Did you say VAIO ...)
“ Give the laptop to Bumburum, let it review!” “- shouted alone. “ Well, nafig him - he works in Asus and they won’t let him write objectively ” - others grumbled)
Of course they won’t give, where already there! ) Huge review, traffic .
The background of my appearance of this laptop can be found here .
First of all, I want to express my gratitude to these kind people for not being afraid to provide a laptop for a test. Not every company agrees to give a laptop worth one hundred thousand rubles to the first passerby. And this miracle for the photos;)
Yes friends, working with ASUS is a pleasure, but ... I did not sign any documents saying that I would not be able to write about something else and that I would put all dissenters on the count. As there was not a word about the fact that I should write about ASUS only positive reviews, etc. ... I just write detailed reviews that the IT audience reads - I think any manufacturer would be interested in this. The fact that a large company is not afraid to take even bloggers into its arsenal is only a plus for it) Therefore, one should not look for any causal relationships there.
And yet, so that ASUS is not offended by me) in this review I will compare the Sony VAIO laptop with the ASUS VX5 Lamborghini laptop , about which I recently did a detailed review .
I think this is logical - they have the same price category, weight, size and purpose are also similar. Only here in the first review they used to say so often, “ Nafig, Vayo is much better, ” so I’m even curious what they will say this time. I feel the storm in the glass will calm down only after I review the latest macbooks) By the way )
So let's see ... what is your VAIO and how much better is it) That's it, let's not pull the cat by the tail - let's go.
The box surprised me. This is not some kind of boxing in which it would not be embarrassing to give a laptop ... this is the most ordinary cardboard. It’s also a misfortune with the package bundle - they didn’t bother to put either a mouse or a leather bag on a laptop with space cost - nothing. I really hope that this is only a sample problem that I got, and not the whole party ... otherwise it’s just not serious.
In the box was:
- Laptop VAIO VGN-AW2XRY / Q ;
- Battery;
- Remote control;
- Network adapter with power cable;
- An adapter to a laptop for a TV antenna;
- Quick installation guide and some other pieces of paper.
The battery is lithium-ion at 4800mAh (11.1V, 58Wh). There are no paper instructions as such either - instead, there is only a black-and-white Russian-Ukrainian quick installation guide. The manual itself was later found in electronic form - a detailed and useful thing. The network adapter is large and heavy, I hope that it is at least high-quality) There were no complaints about it during operation.
First, let's talk about the remote. Here I am also somewhat disappointed ... someone who, and Sony should have done beautifully! Here is the most ordinary remote control made of cheap plastic, in which there is almost nothing remarkable. Compare it at least with the remotes (from the TV and popcorn) of BBK, which for some reason many do not like, even if they have never seen its products.
I think the comments are superfluous) There are a lot of buttons on the remote control, but the functionality is very standard. The brightest button, the round one with the Windows logo, allows you to launch the Windows MCE (Media Center Edition) shell on your laptop. An exceptionally nice thing, you can read about it on the Internet (I partially wrote too).
Now you can talk about the laptop itself) It is simply huge (437x289x36.9 / 39.7mm) - it did not fit into any of the laptop bags that were at hand. Therefore, without a bag in the kit, it’s doubly bad - it’s not in the Auchanovsky package to wear it. Weight - almost 4 kilograms. But as a reward for physical exhaustion - a screen diagonal of 18.4 inches.
For comparison, ASUS VX5 weighed 3.3kg with dimensions of 394x2274x48mm and diagonals of 16.4 ”and the“ strong men ”began to be indignant already on this note)
The laptop is really beautiful - you can’t argue. His appearance immediately inspires some confidence ... it is felt that many details were carefully thought and worked on. But not over all. For example, the front cover is made of glossy black plastic (there are also no rags to remove prints in the kit), it, like all glossy surfaces, is very easily soiled.
Inside, the gloss is much less - although it is calming. Gloss can be good for marketing, but in practice this is sheer inconvenience.
I liked the variety of connectors that are present on the body of this machine, which makes it very versatile. At the left end there are air vents, a USB port, a VGA and HDMI connector, a CF card reader, an ExpressCard slot and an S400 connector (I see it for the first time).
On the right is the door of the Bluray drive, two more USB ports, optical output jacks and a microphone.
