Review of Sony Vaio Y-series 11.6-inch netbook (model number VPCYB15AG):

Introduction: Earlier this year, when Sony released this netbook, it was advertised as the Vaio YB series and had an MRP of INR 26,990. Recently, this line has been refreshed as simply the Y-series and the portfolio has been extended to include a 15.5 inch notebook as well. The new MRP is 22,900 and you can almost certainly get it for lesser from many outlets. The new model isn’t any different from the older series – all the hardware spec and bundled accessories are exactly the same. The 11.6 inch variant comes in 4 colors – Black, silver, green and pink. The last digit of the model number reflects the color of that model (In my case VPCYB15AG = green). The fresh 15.5 inch model is identical in hardware as compared to its puny cousins, except for the larger display diagonal and the in-built DVD drive.

Hardware Specifications: So what does the Vaio Y-series have to offer? The bottom line for this range is that it is the most affordable of all Vaio’s. But that does not manifest that it has gone low-end on features. In fact, for the average user, the power presented by this range of laptops is more than enough for day-to-day tasks. The star of the show here is the heart of the Y-series, which is the AMD E-350 APU (Accelerated Processing Unit), which is a CPU and a GPU (Graphics card) combined and manufactured on a single piece of silicon. This processor has two physical 64-bit processor cores running at 1.6 Ghz and 80 unified DirectX 11 shaders running @ 278 MHz, which are used for the graphics processing and video acceleration. The graphics part appears inside Windows as AMD Radeon HD 6310. The reason I mention physical cores is to differentiate the E-350 from the previous generation of Intel Atom based netbooks which were assumed dual core by most ignorant consumers. In fact these Atoms just had a single core which was hyper-threaded, due to which it appeared as dual core from within Windows. These Atoms were not any faster than a single core processor but just gave a feeling of responsiveness when the CPU usage was high.

Coming back to topic, the RAM is the standard 2GB DDR3 running at 1333 Mhz. 384 MB of this memory is shared as graphics memory so you get 1642 MB available for windows. The hard disk is a Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B Rev. 320GB and 5400rpm SATA drive, which is decent and again standard for this category of laptops. It comes partitioned into 4 sections of which the first is the recovery partition which holds the system recovery data. The recovery mode can be directly booted into using the “Assist” button which is on the top right hand corner of the keyboard. It is used to restore your system to factory condition, should the need arise. High Definition Audio is provided by a Realtek ALC269 chip. In addition to that, the graphics core also has the capability to process and output audio along with its video, over the HDMI port. Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11 b/g/n Wireless LAN are both by Atheros. Battery is 6-celled with a capacity of 41040 mWh.

Physical features: I got this netbook from a friend for the purpose of this review, so I couldn’t look inside the box and don’t know what comes with it. All I got from him was the laptop in a pouch and the charger. The pouch is of above average quality – spongy and soft – nothing to complain about. This is something standard that you get with a netbook and I didn’t expect any better because, after all, this is the cheapest Vaio.

The laptop itself looks sleek and has a matte, metallic paint finish which gleams from an angle. This gives it a certain aesthetic appeal and makes it feel like a more expensive netbook than it actually is. The laptop itself is fairly light which is pretty standard for its class. I am not going to bother with the exact weight because a few grams do not make or break a person’s opinion about a product if he is satisfied with it otherwise. So just go with – it weighs average, neither more nor less. Had it weighed less, it would have felt like a toy

On the left side of the laptop we have the charger port integrated into the bulge of the laptop hinge, the standard D-SUB (VGA) port, a HDMI port, heat vent and a standard USB 2.0 port. On the thin front end there are two (yes – two) memory card slots. Sony is now widely supporting the SD industry standard along with its proprietary Memory Stick format. We also have LED indicators for wireless, battery and hard disk activity. On the right side, there are 3.5mm jacks for headphone and mic, two more standard USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet port, Kensington lock slot and finally the round power button on this end of the hinge.

