Reviews of Sony VAIO S Series SVS1512ACXS 15.5-Inch Laptop (Silver)

Customer Ratings:

I was looking for a machine to replace a MacBook Pro that was horrible at running Linux (see notes on Linux below if you are buying this and considering putting Linux on it). I was considering going with a Lenovo, but if you want a quad-core processor you have to bump up to a machine that is over an inch thick and weights over 5 lbs. As a grad student who is constantly on the move, both around campus and in the lab, I wanted to find something slimmer but just as powerful. I found it in this machine.

Pros:

Display Amazing 1080p display, with IPS so that other viewing angles still work well. It rivals the quality of a Retina MBP, and looks much, much better than my lab mate's Lenovo T430.

Discrete graphics card With an NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE, with 1GB of memory, it can handle what I throw at it. I work in computer vision, and it handles 3 simultaneous Kinect inputs in real-time, and CUDA works well on it. On the gaming side, I tried my old Guild Wars 2 account, and got ~40fps on medium settings.

Full size keyboard with numberpad I love having my numberpad, and I use it often. Not many laptops tout this but for someone like me it is a godsend. The backlit keyboard is nice as well, and the keys are visible well in the dark even without it due to the fact that the keys aren't black (I'm looking at you, old MacBook Pro).

The "assist" button As I set up my machine to dual-boot Windows 8 and Linux, this button is much. much better than waiting to hit the proper key to change boot sequences/enter BIOS.

Design The machine is gorgeous and has a great aesthetic value.

NOTHING IS PROPRIETARY! A big reason I moved away from Apple. The machine is not locked down in any way, and everything is accessible if you know where to find it.

Cons:

Bezel flimsiness The bezel and screen are rather flimsy, but this is handled well if you use two hands on each side when moving it, or one had at the top center. Grabbing it from the sides tends to bend the screen a bit, which is a little concerning.

Battery life I can get roughly 4 hours out of the machine in Windows 8, and 3 in Linux. A little more would be nice but I always have my adapter with me.

Notes on Linux:

If anyone is considering getting this machine to run a distro of Linux, it works very well. I dual-boot Windows 8 with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Everything works well in Linux with a fresh install, and it only needed a few tweaks any laptop would need. There are two ways to dual-boot this machine: the first is to simply switch between legacy and UEFI boot in the BIOS, UEFI sending you to Windows and legacy to Linux. However, with some tinkering you can leave it on Legacy and use an EFI booting tool to be able to boot from GRUB, which I am doing now.

Overall, I'm very happy with this machine, and am currently writing this review from it. It has a fast boot time, good speed, great performance, and a little bit of a wow factor with the design. If the battery life was a bit better, it would be perfect. However, better battery life would equate to more weight so I'd rather stay with a lighter machine.

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My criteria for the laptop I wanted involved a conflicting set of specifications, which resulted in few options. Till this very day, I have yet to find another laptop being sold which comes as closely to matching my criteria as this one. Basically, I wanted a powerful machine I could be productive on, which was simultaneously light enough to carry around (and pretty enough to look at). After first buying a Dell XPS15 (L521x), and later deciding to return it, I have been very pleased with this laptop, especially after installing a SSD (Crucial M4 256GB, btw).

Pros:

Display quality At 1080p, of the IPS sort, there's almost nothing negative that can be said about this display. Some users have noted that the reds appear orangish, but for me it wasn't noticeable. I may have been either lucky or this just wasn't high on my priority list. The colors are vivid and the viewing angles are spectacular comparable to my Thinkpad X61 Tablet, which also had a high resolution IPS display. 1080p set the real bargains apart from the phonies (aka most ultrabooks and their pathetic weaksauce resolutions).

Dedicated graphics GeForce GT 640m 1GB. While it uses the slower VDDR3, but gaming on this laptop (I play SC2) has been no problem for me. In addition, there is a bios mod floating around which doubles the speed of the GPU (from 500MHz to 900MHz, with no increase in temps or voltage), though the actual performance difference was not noticeable to me.