A little later, behind the drive, there was a small flip-up plug - behind it there is a 100-megabit network connector, a hole for the antenna and ... a telephone cable. Yes, yes, inside there is a v.92 56K modem ........) If there were no SSD drive inside, I would have thought that I had made a mistake with the choice of a laptop for at least an era.
If you look at the laptop in front, the following functional elements are visible - two slots for memory cards (SD and Memory Stick), an IR receiver window and a Wi-Fi switch (Off-on).
A little lower above all this (even already at the bottom of the laptop) is the cover of the MagicGate connector, which is difficult to open (nothing to catch on). Judging by the tooltip when typing a search query in Yandex “magic gate what is”, I'm not alone))
There is nothing behind, except that the battery can be seen a little.
At all ends there is a solid metal chrome “ribbon” molding, which in some places explaining inscriptions are placed above the ports.
On the “bottom” there are a few vents, three small round rubber feet and two large high ones, the latter not being removed in any way. It would be better done both on keyboards, and so - extra half a centimeter of growth.
Two parts of the laptop are connected by a massive hinge, from one end of which there is a power connector, from the other - a transparent power button. The hinge perfectly holds the screen, opens and closes without sound, does not stagger, and in general it seemed to me very reliable.
The screen is not glossy or matte - something in between. I really liked him, I need to take an example from him. Apparently, for this screen on the case there are so many card slots for photographers to really admire their pictures;) The
frame around the screen is matte - finally. On top of it is a webcam with 1.3 megapixels on board. By the way, they are also interpolated.
Right below the screen is a fine grid, behind which are 2.1 speakers. A panel with seven touch buttons and a fingerprint scanner are inserted in this grid - a nice bonus.
The keyboard “like on the VAIO” is, in principle, in the best traditions) But in this particular case, I partially did not like it with its layout. The small right Shift and Enter are like on VX5, but there is still a digital block, because of which these buttons (especially Del at the top) in the dark simply cannot be distinguished. Therefore, to send a message in ICQ or a comment, CTRL + Enter will have to search. But for some reason they made (on the keyboard) a hardware button to open the drive) a very nice bonus that can accidentally come in handy when watching a movie from disk.
Otherwise ... all is not bad. Divided square keys with rounded edges, quiet and tactilely pleasant keystrokes, a small key stroke ... for complete happiness, I would like to have a backlight - in the same VX5 it just is.
The touchpad without any frills is the most common rectangular (with rounded edges) touch panel. Rough, with a dotted texture, not pressed into the main body. It’s nice to work with fingers, I haven’t tried anything else) On the right there is a scroll area, but it is not marked in any way (maybe this is for the better). But the fact that there is no multisensory can upset some. Under the touch panel are two elastic buttons.
I forgot an important point) Immediately after the opening of the “book”, the material that covered the surface under the keyboard (well, around the touchpad, respectively) caught my eye. At first it seemed to me that this was leather (for such a price it should be at least the skin of the President of Venezuela), but the very first touch (and even if you just peered at the texture) said that it was not even leatherette. It is just a rubberized surface.
Very pleasant to the touch and, hopefully, practical, coverage ... but damn it ... where are the chips then that affect pricing? :) Well, if the filling does not disappoint - intentionally removed the specifications to the very bottom)
Switching on is done by pressing a button on the right end - immediately after that it lights up in green, like a small diode strip in the hinge. The touch buttons on the front side are lit in green color - unobtrusively so nice. You can’t call the device quiet - you can clearly hear it in the silence, but you don’t pay much attention to it in the office environment.
At VX5, many scolded the heat dissipation system - what kind of slots are these in the side of the device ... well) Well, these are exactly the same slots, only they "warm" not only to the side, but also down (thanks to the beveled part of the bottom of the case ) If you put the laptop on your knees and put a resource-intensive film, then the first discomfort will appear even before the "leading roles". So the stand turned out to be very handy.
The exit drive tray does not rest on the surface under it - a frequent pitfall, you must be careful.
After starting the system, there are quite a few shortcuts on the desktop - you can restore order. About the software a little lower.
Battery life, oh gods, is exactly 1 hour.
With this indicator, everything seems to be fine. An Intel® Core ™ 2 Duo T9800 processor with a clock frequency of 2.93 GHz ( 1066 MHz bus frequency, 6 MB L2 cache) is installed on the Mobile Intel® PM45 Express chipset in the system - one of the best stones in the Core2Duo line (only T9900stars with 3.06 GHz are higher). On board - 4GB of RAM (DDR2, 800 MHz) and a discrete graphics card NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT with 512 MB of memory. This alignment allows you to achieve good performance, sufficient to perform most tasks.