The keyboard is the usual chiclet style which is increasingly being used nowadays by Sony as well as other manufacturers. This was my first hands on with such a keyboard and I disliked it in the beginning because it reminded me of a calculator. But my typing speed on this was actually higher than ever so I cannot complain about this keyboard even though I have an unreasonable dislike towards its design. Maybe the higher typing speed and accuracy is due to the keys being smaller and closer to each other than a full size keyboard, or due to the fact that all the keys have spaces between them which assists in correct recognition – I really don’t know or care much. The keyboard slopes slightly towards the user. The overall device thickness varies – tapering towards the user end. Again I didn’t measure the exact dimensions because seriously…. Who cares?? It’s nothing out of the ordinary and again a few centimeters will not change the overall experience.

Above the keyboard there is a row of stickers on the left side which are self-explanatory and the LED indicators for NUM-LOCK, CAPS-LOCK and SCROLL-LOCK. There is the “Assist” button about which I explained earlier. I can’t imagine why Sony chose such a conspicuous location for a button that will (i) be used sparsely and (ii) has the potential to do more damage than good in the hands of n00bs. This button should have been on the underside and recessed. Better still it should have been just a hole which should be poked into using a sharp object to invoke recovery mode. A couple days after returning the netbook, it got sent back to me because somebody pressed “Assist” and then turned it off when they realized their mistake. Below the keyboard there is a yet another sticker which gives the hardware specifications, and puny little touchpad which supports multi-touch. Multi-touch is becoming something of a no-brainer nowadays, with almost all the manufacturers opting for it in their 2011 line of portables. Frankly, I think this is just a gimmick and one can do just as well without it. But it’s better to have an added feature rather than omitted, so again no complaints in this department. I can’t bash Sony for the tiny touchpad which is not enough for one finger, let alone multi-touch, because all the manufacturers are in the same boat for 11.6 inch laptops. They could fit in a larger touchpad with a little design change but they will never do it because some advantageous features are always left for the larger laptops. It’s a marketing ploy.

The palm rest area has a subtle texture rather than having a plain metallic finish, which is aesthetically pleasing. One thing I really like about the working surface of this laptop is that dirt particles and strands of hair which fall on the light colored surface are easily visible so I can simply blow them off and keep the laptop clean. (Yep that’s me. If there is dirt, I’d prefer that it shows up on a light surface for me to be able to clean, rather than accumulate on a dark surface)

Coming to the display, its glossy glossy glossy. Need I say more? I saw myself peering from the other side of the display several times, while taking pictures and videos of the laptop. But the sheer brightness of this display (when turned all the way up) makes up for the reflectivity. I have heard user complaints about the HP Pavilion DM1z AMD fusion netbook, that its display quality was pathetic. But nothing specific was posted anywhere about whether Sony Y-series display is good or average or bad. I also anticipated that Vaio displays are always good and this laptop would not disappoint. And it didn’t. The standard fading and inversion of colors at angles is there but from the front, the colors are deliciously vibrant and this is what matters on an 11.6 inch. The native resolution of this LED panel is 1366 x 768 pixels.

Software: The Vaio Y-series 11.6 incher comes with Windows 7 Starter, which I wiped the instant I saw it. They might as well have given it with DOS. The limitation of not being able to change the wallpaper is too annoying in addition to the vastly cut down features of this OS. It’s very stupid by Sony to choose Starter in order to reduce costs. The similarly spec’d HP Pavilion DM1z comes with original Windows 7 Home Premium and yet it retails at INR 1000 lesser than this netbook. Formatting the Windows partition also rid me of the bloatware (applications that reduce the performance of the laptop without adding any usefulness). Using Home Premium is an absolute joy with Aero themes on the delicious display.

