Small, good and expensive
Written: Dec 06 '04
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Pros: Weight, form, keyboard, quality
Cons: No built-in WLAN / Bluetooth, small HDD size (20 GB)
The Bottom Line: Recommended for quality, not recommended for price, thus the X505 seems to be luxury.
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| therealvarta's Full Review: Sony Vaio X505 (vaiox505) PC Notebook |
This is what's supposed to be a review, never had the time to round it up. Anyway, here it goes:
Review Sony Vaio VGN-X505VP
===========================
Important specifications:
- 835 grams including battery (didn't weigh that by myself)
- 10.4 TFT with 1024x768 resolution
- 512 MB RAM (not extendable)
- 20 GB hard drive (not extendable)
- 1,1 GHz Pentium M ULV processor (not extendable)
Packaging:
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- Black cardboard box, all items accurately packaged.
Accessories:
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- Please note that supplied accessories vary among different countries.
- The external optical drive seems to be robust, it's not a slot-in. A carrying case for the drive is not supplied.
- The carrying case for the notebook is made of sythetics and is Velcro. It may house the notebook only, there's no room for additional accessories. The inside of the carrying case is lined with velvet-like material, by its stiffness it seems to be able to absorb small bumps. If you have the WLAN card inserted permanently, there's a small drawback: the carrying case does not have a cut-out for the antenna of the WLAN card. Thus a side bump will hit the antenna, respectively the card, instead of being evenly spread across the side of the notebook.
- An additional smaller carrying case for accessories is supplied as well. It seems as if this case was intended to house the mouse which is supplied in the US instead of the optical drive. You may also put in the VGA / ethernet adapter and PC cards, but for this purpose alone I find it too big.
- The power adapter is relatively light and flat, the DC current jack is illuminated in green. A carrying case for the poer adapter is not included.
Appearance of the notebook:
===========================
- There are enough pics on the internet and as far as I've seen they resemble reality. Though its a matter of taste: I like the frugal appearance. The surface feels like something in between metal and plastic.
- The DC power plug is in the left hinge, the illuminated power switch in the right hinge. In between the hinges there is the cylindrical batterey. Because the battery is outside the case, it stays rather cool which should improve its durability. Excellent!
- At least the black bottom side of the notebook gets is color by paint, not as I originally thought, by "carbon". This paint is highly sensitive. Recently I noticed silvery spots on the edges. I presumed that these were stain and tried to remove them - gently - with my finger nail. Doing this, I noticed that the silvery spots grew! The spots were not stain but removed paint, of which I removed even more. I must annotate that I handeled the notebook very carefully during the two weeks I had it. Since paint abraison occurs after such a short period of use and paint can easily be removed with the finger nail, I worry that the nice appearance of the X505 won't last for too long. Presumably the paint does not stick well on the subsurface. Another X505 in the store, which is locked inside a show-case, shows the same abraisions, thus the problems with mine are not an individual case.
Lid:
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- The lid of a notebook is frequently used to judge workmanship, since it's one of the few moving parts. The lid of the X505 is kept close firmly without any clamps. Opening the lid is cumbersome, because there is almost no working surface for this, but practicing helps.
- Once the lid is opened, it firmly remains in its position. For my taste the lid could have been openable to a wider angle, in order to provide for a better viewing angle.
- Unfortunately the lid is held in its position only by the right hinge, the left one seems to be freely movable. This causes some flexing, in particular when closing the lid. The trick is to touch only the upper right corner of the lid when opening or closing, then there's no flexing.
- Since the heavy parts like display, battery, mainboard and hard drive are all located on the rear side, the X505 tends to topple over, in particular on soft surfaces like a bedspread.
Display:
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- The display is relatively bright, that is, brighter than the average notebook. Brightness can be controlled in a wide range, I measured 11.6 nits to 151.2 nits with a Spyder calibration device. It however is not in the same class as the brightest notebooks, like some BenQ or other Sonys with approx. 180 nits.
- Unfortunately the display is extremely dependent on the viewing angle, especially vertically. This way the good brightness is seen only as a horizontal bar in the middle. At a normal viewing distance, the edges drop to approx. 60-70% of the brightness in the middle. To measure this, I too a photo with a digital camera and then compared the pixel luminance values. Possibly the dependence on the viewing angle was a concious design descision, in order not to reduce brightness with additional foils which would have been necessary to improve the viewing angles.
- Coating is good, but this way the display does not appear to be as brilliant as the glaring displays (XBrite) seen with other newer Sony notebooks. I can live without that effect, I think it's basically visual delusion.
- I don't have any dead pixels, however there's a spotted shading on the lower right corner, depending on the viewing angle. A smoother - and therefor less appearant - shading is on the top left corner.
- It should be clear that with a 1024x768 resolution on a 10.4'' diagonal fonts appear rather small. Those with less than top vison should consider this in particular.