All kinds of films - absolutely no problem. Games - Installed Crysis
it started freely and even gave a decent pass, however, it was far from the maximum settings and not even high ones. Synthetic tests, which it is customary to measure ... measure) can say something more objective.
So, after disabling all unnecessary services and applications in the tray, I launch the SuperPi 1.5 program . The number "Pi" to the millionth mark is considered in 22 seconds, which is not bad.
The mathematical test of the CPU FreeBenchmark 2.2 ends already after 23.14 seconds - it's even a little faster than in Lambo.
3DMark05 at a resolution of 1024 × 768 (without AA) scored 10573 points, 3DMark06 at a resolution of 1280 × 1024 - 5275. Slightly lag.
3DMarkVantage 1.0.1 - on the Performance profile scored P1718 points (GPU - 1390 , CPU - 6889 ), and on the High profile - H911 (GPU - 793 , CPU - 5702 ).
Actually, such pies) some brakes were not found. Oh yes, the installed Windows Vista Ultimate system produced a performance index of 5.5 - just like on a sports car.
Now we can talk about another nice thing, although, as I understand it, there are two of them there at once.
The total amount of data space on this laptop is 628GB - two 500GB SSDs each (with Raid 0 support) got to the 500GB hard drive. And here I have a few questions. The first and main of which is “Why?”. Silent system here seems not to be designed. Judging by the weight and size, the device is also not intended for active travel (in extreme cases, a laptop can be stuffed with flash drives to the eyeballs). A multimedia laptop involves storing a lot of content, however, 128GB is not much at all ... I would even say it is only 3 films in blur) Okay, let's assume that this particular bunch will please with its performance, for example, in the OS ... but I assure - The target audience of this laptop does not even know about it. SSD is, of course, good, but here it is completely unclear what the manufacturer was guided by.
Toli is the case with ASUS VX5) There is a choice of either an array of two disks per total terabyte, or the same (!!!) volume completely on the SSD, but for thousands. Whoever needs what he chooses, and no troubles.
However, the Soni VAIO SSDs proved to be very worthy. Judge for yourself - linear read speed graph and random access time.
The usual hard drive, on the contrary, is not famous for records - there were no more than 50Mb / s.
In many reviews of ASUS, I skip this chapter, because often the software simply repeats from device to device - I write only about innovations. But I would like to dwell on Sonya in detail - for many there will be nothing new here, but personally I was pleased to meet you.
So, immediately after starting up, a small window is visible on the desktop - “ Me and my VAIO ”. When you click on it, a large window opens, where the main actions based on the main software are taken out. For example, let's work with a photo - select the desired item and see the available actions. Sort, burn, edit, etc. - select, for example, “Edit” and immediately the programs become available for editing. In a specific case, Photoshop Elements and the programPicture Motion Browser . And so by analogy. In fact, such a launcher is very convenient and will appeal to people other than geeks.
The VAIO Smart Network utility will also not be superfluous - when launched with the operating system, it unobtrusively hangs right under the webcam. It allows you to configure network parameters and connections in great detail, create a pair of profiles for quick switching.
For the operation of the webcam, the ArcSoft WebCam Companion program from a third-party manufacturer is responsible (I am more and more beginning to love ArcSoft - they do a lot of things and at a good level). There may not be as many settings as in ASUS LifeFramebut also a lot of things. From the unusual, I liked the fact that you can instead show yourself a character who will partially repeat your actions. lol.
The fingerprint sensor is also a nice bonus - I always liked it because you can log in quickly. Here, besides the login, there are several more functions - encryption, launching applications.
As a separate item, I liked the PMB ( Picture Motion Browser ) program mentioned above . Thanks to her, you can really sort photos very quickly and conveniently — it’s a pleasure to use.
As I said, above the keyboard are touch buttons - in addition to the player control buttons, there are two buttons S1 and S2 .
The first, S1, launches Sony Center - a kind of laptop control panel. I really liked this tool, because everything is collected in one place. What all"? General system information (nothing more), power management settings (very flexible), display settings (or displays), sound, security and buttons on the keyboard. Well done, very nice softinka.
When S2 is pressed, Dolby Control Center starts by default - a small window with a pseudo-three-dimensional room where you can change the bass level by moving a single slider)
In general, it is unlikely to be useful to anyone, so you can immediately re-bind.
