Review: Sony Vaio SA

[ota-con]

I found this video today. For anyone still on the fence becasue of the screen, I think this will put things into perspective.

YouTube - ‪?VAIO Z?SA??Z?OS??????‬‏

Thanks for the video.
The screen looks definitely better on the Z.
Boy the old Z is slow compared to the SA and new Z.

[ceffect]

Thanks for the video.
The screen looks definitely better on the Z.
Boy the old Z is slow compared to the SA and new Z.

Don't take the boot-up times too seriously. My SA boots in < 14 seconds. All 3 are fast laptops!

[ktbpylon]

I found this video today. For anyone still on the fence becasue of the screen, I think this will put things into perspective.

Perspective - An extra $5-600 will get you a better screen.

[noddycat]

Perspective - An extra $5-600 will get you a better screen.

I priced up the new Z in the UK - without the silly-priced dock but with 3G data WAN, 8GB RAM, backlit keyboard and extra battery slice options it was about £1720. That's £600 more than the 4GB SA and battery slice - a shade under $1,000. Way too much extra for me to justify it... and even then there's no onboard discrete graphics and optical drive, and I'm not keen on the new Z trackpad or buttons either... for that price difference I can live with a less-than-perfect screen on the SA.

[ktbpylon]

... for that price difference I can live with a less-than-perfect screen on the SA.

As can I My black SA arrives Monday and I can't wait to tear into it!

[willysp]

As can I My black SA arrives Monday and I can't wait to tear into it!

I've had my black SA for a couple of weeks and love it! FYI, amazon.com carries a 4GB DDR3 stick that uses the same chips as the onboard RAM.

[tcpdump]

noddycat, thanks for this, I will definitely head down to the store when im back in town, as for the colour, I really like it, just hope the lid is not too glossy and the actual frame is brown rather than orange, let's see what it's like in real life!

I was in that very same shop on Tottenham Court Road this afternoon and can vouch that the brown SA is there on display now. IMHO it looks a bit horrid though (the colour, not the laptop itself) - not my style at all but that's not to say someone else may love it... I'll be sticking with black myself.

One thing worth bearing in mind is that if you order an SA from the Sony store it's still treated like a CTO order, so it's built to order and takes a few weeks before its shipped to the store where you then pick it up. Obviously though you don't pay the delivery charge in that case - I'm guessing you could also have it delivered where you want at the standard cost.

Chatting with a very helpful assistant, the in-store price was apparently the same as the Sonystyle web price, including the cheaper £70 price for the battery slice if bought as part of a CTO. Not a huge advantage of buying it from the store rather than web... one thing to be aware of in-store, the SA I looked at had had its battery removed and was running on mains, so felt unnaturally light in the hand - the other SBs in the store had their batteries intact so were more representative of the weight.

Still, all in all a nice looking and feeling machine for the price. The hinge issue didn't seem to be a problem TBH - the unit I looked at seemed fine. I had a good look at the screen and it wasn't at all the nightmare that some have said - in isolation it seemed absolutely fine, particularly for the sort of work I'd be using it for. Reasonably bright, not too hard to find a usable angle, text looked sharp enough etc - I'm sure the new or old Z is visibly far superior in colour accuracy and reproduction (they had none on display to compare it to) but for my work (mostly Word documents) the SA should be sufficient.

[DJ9900]

Hey guys, finally got my Vaio SA. After toying with it for about 2 days, I have decided to post my thoughts on it for the benefit of perspective buyers. First of all, a little context. I am a college student, who will be using this notebook for college (assignments and whatnot), a little gaming (COD series, Need for speed, etc, etc), movies & programming (although I am pretty much a beginner). Also, I am coming from a Macbook Pro 13 inch (2009 2.2 Ghz version) and before that a DV4 - 1299 ee. I will first start of my impressions with why I chose this laptop in the first place and all the positive things about it & then move on to all the negative points (and yes there are quite a few of these as well).

So the specifications of my Vaio SA are: Jet black, i7, Radeon 6630, 650 GB (5400 rpm) Hdd, 1600 * 900 aspect ration, with fingerprint scanner, without WWAN and without external battery. Oh and just a regular CD/DVD drive (no blu ray for me ). I plan to upgrade the HDD to Intel 510 160 gb in the near future and quite possibly also upgrade to a blu ray drive.

The reason I chose this laptop is fairly obvious - there is simply no other laptop in the market like this. This laptop packs some serious power and manages to be slim and portable with a decent battery life while at it. The other options that can be compared to this laptop for me were the Dell XPS 15z, Apple Macbook Pro 13 2011, Samsung series 9 & the Lenovo X - 200 (or something like that...). The MBP, Samsung series 9 and the Lenovo were eliminated because of their lack of a dedicated graphics card. As I have said, I intend to do some casual gaming with this laptop and as such a decent to good gpu was a must. However, so was portability cause I also intended to use it for college. This is where the XPS 15z failed, because at the same pricepoint, it was offering me a laptop with similar specifications but in a larger and less portable package. And hence, I chose the Vaio SA. It is a good all rounder - portable and powerful.