Speaker:
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- The speaker is the worst I've ever heared. It's very quiet but rattles, speech is just being comprehensible in a quiet environment.
Keyboard:
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- You're definitely better off with a real keyboard. In spite of this, I don't dislike the X505's keyboard, as you really can touch-type on it. Unfortunately the cursor keys, which I use frequently, are rather small and "end" is available only in conjunction with a function key.
- The key labeling fits the overall design (light grey / purple on dark grey), but this way it is hardly readable in a dark environment. Thats clearly a conflict between design and ergonmics, design won.
- Otherwise the keys are accurately aligned and have good action feedback.
Track-Stick:
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- I'm used to TrackSticks from IBM's ThinkPads, thus I don't have a problem with these. With sensivity set to maximum, I can work reasonably well. Whether you prefer TrackPads, TrackSticks or mice, is a matter of taste. For me a mouse is the best pointing device, apart from a pen for special purposes.
Noise:
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- Since there is no fan, there is no noise made by a fan. The only thing to hear is the hard drive. Its noice can be perceived in quiet settings only, but then it's unpleasent due to its high-pitched frequency. Head movements are hardly perceivable at all.
Performance:
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- There are lots of performance tests which can be found on the web, thus I don't address these in detail. Set to maximum performance in the energy options, the processor performance according to SiSoft Sandra is at about 70% of my 2.0 GHz P4 with PC-800 RDRAM desktop, which don't seem to be slow to me.
- One thing that puzzled me was a warning in the user manual, saying you shouldn't use screen-savers or other computing-intense applications. These would stress the processor and may shorten its lifetime. I always thought computers were made for processing, may it be by using a screen-saver, video editing, games or compiling a kernel or whatever.
- I suspected that Sony's worries regarding processor load were due to the X505 not being able to dissipate heat fast enough. And so it is: the heat generated at 1.1 GHz can not be dissipated for a sustained period of time. At 24 degrees Celsius, I measured an average performance of 89%, with the minimum performance at 79%. At the same temperature, but with the X505 on a soft surface blocking heat dissipation of the bottom side, average performance was 68% and the minimum performance dropped to about 30%. All measurements were made with performance set to maximum in the energy options, all percent readings related to 100%=1.1GHz. Thus instead of activating a fan when load is high, the X505 just reduces the processor clock. Well, this way a fan-less design works too...
Battery life:
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- Depending on the individual load, expect a battery life of 1.5 to 2.5 hours. If that's not sufficient, you may buy another 150 grams battery for about 200 euro, which of course doubles the total battery life. Something positive I've noticed: the X505 can switch to/from disk hibernation quite fast. Maybe this is nothing special, but it is much faster than with my desktop PC.
Hard drive:
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- The hard drive is 20GB, with about 15GB available due to operating system, swap file and hibernation file etc. With 4200 RPM the 1.8'' Toshiba MK2004GAL isn't the fastest, its noise is unpleasent but quiet. It's a pity that Sony didn't put in a 40GB, for example a Toshiba MK4004GAH. This drive would have weighed just 11 grams more, with the same size and power dissipation (= heat). At least one review of an X505 imported from Japan indicated that a 40GB was in. It must have been cost or availability reasons that made Sony finally put in a 20GB.
Interfaces:
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- The interfaces are already known from the specifications. I'd just like to note that there is neither a built-in micrphone nor an external microphone-in or line-in. Thus dictates, VoIP etc. are not possible without an extra USB soundcard, if that's at all available with microphone-in.
Support:
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- Registering with club Vaio worked only after calling the hotline.
- The Vaio update is not transparent to me. I cannot tell if the updates offered are more recent than those already installed. Thus I'll don't do updates unless I have a problem.
Software:
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- Some applications come preinstalled, others are found on the recovery DVD. I didn't see this being mentioned in the manual.
- Norton Anti-Virus/Internet-Security includes 90 day updates of virus signatures. Wow, I deinstalled that immedietely.
- Initially the hard drive was partitioned into a drive C: with 15 and a drive D: with 4 GB. Because of that limited space, I decided to repartition the hard drive using the recovery disk in order to get one single partition. This worked very well, all previously installed programs and drivers were restored.
Bottom line:
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- With that combination of weight and size, Sony has a unique selling point they can charge for. I cannot tell if the price/performance ratio is right, this depends on how much the saved weight is worth to you. In spite of this, I did expect to get more in that price range: a display without shadings, less sensitive paint, more thought-out carring cases. I regard these issues as quality problems which do not fit into the price range of the X505.
- Of course I highlighted the negative aspects, because these are usually neglected in magazine reviews. Thus don't be confused, the X505 is a good laptop capable of running a lot of different applications well.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 3000
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 10 inches
RAM: More than 256
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
therealvarta
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Reviews written: 4
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