Sony VAIO Pro 13: Exceptionally Portable
by Jarred Walton on October 16, 2013 12:00 AM ESTA Great Display
Wrapping up our testing, we have the display along with some figures for temperatures and noise levels. Starting with the display, I actually have a problem with my i1 Display2 colorimeter – it reports numbers, but the calibration is all messed up. I have another colorimeter, an older DTP-94 that still works well, but it doesn't work with ColorEyes Display Pro under 64-bit Windows. What I ended up doing was measuring the white and black levels with the DTP-94 using a separate PC (an old laptop running Windows XP), which also give me contrast, but I don't have Delta E or gamut numbers right now.
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At some point we will be moving towards a better test regimen for laptop displays, similar to what we do on tablets and smartphones. Most users don't have a colorimeter, so the out-of-box experience is far more important than the calibrated result – and nearly all displays calibrate fairly well. This will hopefully help to encourage the laptop manufacturers to put more effort into delivering good quality calibrated displays, similar to what we've seen from Apple with their latest iPad, iPhone, iMac, and MacBook Retina products. And with that said, here are the brightness and contrast graphs.
The VAIO Pro 13 has a reasonably bright backlight, but we still would like to see maximum white levels of 400 nits, as that helps with outdoor use. This laptop is so targeted at mobility that the lack of a brighter display could definitely be seen as a drawback. As for black levels and the resulting contrast, the LCD does very well, with a contrast ratio of over 1000:1. Acer's S7 potentially has a slightly better display, based on these results, but I think the colors on the Sony are actually a bit better and hopefully I can get the colorimeter situation sorted out soon enough to update this section. Anyway, I do like the Sony display quite a lot and think it's one of the best aspects of the VAIO Pro 13.
Temperatures and Noise Levels
Considering the apparent throttling that was taking place in some tests – at the very least the CPU/GPU are not running anywhere near maximum Turbo speeds – I was curious to see what the temperatures looked like under load. We've seen many an Ultrabook hit 90C or higher under load, but Sony bucks that trend in a serious way. I don't think it's just the cooling either, as the laptop doesn't get exceptionally loud. Instead, it's Sony's firmware favoring lower Turbo Boost levels in order to keep temperatures down. Here's what we found in our stress testing:
After running our stress test all night (and then some), the maximum package temperature ended up at just 76C. That's a result more than a few desktops would be happy to equal, and we're dealing with an extremely thin chassis. Even the airflow from the vent on the side doesn't feel that hot, and covering it with my hand didn't get uncomfortable – and it didn't increase the noise levels or temperatures either! Instead, clock speeds dropped slightly and the system continued chugging happily along at 76C or less.
As for noise levels, at idle and light loads the fan is off and thus the VAIO Pro 13 is completely silent. Once the CPU temperature hits I think 40C or more, the fan begins to spin, and in most cases it will be at the minimum speed, which results in a noise level of 32dB from a distance of around 18 inches (45cm). The fan speed and resulting noise levels begin ramping up until the fan is running at maximum at 50C or higher, with a resulting noise level of 42dB. It's a gradual ramp in fan speed as well, which is nice to see – a lot of laptops have three or four discrete speeds with a substantial difference in noise levels at each speed. Considering this isn't really a laptop designed for complex computational tasks (not that it can't do some of them, but it's no mobile workstation), most users will find the laptop typically runs at very low fan speeds or even silently.
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Drumsticks - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
Two months ago or so Sony had an awesome sale (presumably back to school) on this. I helped my friend pick out the Vaio Pro 13 with the 4200U, 8GB Ram, and a 256GB SSD for $1200 or so. I thought it was a pretty decent deal at the time, especially given the relative rarity of haswell ultrabooks at the time. The SSD upgrade was only $120 and I think RAM upgrade was about $50. I think we might have added the battery sheet at some point.Then of course her (rich and trying in every way to spoil her great daughter), against any advice I could muster, found the need to throw in a 512GB SSD (SEVEN HUNDRED dollar upgrade), the i7, and some other obnoxiously useless upgrades for a friend of mine who browses facebook and simply needed a nice laptop for class. End price ended up being about $2500.
But regardless, if this can be had on sale I think it's definitely a great choice. Personally, I think I want the Asus you mentioned as soon as it's out!
Drumsticks - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
Oh yeah, great review, thanks!kevin_newell - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
It's nice I agree! But it doesn't change the fact that Sony VAIO Pro 13 stands no chance to some of the top laptops on the market. /Kevin from http://www.consumertop.com/best-laptop-guide/teiglin - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
Yeah I bought just a bit ahead of that sale; I was super annoyed when I saw it. With that sale, the Vaio Pros were actually a bit cheaper than a lot of the higher-end Ivy ultrabooks available at the time. It was something like $50 off the RAM/CPU upgrades, $100 off the 256GB SSD upgrade, $50 off the sheet battery, and a $100 rebate to boot.I don't really know who they're trolling with that $720 512GB SSD upgrade. I'm really glad I can live okay in 256GB. And $2500 sounds about right for the fully-kitted out version--if I had more money than sense, I'd love to tote around the red version they sell (http://store.sony.com/vaio-pro-13-zid27-SVP1321BPX... - $2600!).
Brutalizer - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
Gamin sucks, but it seems to be a great laptop, because it is small. If only you could connect an external graphics card everything would be good. I saw someone modded an Mac book Air to use an external graphics card. Can this be modded too?purerice - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
"Modding" in that case essentially means they used a Thunderbolt/Lightpeak cable to connect to an externally housed GPU. Technically you could also do that with Firewire or USB but even USB3.0 bandwidth is so limited that you would be better off with the Intel graphics.In the case of the Macbook, Somebody was guessing the cost of the housing at $200-$250 without a GPU. That would put the cost of a good GPU+case at $350-$500. For some people it would be worth it, for others not so much.
hodakaracer96 - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
"The keyboard gets a pass, but I’d rate it a B rather than an A" I think you mean touchpad.JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
Thanks, corrected. :-)Samus - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
Considering Sony's reputation for making short-life laptops it's hard to justify dishing out a months rent on something that will probably fail right after the warranty expires. Practically every VAIO I've ever come across beginning with the Transmetta Crusoe ultraportable's a decade ago have had chronic overheating problems, failed hard disks (from overheating) and terrible, terrible, terrible driver and warranty support.Some people think HP and Dell are bad, but man you haven't seen anything until you've owned a Sony. 4 week turnaround time on warranty repairs for something that was likely purchased at a price premium over the competition. They are pretty machines, but if you want something pretty with decent reliability at this price, why would you pass up a MacBook Air 13?
br1an - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - link
I've owned several Vaios but only needed one warranty experience (in the UK) and it was excellent. The collection and turnaround time was very quick (4 business days from pickup to return) and they checked and replaced a whole lot of stuff that wasn't within the specified scope of the warranty claim. Okay it wasn't major technical stuff - the palmrest cover had unglued on my F series, which they replaced - but they also replaced the fan, the whole keyboard and trackpad because they felt it needed it. Also nice were all the updates so I knew exactly what was going on - even DHL were announcing delivery with automated option to reschedule or re-address.