In general, I liked the software - not much is superfluous, and what is there is hidden. It’s not difficult to find, and to whom the full-time functionality is enough - they will appreciate it.
Pros
- Stylish appearance and expensive finishing materials, quality assembly;
- High performance, many different connectors;
- Bright and colorful screen, fingerprint scanner;
- Convenient keyboard with split keys;
- SSD-drive, Bluray-drive, remote control.
- With software everything is OK)
Cons
- Scanty equipment;
- Huge sizes and weight;
- The glossy cover is very easily soiled;
- A ugly remote, in some places an uncomfortable layout (you can get used to it), there is no backlight;
- Not the most successful design for heat dissipation;
- Short battery life;
- Price (100 000 rubles).
Do not say anything, I understand everything) " nafig laptop XXX, better vaio! ”In 99% of the cases it means that we mean the X, Z, TT or SR series - stylish, small, powerful and expensive cars that are really cool. But ... it seems to me that most often this is said by those who cannot afford either one or the other, but want to say something. Friends, you have to be simpler) Well, or at least specify - it seems that Sonya is a little different. Hence the title of the article - I took this opportunity to take the “top” model, and there are so many compromises in it.
At one time, I slightly wondered about studying the model lines of Sony laptops and I know that the AW series is positioned as multimedia, in fact it is even a DTR-system (Desktop Replace). And here it’s worth nodding your head - the multimedia capabilities of the laptop beats off one hundred percent. But then I still do not understand the complaints about the VX5, which is lighter, longer-lasting and, in my opinion, more aggressive-cute) It can do the same thing + you can take it with you. If I hadn’t written about VX5, this article would probably have been in a more positive way, because there would have been no comparison and everything seemed to be more unique. And no " ASUS will not be allowed to write " has nothing to do with it. Nevermind. I do not impose either this or that.
In general, the laptop made a positive impression - everything in it is harmoniously assembled, thought out and debugged, although there are many controversial issues (one modem is worth it). BUT ... judging more globally - there is absolutely nothing in it that costs 100 thousand. In my opinion, for such a configuration, the price is almost doubled.
There was very little time for the test, so if you haven’t figured it out (and this is the case), then do not swear, but supplement it. I'd love to test the X, Z, TT, SR and P series from Sony. I hope that someday I can do it.
Good luck!
Of course they won’t give, where already there! ) Huge review, traffic .
The background of my appearance of this laptop can be found here .
First of all, I want to express my gratitude to these kind people for not being afraid to provide a laptop for a test. Not every company agrees to give a laptop worth one hundred thousand rubles to the first passerby. And this miracle for the photos;)
Yes friends, working with ASUS is a pleasure, but ... I did not sign any documents saying that I would not be able to write about something else and that I would put all dissenters on the count. As there was not a word about the fact that I should write about ASUS only positive reviews, etc. ... I just write detailed reviews that the IT audience reads - I think any manufacturer would be interested in this. The fact that a large company is not afraid to take even bloggers into its arsenal is only a plus for it) Therefore, one should not look for any causal relationships there.
And yet, so that ASUS is not offended by me) in this review I will compare the Sony VAIO laptop with the ASUS VX5 Lamborghini laptop , about which I recently did a detailed review .
I think this is logical - they have the same price category, weight, size and purpose are also similar. Only here in the first review they used to say so often, “ Nafig, Vayo is much better, ” so I’m even curious what they will say this time. I feel the storm in the glass will calm down only after I review the latest macbooks) By the way )
So let's see ... what is your VAIO and how much better is it) That's it, let's not pull the cat by the tail - let's go.
Equipment
The box surprised me. This is not some kind of boxing in which it would not be embarrassing to give a laptop ... this is the most ordinary cardboard. It’s also a misfortune with the package bundle - they didn’t bother to put either a mouse or a leather bag on a laptop with space cost - nothing. I really hope that this is only a sample problem that I got, and not the whole party ... otherwise it’s just not serious.
In the box was:
- Laptop VAIO VGN-AW2XRY / Q ;
- Battery;
- Remote control;
- Network adapter with power cable;
- An adapter to a laptop for a TV antenna;
- Quick installation guide and some other pieces of paper.