When I got my Vaio SA, the first thing I noticed is how light it is! It is significantly lighter then my MBP 13 and its weight really makes a difference. I mean its no Air or Samsung 9, but its pretty light and considering what its packing, its weight is really less. Also, the Vaio SA is a looker (although that is subjective). Its got a subtle yet classy appearance and its definitely a refresher from the MBP look that manufacturers seem to be so keen on replicating these days. Also, the port selection on this laptop is very good, although I do have some quibbles with the placement of ports. Another thing I really like about this laptop is the ability to switch between Intel's integrated gpu and Ati's dedicated gpu manually. I have not used this extensively, so I cannot confirm some of the problems that other users have talked about. But I do prefer this to Optimus because reportedly, Optimus tends to switch towards the wrong GPU at times (I have seen this being said in several of Engadgets reviews of laptops with Optimus). Also, the trackpad on this laptop is pretty good.........for a pc. Its not as responsive as the one on the MBP, but it does a good job & I personally enjoy having dedicated buttons for once. Although, yet again, there are some problems with the trackpad. The chicklet style keyboard is quite spacious and the blacklit keyboard is also a good option but its got its own annoyances.

A little bit about the display....its pretty okay, good even. Yes, I think the SA's display is good. But then again, I am not very picky when it comes to displays. The one on the vaio is definitely better then my old DV4's display as the colors are more vivid on the vaio. However, it does loose on against the MBP but honestly, it does not bother me at all. The vertical angles are bad, but the horizontal ones are pretty good, as is the contemporary belief in this forum. I like the resolution of the display, but not the aspect ration. Its 16 * 9 and as a result, it looses on some height. Now again, this is subjective and perhaps the only reason I am not so fond of this aspect ratio is because I am coming from 2 prior laptops that both had 16*10 aspect ratio. It just 'feels' a little smaller while browsing. However, it does feel good to watch movies without the black bars for a change.

Now for the negatives. First off, this laptop feels flimsy. The laptop flexes quite a bit (in comparison to both the Aluminum made mbp and the plastic made DV4) at all points in the palmrest. The hinge is also pretty bad as compared to the mbp. I don't know why sony did this considering this laptop is designed for portability. The hinge is loose and yes it does have different resistances at different angles. What I did notice is that at 100 degrees +, the screen holds much better, but is very flimsy at around 90 degrees. So if you are sitting it on your lap, its will not shake and move much and is pretty good. But if you are on a desk, the hinge will not hold as well. But then again, if you are on the desk, you don't need a very stable hinge, so in a way, the hinge works pretty well. It still could have been better had it been like the Macbook pro. The next thing about this laptop is the touchpad. As I said before, its pretty good, but there are somethings that could have been better. For starters, the buttons are quite hard and make it uncomfortable to touch. Heres to hoping they become better with time. The second thing is that while the touchpad supports multitouch, it fails to recognize two finger scrolling. Dedicated side scrolling works fine, but if you are coming from a Mac, it might take some getting used to. I don't get it why Alps has not implemented it yet (prob some patent issue). Now for the keyboard. The keyboard is quite recessed and hence button presses tend to be short. Its not bad but it will take some getting used to. Its quite a change from an mbp. Next is the back lighting of the keyboard. There are no dedicated or function keys to adjust it and its kinda annoying cause the ambient light sensor often turns it up even when I don't need it. Waste of battery. You actually have to go into the Vaio control center just to control the back lighting and thats kinda annoying and unnecessary. There are two function keys F8 and F11 that have no other function. These keys could have been used for the better purpose of providing us more direct control of the back light via the function key. Next up.......the ports. The only port that i have a problem with, is the headphone jack. its located in front of the ODD and becasue of that, when you open the ODD, it might get stuck up in front of the HDD pin. Also, it kinda takes away some of your wire length.

So far, this is all that has come to my mind. I will test more things like battery life & gaming performance soon enough. So in conclusion, this laptop is great! It is definitely one of the better (possible the best) laptop I have ever got. If you want an all rounder (performance and portability) then you might not be left with many (or even any) options as the vaio SA delivers that promise. But whether you can live with its many weaknesses, thats the question. If you are picky about your display, this might not be for you. But otherwise, one can easily get used to the trackpad and keyboard. So, I hope this helps you in some way in making your decision.

[phoenixfight]

I've had my black SA for a couple of weeks and love it! FYI, amazon.com carries a 4GB DDR3 stick that uses the same chips as the onboard RAM.

Could you post a link?

[willysp]

Could you post a link?

Sure, here you go:

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-MV-3T4...7C/ref=lh_ni_t