Backlit keyboard with numpad I felt that the numpad was one of those infrequently used, but very necessary when needed devices, and this laptop comes with one. It was perhaps the largest factor in weeding out most laptop candidates from my consideration (judge me if you want). The keys are chicklet style, which was a first for me. Adapting to it wasn't that big of a deal.

Size and Weight this is just about the lightest and thinnest laptop that had all three of the previous criteria. It is 4.4lbs and less than an inch thick. Previously, the Dell XPS15 was also less than an inch thick, but was 5.7lbs or more. In addition, the viewing angles on the Dell was quite a bit poorer.

Accessibility and Upgradability the battery, hard drive, and one stick of RAM are easily accessed. This made it very convenient to upgrade to an SSD and to slap more memory in. Same thing can't be said about most ultrabooks. Ultrabooks = 150% marketing 50% quality

Cons:

Battery life this is the biggest deficiency for this laptop. I would have preferred it to be 5+ hours, but at Hardware and Sound > Sounds > Select Realtek High Definition Audio > Configure > Next > Check the box "Front left and right" > Next > Finish. However, even after this they are not that loud.

2 } Webcam. A disappointment, especially since I freaking love the my Sony TX9 camera ... fantastic photos and videos. However, if you want to improve the framerates of the webcam, turning off the "low light compensation" (webcam settings > camera control tab > uncheck the box). I noticed a tremendous improvement in framerate

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At the beginning I was very dissapointed because I was not able to virtualize some windows server 2008 R2 in this Sony Vaio because of some SONY restrictions, but after reading some blogs on the internet I came to know that I could update the BIOS and then edit it in order to enable virtualization.

I did so and now work on this laptop very nicely.

It is a great machine, very fast, light in weight and excellent performance.

I just love it.

I reccomend it!

Honest reviews on Sony VAIO S Series SVS1512ACXS 15.5-Inch Laptop (Silver)

I bought this computer from Amazon Warehouse Deals as Used-Like New. Amazon.com did not have any new ones available. When the product arrived, I found that it came only with a power cord and laptop itself (none of the documentation was included and it came in a brown box). The laptop did not have NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, instead it had a Intel HD Graphics 4000 (someone had replaced it), and the battery life is half of what is advertised. Also, the optical drive makes a very loud noise at start up time. Apparently, Amazon Warehouse Deals Used-Like New computers are used for at least 6 months maybe more. It appears that Amazon Warehouse Deals does not have any quality control measures in place when it comes to checking used products before placing them on sale.

If this computer was new, I probably would have given it a 5 stars, but considering the condition that I got after paying $850 it only deserves 1 star.

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Sony VAIO S Series SVS1512ACXS 15.5-Inch Laptop (Silver)

the product is intended to be good with all bells and whistles too many features has overblown and but there are too many problems to be a quality product

Gesture mouse feature too often stops working and i have to reset the laptop to get the functionality back. Obviously software malfunction. It makes you get used to it and once it frequently stops working it is annoying and satisfaction is hindered.

Same with wireless radio: it frequently fails to connect to 2.5GHz router and i have to reset or manually connect everytime i boot. Problems I dont see even in less prestigous brand of laptops. In overall i would rate down on this after paying premium price.

Windows 8 sucks and Secure boot in BIOS setting will prevent installation of most of earlier and alternate operating systems including 7, in the BIOS it offers to disable the secure boot however it still rejects the Win7 installation CDs. Obviously the BIOS is not functioning as intended.

Screen dimms for no reason. Really bad for eyesight and frustrating. On power setting, no matter how many times you tell and set the screen brightness to maximum it relapse back to some kind of predetermined dimmer setting which pisses off. I had to contact customer service to figure out how to set it permanently and it was some kind of VAIO specific setting in the crapload of apps that came with no laptop which is easy to forget. Few months later, system became irrecorevable and I did the recovery. After the recovery, the dimmer setting sets back in like haunted and by this time, you already forgot the permanent setting. Second time you contact customer service. I hated it.