Performance: This laptop gives a base score of 3.7 on the Windows Experience Index. The 2D graphics score is 4.1 and due to this the Aero transition effects are silky smooth, unlike an Atom based netbook. The graphics core is sufficient to play many games of yesteryears with low to medium settings. I did not have enough time to test any games but if you scourge the web you can easily find the benchmark scores for AMD Radeon 6310. What I was more excited about was the video playback performance and I wanted to test it myself. So I installed a copy of Media Player Classic HomeCinema and played back a 1080p high definition trailer of Prince of Persia – The Sands of Time. The results were impressive – there were very few dropped frames and the CPU usage was less than 25% for almost the entire length of the trailer. This was because the AMD Radeon Graphics core supports DirectX Video Acceleration with UVD 3.0 (Unified Video Decoder). It performs most of the HD video decoding on its own, leaving the CPU to perform other tasks like decoding audio. Watching a High Definition movie on even the current generation Atom netbook is a rocky experience – constant stuttering, dropped frames and high CPU usage, coupled with the CPU heating up and its fan running at full speed for extended periods of time.

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. I used this software to assess the performance of the E-350 APU and get an idea of where it stands when compared with various other CPU’s. The E-350 gave a CPU score of 4968 which was 33% higher than the equally clocked 1.6 Ghz Atom 230. Pretty impressive considering that the E-350 APU also consumes lesser power than the combined use by the Atom 230 and its Intel Graphics.

I tested the read speed of the hard disk with the AIDA64 Disk Benchmark and it got me a maximum linear read speed of 80.5 MB/s which is equivalent to the old 80GB 7200 rpm Seagate Barracuda drives. It’s again quite impressive that a notebook drive can deliver similar performance, while running at just 5400 rpm.

I left the laptop idle for 15 minutes and checked the internal temperatures. The CPU idles around 54 degrees centigrade which was high for me because my desktop Athlon II 250 which runs at 3 Ghz idles at just 30 degrees. But to be fair, a desktop CPU has a much larger fan and 54 degrees is not high for a laptop CPU. After that I ran a stress test with Prime95 for 15 minutes and checked the temperatures again. The CPU temperature was just above 70 degrees centigrade which is an improvement over the older AMD Turion series which peaked much higher. The CPU core voltage varied between 1.025V to 1.300V from idle to full load. One interesting thing I noticed was that the both the CPU cores and the GPU temperatures were exactly the same at all times, which is a kind of verification that they are both a part of the same APU.

The battery lasted me 4 and a half hours with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi off. It was kind of good because personally I have never used any laptops (Intel or AMD) with more than 2.5 hours of juice, but I know that the HP Pavilion DM1z goes quite a bit longer so probably Sony’s design is less energy efficient than that of HP.

Bottom-line: You get what you pay for. AMD fusion based systems are priced higher than the Intel Atom based systems.  Consequently, they are better in every aspect when compared with Atom.

The HP Pavilion DM1z is priced lesser than this even though it has some clear advantage. Ultimately, it is your decision to make and you can’t be blamed for it if you decide to go for one or other. With HP Pavilion, your money is well spent in that you get Windows 7 Home Premium and better battery life. With Sony Vaio you have a device that has the power to turn heads wherever you go. You get to be a member of the Sony cult, so to speak. Technically, you are paying the premium for the VAIO logo on the lid.  Personally, if the Sony Vaio YB was priced 19,000-20,000, I would choose Sony over HP and add an additional 2GB of RAM and be satisfied with it.

Other honorable mentions of AMD Fusion based semi-notebooks are the Lenovo Ideapad S205, MSI Wind u270 (This one is a steal for its price – you get USB 3.0 too!!) and the Lenovo Thinkpad x120e (don’t think this one is available in India but if it is, I wanna buy it!! It’s the best of the lot in my opinion).

UPDATE 1: As of December 2011 there is a new player in this game. Samsung has released the SERIES 3 NP305U1A ultraportable which is better than the Vaio in every aspect. It comes with Windows 7 Home Basic, its cheaper, lighter and has a matte display, not to mention that it has a faster E-450 processor and it comes in 4 sleek brushed metal colors. So as of now the Vaio has serious competition – The Samsung in terms of style and the HP in the battery life development.