We didn't end up using the optical drive, but it's great as a 'just in case I ever need it' feature, and it doesn't make the laptop too much heavier, nor does it make it feel bulky or flimsy. The left side has the DVD burner slot, as well as the headset jack. Our test model came in red, which we think looks fantastic, but we did manage to scratch some of the paint off while just chucking the unit into a backpack rather than a protective case. The build quality is solid overall, but we did notice some squeaking from the hinges and also from some of the keyboard's keys in our test model. The cable lock slot is also on this side near the front, which could be inconvenient if you ever need to use this laptop while the lock is attached. It has power, Ethernet, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA, and also SD card and Memory Stick HG Duo slots.
The right side has almost all of the ports and slots. Another issue is that they are all next to each other, which means if you ever need to plug in an oversized USB key (we have a thick one in the shape of a V8 Supercar that holds our benchmark files, for example), and still need to use the other ports at the same time, you might be hindered. Two of the USB ports are of the 3.0 variety. We often wanted to plug USB drives into the left side in order to manage cables better, but always had to settle for relocating them to the right side. You get a discrete graphics adapter, dual-band Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet, VGA and full-sized HDMI ports, full-sized SD and HG Duo card slots, and it even comes with a DVD burner in case you ever need to load info from an optical disc.Īlmost all of the ports and slots are on the right side of the laptop's chassis. It's a great model to take on the road because at just over 1.7kg, it doesn't feel too heavy this is despite having such a rich set of built-in features. This makes it 6mm thicker than a 13.3in Ultrabook, but it's still quite a mobile unit that's easy to handle and not a chore to transport over long distances.
#Sony vaio s laptop series
As such, the S Series has a base that's around 24mm thick. It often got in the way so we disabled it.īecause it uses a regular-voltage CPU, the chassis needs to have adequate space for cooling. One of the pre-installed items is a program called VAIO gate, which sits just above the Internet Explorer icon and acts as a Start Menu to all the pre-installed software.
#Sony vaio s laptop software
The system felt sluggish when loading programs and also at boot-up as it had to load all the pre-installed Sony software in the background. Usually we expect rates closer to 110MBps for a laptop with a hard drive in this price range. This was confirmed in the CrystalDiskMark test, in which the drive recorded a sequential read rate of 90 megabytes per second (MBps) and a write rate of 91MBps. The hard drive in this notebook provides plenty of space for storing large files (and lots of them), but it's slow. Both are times we expected from a laptop with this CPU. In our Blender 3D rendering test, the VAIO got 40sec, while in our iTunes MP3 encoding test it got 53sec. It also comes with 4GB of RAM, a 5400rpm, 750GB hard drive and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE graphics adapter. The VAIO S Series SVS13126PG is a mature model that uses a third-generation Intel Core i5-3210M CPU, which gives the S Series a little more oomph than Ultrabooks that use ultra-low voltage CPUs (U models).