Sony VAIO Y Review

We received this Sony VAIO Y (VPCY115FG/S) unit for review which is Sony’s entry to the thin-and-light world of laptops. It is a 13.3” laptop with a thin form-factor powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 (1.30GHz) ultra-low-voltage processor.

Design

Sony VAIO’s are known for the beauty of its craftsmanship and the quality of materials used and the VAIO Y is no different. It’s chassis is made of magnesium giving it a sturdy look without sacrificing style. It weighs 1.77 kg. making it suitable for travel.

The VAIO Y is one curvy and sexy laptop. The circular hinge sports the charger socket on one end and the power button on the other end which emits a hypnotic green light when turned on.

The chiclet-style keyboard is one of the most comfortable ones that I used on a laptop. I had virtually no problem switching from my regular desktop keyboard to the VAIO Y’s. The size of the keys are just right and every keys are right where I expect them to be. Tactile feedback feels just right too.

The touchpad is adequately-sized. What I like about it is the curved edge where the right and left mouse-buttons are positioned. This makes it easier and natural for your thumb to do right and left clicks on the touchpad. The palm rest has a textured finish so you would know whether your palm is resting on the touchpad.

There’s also a dedicated wireless toggle switch near the base of the laptop so you can easily turn off WiFi to save on battery.

Display & Audio

The 13.3” display produces vibrant colors on a 1366 x 768 resolution. It looks pretty good when watching movies although the glossy screen can cause quite a glare which makes it hard to see when outside or directly under bright lights.

There is a stereo speaker-grill located just above the keyboard that supports Direct Sound 3D and is quite loud without sounding clanky at high volume.

Performance

This VAIO Y comes with a 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium which is kind of odd since the default RAM is 2GB wherein you need 4GB to actually optimize 64-bit.

Anyway, here’s the Windows Experience Index.

The lowest subscore is on the graphics which is powered by an Intel GMA4500MHD. Watching HD 720p videos is ok but it will start to stutter on 1080p videos. Games are restricted to casual ones but heavy Facebook Flash-based games like Restaurant City can bog the system if played for a while.

The 1.3GHz ULV Core 2 Duo processor is no slouch for this machine. Launching apps, browsers and processing images for this write up via 64-bit Photoshop were quite a breeze. Of course, I strongly suggest bumping the memory to 4GB.

Battery Life

The 5000-mah 6-cell battery for the VAIO Y is quite subpar when you consider netbooks having batteries with a much higher-rating. Sony claims that the VAIO Y can go for up to 8 hours on a single charge.

Here’s what BatteryBar has to say about it:

At one point, even at 95.6% full it can only give me 4:29 hours of usage which is quite low. Of course, we can’t trust BatteryBar on a single instance so I put the VAIO Y to my primitive battery drain test. I tried it out with WiFi always on while downloading, surfing and watching trailers (no games) and it only lasted me for about 5.5 hours. That’s already with a handful of minutes worth of idle time. The brightness was set to 80% by the way which is quite high.

Conclusion

Overall, the Sony VAIO Y is a very solid thin-and-light laptop. I really liked the sleek, serious design although I would prefer the black one. It runs pretty snappy for your basic laptop needs and I really enjoyed using it. I have to give Sony a thumbs-up for the job they did with the VAIO Y’s keyboard.

Included in the machine is some Sony software which would supposedly make your life easier. I didn’t like the Sony VAIO Gate though. It is like another taskbar on the top of your screen for easy access on some apps but it gets in the way when I was switching tabs in Google Chrome so you might want to turn that off.

I would recommend the Sony VAIO Y if you are considering a thin-and-light laptop but I suggest you bump the memory to 4GB and look into the optional longer-lasting battery.

Local Price: Php 54,999

Specs:

• Processor: Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor SU7300 (1.30 GHz)
• OS: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
• Display: 13.3″ wide (WXGA: 1366 x 768) VAIO Display, LED backlight
• Graphics: Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
• HDD: 320 GB (Serial ATA, 5400rpm)
• RAM: 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM*2 (upgradeable up to 8 GB*3)
• Ports: USB 2.0 x 3, i.LINK, VGA, HDMI, Memory Stick, SD Card, ExpressCard
• Wireless Connection: WiFi (802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1
• Battery: 5000mah 6-cell Li-Ion

Related posts:

1. Sony Vaio E Review
2. The Sony Vaio P gets some interesting upgrades
3. Sony Vaio E series mainstream laptops
4. Sony Vaio P Review
5. Sony Vaio X Review

1. 

   Cathren Bin says:

   April 16, 2010 at 6:28 pm

   I love my Sony Vaio. I am using TX650 laptop. Light weight, thin and beautiful. It really is worth the money. I just wanted to upgrade features such as a larger hard drive, an internal DVD burner and the perfect size and weight of this last one (TX650).

   reply
2. 

   Deck Lighting says:

   January 25, 2011 at 7:08 am

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   reply