The battery is lithium-ion at 4800mAh (11.1V, 58Wh). There are no paper instructions as such either - instead, there is only a black-and-white Russian-Ukrainian quick installation guide. The manual itself was later found in electronic form - a detailed and useful thing. The network adapter is large and heavy, I hope that it is at least high-quality) There were no complaints about it during operation.
Appearance
First, let's talk about the remote. Here I am also somewhat disappointed ... someone who, and Sony should have done beautifully! Here is the most ordinary remote control made of cheap plastic, in which there is almost nothing remarkable. Compare it at least with the remotes (from the TV and popcorn) of BBK, which for some reason many do not like, even if they have never seen its products.
I think the comments are superfluous) There are a lot of buttons on the remote control, but the functionality is very standard. The brightest button, the round one with the Windows logo, allows you to launch the Windows MCE (Media Center Edition) shell on your laptop. An exceptionally nice thing, you can read about it on the Internet (I partially wrote too).
Now you can talk about the laptop itself) It is simply huge (437x289x36.9 / 39.7mm) - it did not fit into any of the laptop bags that were at hand. Therefore, without a bag in the kit, it’s doubly bad - it’s not in the Auchanovsky package to wear it. Weight - almost 4 kilograms. But as a reward for physical exhaustion - a screen diagonal of 18.4 inches.
For comparison, ASUS VX5 weighed 3.3kg with dimensions of 394x2274x48mm and diagonals of 16.4 ”and the“ strong men ”began to be indignant already on this note)
The laptop is really beautiful - you can’t argue. His appearance immediately inspires some confidence ... it is felt that many details were carefully thought and worked on. But not over all. For example, the front cover is made of glossy black plastic (there are also no rags to remove prints in the kit), it, like all glossy surfaces, is very easily soiled.
Inside, the gloss is much less - although it is calming. Gloss can be good for marketing, but in practice this is sheer inconvenience.
I liked the variety of connectors that are present on the body of this machine, which makes it very versatile. At the left end there are air vents, a USB port, a VGA and HDMI connector, a CF card reader, an ExpressCard slot and an S400 connector (I see it for the first time).
On the right is the door of the Bluray drive, two more USB ports, optical output jacks and a microphone.
A little later, behind the drive, there was a small flip-up plug - behind it there is a 100-megabit network connector, a hole for the antenna and ... a telephone cable. Yes, yes, inside there is a v.92 56K modem ........) If there were no SSD drive inside, I would have thought that I had made a mistake with the choice of a laptop for at least an era.
If you look at the laptop in front, the following functional elements are visible - two slots for memory cards (SD and Memory Stick), an IR receiver window and a Wi-Fi switch (Off-on).
A little lower above all this (even already at the bottom of the laptop) is the cover of the MagicGate connector, which is difficult to open (nothing to catch on). Judging by the tooltip when typing a search query in Yandex “magic gate what is”, I'm not alone))
There is nothing behind, except that the battery can be seen a little.
At all ends there is a solid metal chrome “ribbon” molding, which in some places explaining inscriptions are placed above the ports.
On the “bottom” there are a few vents, three small round rubber feet and two large high ones, the latter not being removed in any way. It would be better done both on keyboards, and so - extra half a centimeter of growth.
Two parts of the laptop are connected by a massive hinge, from one end of which there is a power connector, from the other - a transparent power button. The hinge perfectly holds the screen, opens and closes without sound, does not stagger, and in general it seemed to me very reliable.
The screen is not glossy or matte - something in between. I really liked him, I need to take an example from him. Apparently, for this screen on the case there are so many card slots for photographers to really admire their pictures;) The
frame around the screen is matte - finally. On top of it is a webcam with 1.3 megapixels on board. By the way, they are also interpolated.
Right below the screen is a fine grid, behind which are 2.1 speakers. A panel with seven touch buttons and a fingerprint scanner are inserted in this grid - a nice bonus.
The keyboard “like on the VAIO” is, in principle, in the best traditions) But in this particular case, I partially did not like it with its layout. The small right Shift and Enter are like on VX5, but there is still a digital block, because of which these buttons (especially Del at the top) in the dark simply cannot be distinguished. Therefore, to send a message in ICQ or a comment, CTRL + Enter will have to search. But for some reason they made (on the keyboard) a hardware button to open the drive) a very nice bonus that can accidentally come in handy when watching a movie from disk.
Otherwise ... all is not bad. Divided square keys with rounded edges, quiet and tactilely pleasant keystrokes, a small key stroke ... for complete happiness, I would like to have a backlight - in the same VX5 it just is.
