not come to fruition, just yet; maybe we'll see something interesting later this year with the launch of Windows 8?

TLDR: unbeatable machine for Office apps and basic browsing. Makes a Chromebook look like a Fisher Price toy in comparison.

 

The X is still a unique machine and has no competition as such. No other laptop has the same minimalist design, 780g weight, carbon fibre materials, 11.1" high-res high-quality screen, solid battery life (5 hours) and full connectivity (VGA, LAN, 3G). It's one of those insane obsessive products that Sony pursues every 5 years and I'm glad to have one. It's Sony at its best. No 'ultrabook' can compete with that package for the business user.

However as people are suggesting, its 1.86ghz Atom is a bit of a crawler. That said, Windows 7 and Office performance is excellent due to the SSD and sufficient RAM. But you don't want an X to perform any CPU intensive tasks. There are still a dedicated band of X users in the Owners' thread here, still trying to squeeze every last drop of performance from this thing. mmmsheen and jeonghun have done sterling work producing custom drivers using Intel's latest EMGD set, which lightens the load on the CPU a little for Windows use.

Running the lightest possible Windows setup, search indexing disabled (use Everything search instead), with the custom EMGD driver and using Chrome with AdBlock (plus 'Antisocial' list to block widgets) I've found the X offers a fairly good browsing experience. I'm also experimenting with Opera which is even quicker. You generally have to work a bit harder in terms of software. For example, replace the default Windows picture viewer (which takes forever to load on the X) with Picasa viewer. Replace Adobe reader (which scrolls slowly on the X) with Foxit Reader and so on. It's also worth noting that the X can play 720p and 1080p H264 files using hardware decoding. It's perfectly smooth in fullscreen using MPC Home Cinema.

Flash is still our major bugbear unfortunately. With 11.2, windowed is smooth up to 480p. Anything higher chugs and tears whilst full-screen anything is unplayable. If you're a big full-screen Hulu watcher or gamer you'll want to steer clear. If you decide to get one I hope you enjoy it. You have to be willing to accept it for what it is though.

I bought mine brand new after it had been discontinued for £680, which made it all the more sweet

 

I used to own one. The build quality is exceptional, but the Atom ensures a sluggish performance. The small keys also ensure a constant frustrating user experience.

It's also vastly overpriced, so if you want a badly performing machine just buy a £300 netbook and save yourself some money.

...except the 11" MacBook Air which is vastly superior in every conceivable way.

To say the X is "Sony at it's best" overlooks the compromises Sony made with the X.

 

At this point in time - yes, I think a Toshiba Z830 or even the 11" Crapbook Air as evidenced above would seem to be a much more productive option.

One word of advice - if you're intending to run Windows for anything worthwhile, forget the Crapbook. Not a huge fan of either TBH, but the Tosh is a better machine overall for general productivity let down a little by the screen. The shallow keyboard is also an acquired taste, though on the Tosh it actually serves its purpose of not contacting the screen (unlike e.g. the Sony Z2. I can make the screen contact the keyboard by a light finger touch on the Z2, while I had to place an Elitebook edgeways on the Z830's lid to get it to touch) under normal portage.

 

Crapbook, wow, how long did it take you to think that one up?

 

Word, Powerpoint, Excel and simple web browsing don't need a gazillion Ghz i7 processor. The X is aimed at adults who don't need the latest overpowered marketing gimmick. You've conveniently forgotten that the MacBook Air is almost 40% heavier, has a glossy display with inferior colour reproduction, is itself unsubtle in colour, has no VGA out, no SD card reader, no 3G and no LAN. There's no extended battery option for 12 hour days. Nor does it come with Windows 7 installed. In other words, it's a computer largely aimed at children.

The only thing the X has in common with a netbook is the Atom processor. Did you actually read anything I wrote or were you too busy playing with "apps" on your Air?

 

I'd say about four months in from the intro of the Rev. A's*. It's stuck since.

*For the Air. The Pros - about the same time in from the intro of the Yonah Crapbook Pro's.

 

^Crapbook was funny the first 42,000 times you used it. Now it's just plain immature.

 

Trolling/insulting/namecalling each other aside (getting like Slashdot here!), I always admired the X, seeing it as the successor to the TZ and TT models, but the Atom was a dealbreaker for me. Couldn't stand the drawbacks that the Atom produced in the machine... but I lucked out and saw an 11 inch YA-series abroad last Christmas, which I promptly picked up. It came with first generation Core i3 Arrandale CPU, but was replaced by the AMD Brazos platform in the YB model, with a good keyboard, excellent screen, highly portable but slightly disappointing battery life. My model is good for office tasks, isn't that much of a slouch generally at other things and even managed to run some old games in a playable way.

 

YA/YB was nice platform, it just never got much attention as it isn't exotic like the Z/T/X/etc.