Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

[ehosey2]

Besides the 1366 by 768 resolution on the S13 vs. the 1600 by 900 on the S13 Premium, has it been confirmed to be a great difference in other qualities of each panel such as the viewing angles, color sauration, etc. or are we looking at two panels which are pretty much the same? My wife thinks the 1600 by 900 on my Z is too small but loves the 1280 by 800 on her SR590. She wants a gold S13 but don't want to buy the non-premium if the screen is poor.

[UltimusXI]

isn't it like 0.5 kg heavier?

Anyway, what's the main differences from S13A to S13?
Carbon fiber chassis for the first and plastic for the second,
gold Vaio logo vs silver Vaio logo and
no fingerprinter reader for the S13

.. right?

It's apparently 0.1-0.15 kg heavier, but the S13 is still 0.2 kg lighter than my current SR, so that'll have to do. That's just by going from the specs of the non configurable models, don't know if adding the GPU to the S13 (which is not in by default) will make it a bit heavier.

But yeah, you listed most changes, don't know if it's plastic for the S13, the page here lists S13A vs S13 -> carbon vs magnesium. Someone else on this forum said the body was the same and it's just the lid that was different material, but don't know if that's true.

S13A also has a couple more customization options, like the 2GB GPU and more SSD options. Plus, different colors.

I must say though, I didn't notice the lack of finger print reader on S13 before you said so, that's a bit of a downer as I'm quite used to it on my Vaio SR, but oh well, not worth the price difference at all!

[humanstory]

Besides the 1366 by 768 resolution on the S13 vs. the 1600 by 900 on the S13 Premium, has it been confirmed to be a great difference in other qualities of each panel such as the viewing angles, color sauration, etc. or are we looking at two panels which are pretty much the same? My wife thinks the 1600 by 900 on my Z is too small but loves the 1280 by 800 on her SR590. She wants a gold S13 but don't want to buy the non-premium if the screen is poor.

+1 I'm curious about this too

[Hummingb1rd]

My order just got shipped. Coming in from China. Expected to be dropped off on Tuesday morning.

[ludalex]

+1 I'm curious about this too

You can have 1600x900 on S13 too, and it should be the same panel of the S13A.. right?

[mikelsbid]

Super excited, my wife signed for my laptop this morning. An entire day early. I am amazed how quickly it was packed and here from China! I hope to at least run some of the standard tests tonight. Hopig to see another 240-256gb SSD deal pop up.

[boddha]

Managed to catch the S15 and S13A side by side at the local Sony Center here in Helsinki. I took a few photos to share with you guys!

The red/orange issue is still there, I just had to see it myself:
http://sdrv.ms/KJzhgp

The S13 had the premium 1600x900 display. I must admit that the viewing angles were as good on both of the devices. The differences were really subtle, but if you want to see your screen at an 180 degree angle, then the S15's IPS fared just slightly better. Another point for the S15's screen was for the razor-like sharpness (virtually no "blur" around the pixels), which was also slightly better than on the S13A.

And finally I checked the Windows Experience indexes on both of the devices:

The S15 had the 3612QM, 8GB RAM, 640M LE 2GB and a HDD.
The S13 had the 3520M, 12GB RAM, 640M LE 1GB and a SSD.
http://sdrv.ms/KEClMC
http://sdrv.ms/L7J98h

The S15's experience index was:
Processor: 7,5
RAM: 7,6
Graphics: 6,8
Gaming graphics: 6,8
File transfer speed: 5,9

while the S13A had the following values:
Processor: 7,1
RAM: 7,5
Graphics: 4,8
(this could be just the HD4000, if the index was calculated on stamina mode? then again the gaming graphics index seemed unreasonably high)
Gaming graphics: 6,7
File transfer speed: 7,9

The black S15 had a nice "grainy" surface on the top, although all the smooth surfaces attracted quite a lot of prints from my greasy fingers. The screen had some flex to it, compareable to that of the previous SE model. The overall build quality was excellent. Also, the trackpad felt a little sticky, but then again it could be just me.

[Petrov]

Thanks boddha for checking, taking pics and posting. + rep.

Petrov.

[llib]

Same here. got shipping email today and will get it Tuesday.

My order just got shipped. Coming in from China. Expected to be dropped off on Tuesday morning.

[abcdos]

Thanks boddha for the comparison pic of S15/S13A. Seems S13A has a better representation of red? Must be patient and wait for the S15 to be in stores to decide if could really ignore the red/orange issue...