The touchpad without any frills is the most common rectangular (with rounded edges) touch panel. Rough, with a dotted texture, not pressed into the main body. It’s nice to work with fingers, I haven’t tried anything else) On the right there is a scroll area, but it is not marked in any way (maybe this is for the better). But the fact that there is no multisensory can upset some. Under the touch panel are two elastic buttons.
I forgot an important point) Immediately after the opening of the “book”, the material that covered the surface under the keyboard (well, around the touchpad, respectively) caught my eye. At first it seemed to me that this was leather (for such a price it should be at least the skin of the President of Venezuela), but the very first touch (and even if you just peered at the texture) said that it was not even leatherette. It is just a rubberized surface.
Very pleasant to the touch and, hopefully, practical, coverage ... but damn it ... where are the chips then that affect pricing? :) Well, if the filling does not disappoint - intentionally removed the specifications to the very bottom)
Inclusion and work
Switching on is done by pressing a button on the right end - immediately after that it lights up in green, like a small diode strip in the hinge. The touch buttons on the front side are lit in green color - unobtrusively so nice. You can’t call the device quiet - you can clearly hear it in the silence, but you don’t pay much attention to it in the office environment.
At VX5, many scolded the heat dissipation system - what kind of slots are these in the side of the device ... well) Well, these are exactly the same slots, only they "warm" not only to the side, but also down (thanks to the beveled part of the bottom of the case ) If you put the laptop on your knees and put a resource-intensive film, then the first discomfort will appear even before the "leading roles". So the stand turned out to be very handy.
The exit drive tray does not rest on the surface under it - a frequent pitfall, you must be careful.
After starting the system, there are quite a few shortcuts on the desktop - you can restore order. About the software a little lower.
Battery life, oh gods, is exactly 1 hour.
Performance
With this indicator, everything seems to be fine. An Intel® Core ™ 2 Duo T9800 processor with a clock frequency of 2.93 GHz ( 1066 MHz bus frequency, 6 MB L2 cache) is installed on the Mobile Intel® PM45 Express chipset in the system - one of the best stones in the Core2Duo line (only T9900
it started freely and even gave a decent pass, however, it was far from the maximum settings and not even high ones. Synthetic tests, which it is customary to measure ... measure) can say something more objective.
So, after disabling all unnecessary services and applications in the tray, I launch the SuperPi 1.5 program . The number "Pi" to the millionth mark is considered in 22 seconds, which is not bad.
The mathematical test of the CPU FreeBenchmark 2.2 ends already after 23.14 seconds - it's even a little faster than in Lambo.
3DMark05 at a resolution of 1024 × 768 (without AA) scored 10573 points, 3DMark06 at a resolution of 1280 × 1024 - 5275. Slightly lag.
3DMarkVantage 1.0.1 - on the Performance profile scored P1718 points (GPU - 1390 , CPU - 6889 ), and on the High profile - H911 (GPU - 793 , CPU - 5702 ).
Actually, such pies) some brakes were not found. Oh yes, the installed Windows Vista Ultimate system produced a performance index of 5.5 - just like on a sports car.
Now we can talk about another nice thing, although, as I understand it, there are two of them there at once.
The total amount of data space on this laptop is 628GB - two 500GB SSDs each (with Raid 0 support) got to the 500GB hard drive. And here I have a few questions. The first and main of which is “Why?”. Silent system here seems not to be designed. Judging by the weight and size, the device is also not intended for active travel (in extreme cases, a laptop can be stuffed with flash drives to the eyeballs). A multimedia laptop involves storing a lot of content, however, 128GB is not much at all ... I would even say it is only 3 films in blur) Okay, let's assume that this particular bunch will please with its performance, for example, in the OS ... but I assure - The target audience of this laptop does not even know about it. SSD is, of course, good, but here it is completely unclear what the manufacturer was guided by.
Toli is the case with ASUS VX5) There is a choice of either an array of two disks per total terabyte, or the same (!!!) volume completely on the SSD, but for thousands. Whoever needs what he chooses, and no troubles.
However, the Soni VAIO SSDs proved to be very worthy. Judge for yourself - linear read speed graph and random access time.
The usual hard drive, on the contrary, is not famous for records - there were no more than 50Mb / s.
Software
In many reviews of ASUS, I skip this chapter, because often the software simply repeats from device to device - I write only about innovations. But I would like to dwell on Sonya in detail - for many there will be nothing new here, but personally I was pleased to meet you.
So, immediately after starting up, a small window is visible on the desktop - “ Me and my VAIO ”. When you click on it, a large window opens, where the main actions based on the main software are taken out. For example, let's work with a photo - select the desired item and see the available actions. Sort, burn, edit, etc. - select, for example, “Edit” and immediately the programs become available for editing. In a specific case, Photoshop Elements and the programPicture Motion Browser . And so by analogy. In fact, such a launcher is very convenient and will appeal to people other than geeks.
The VAIO Smart Network utility will also not be superfluous - when launched with the operating system, it unobtrusively hangs right under the webcam. It allows you to configure network parameters and connections in great detail, create a pair of profiles for quick switching.
For the operation of the webcam, the ArcSoft WebCam Companion program from a third-party manufacturer is responsible (I am more and more beginning to love ArcSoft - they do a lot of things and at a good level). There may not be as many settings as in ASUS LifeFramebut also a lot of things. From the unusual, I liked the fact that you can instead show yourself a character who will partially repeat your actions. lol.
The fingerprint sensor is also a nice bonus - I always liked it because you can log in quickly. Here, besides the login, there are several more functions - encryption, launching applications.
As a separate item, I liked the PMB ( Picture Motion Browser ) program mentioned above . Thanks to her, you can really sort photos very quickly and conveniently — it’s a pleasure to use.
As I said, above the keyboard are touch buttons - in addition to the player control buttons, there are two buttons S1 and S2 .
The first, S1, launches Sony Center - a kind of laptop control panel. I really liked this tool, because everything is collected in one place. What all"? General system information (nothing more), power management settings (very flexible), display settings (or displays), sound, security and buttons on the keyboard. Well done, very nice softinka.
When S2 is pressed, Dolby Control Center starts by default - a small window with a pseudo-three-dimensional room where you can change the bass level by moving a single slider)
In general, it is unlikely to be useful to anyone, so you can immediately re-bind.
In general, I liked the software - not much is superfluous, and what is there is hidden. It’s not difficult to find, and to whom the full-time functionality is enough - they will appreciate it.
Control weighing
Pros
- Stylish appearance and expensive finishing materials, quality assembly;
- High performance, many different connectors;
- Bright and colorful screen, fingerprint scanner;
- Convenient keyboard with split keys;
- SSD-drive, Bluray-drive, remote control.
- With software everything is OK)
Cons
- Scanty equipment;
- Huge sizes and weight;
- The glossy cover is very easily soiled;
- A ugly remote, in some places an uncomfortable layout (you can get used to it), there is no backlight;
- Not the most successful design for heat dissipation;
- Short battery life;
- Price (100 000 rubles).
Total
Do not say anything, I understand everything) " nafig laptop XXX, better vaio! ”In 99% of the cases it means that we mean the X, Z, TT or SR series - stylish, small, powerful and expensive cars that are really cool. But ... it seems to me that most often this is said by those who cannot afford either one or the other, but want to say something. Friends, you have to be simpler) Well, or at least specify - it seems that Sonya is a little different. Hence the title of the article - I took this opportunity to take the “top” model, and there are so many compromises in it.
At one time, I slightly wondered about studying the model lines of Sony laptops and I know that the AW series is positioned as multimedia, in fact it is even a DTR-system (Desktop Replace). And here it’s worth nodding your head - the multimedia capabilities of the laptop beats off one hundred percent. But then I still do not understand the complaints about the VX5, which is lighter, longer-lasting and, in my opinion, more aggressive-cute) It can do the same thing + you can take it with you. If I hadn’t written about VX5, this article would probably have been in a more positive way, because there would have been no comparison and everything seemed to be more unique. And no " ASUS will not be allowed to write " has nothing to do with it. Nevermind. I do not impose either this or that.
In general, the laptop made a positive impression - everything in it is harmoniously assembled, thought out and debugged, although there are many controversial issues (one modem is worth it). BUT ... judging more globally - there is absolutely nothing in it that costs 100 thousand. In my opinion, for such a configuration, the price is almost doubled.
There was very little time for the test, so if you haven’t figured it out (and this is the case), then do not swear, but supplement it. I'd love to test the X, Z, TT, SR and P series from Sony. I hope that someday I can do it.
Good luck!