Sony Vaio SA3T9E 13.3 inch Laptop (Intel i7 2.8GHz, RAM 4GB, Windows 7 Professional Premium 64-bit) 128GB Flash Drive- Carbon Black
Feature
- Processor clock speed: 2800 MHz
- Processor family: Intel Core i7
- Processor model: i7-2640M
- L3 cache: 4 MB
- Motherboard chipset: Intel HM67 Express
Product Overview
Sony SA3T9E Core i72640M 280Ghz Windows 7 Professional 64bit 133 WXGA Radeon HD 6630M 1 GB 4 GB DDR3 RAM 128 GB SSD Bluray Disc ROM Drive with DVD SuperMulti 80211abgn Webcam Bluetooth VPCSA3T9EXICEK Laptops Notebooks 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Great slim laptop, By
Dave O (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sony Vaio SA3T9E 13.3 inch Laptop (Intel i7 2.8GHz, RAM 4GB, Windows 7 Professional Premium 64-bit) 128GB Flash Drive- Carbon Black (Personal Computers)
I hesitated over this purchase and considered the below review before buying so wanted to add another review for some balance. Please skip to the last paragraph if you don't want to read all of this. However there isn't much info on the web about this laptop so I've tried to give as much useful info as I can.I upgraded to this laptop from a 12" Samsung that is coming up to 3 years old. I wouldn't normally purchase Sony electronics as I think you pay extra for the premium brand but I'm glad I went with this one. The main reason that I purchased this model is that it was the only one that really ticked all the boxes: decent ram, 13" screen, decent battery life, blu-ray, USB3 connectivity, i7 processor, dedicated graphics and SSD hard drive. I've been using the sony for about a month now.
PERFORMANCE:
Firstly, the specs speak for themselves. This is a real performer and cuts through windows 7 like butter. The SSD is super quick to boot as you would expect. Whilst small, this is standard for SSD so if you want the performance you have to go for a smaller drive. I recommend pairing with a USB 3 portable external hard drive for those files you don't always need access to. The core i7 and ram combination are incredibly quick with as many applications open as you could possibly want. I needed a beefy laptop for photo editing and this does not disappoint. The graphics performance is also good given that this laptop is not aimed at gamers. If you've done any research you'll know this is a good spec for the price range that is considered 'mid range'. It runs like a dream and is usually very quiet for routine day-to-day tasks like surfing and word processing. If there are faster machines out there then I doubt I would really notice the speed increase. Using the Sony really does feel to me like cutting edge performance.
SCREEN AND PORTABILITY:
So onto the things you can't see from a spec list. This laptop has some really nice features. The size is wonderful; despite being a bigger screen than my old 13" it's razor slim and light. The screen is good quality; it auto-adjusts brightness and keyboard backlighting which is really useful, although I do find myself using the hotkeys to tweak screen brightness much more often than, say, my iPhone.
KEYBOARD AND MOUSEPAD:
The keyboard is nice to type on with a good depth to the slim keys. I also don't understand why the keyboard doesn't have home and end buttons around that cursor keys instead of the blank space. Other than that, keys are nicely sized. The hot keys are ok and have the defaults you would expect to tweak brightness and volume, zoom in and out, turn off the mouse pad, and scroll through the display options when you have a monitor/tv/projector connected. There's also a physical speed/stamina switch to toggle power modes which is actually very useful. There are other dedicated hot keys for 'assist', 'web' and 'vaio'. Only the vaio button is customisable - WHY? And there is no option to make it a hot-key for play/pause which irks me. The mouse pad is fine, although the buttons are a bit heavier than I was used to (though I have now adjusted with no problem). The mouse pad software is a bit lacking and it's a shame you can't configure, say, a middle click area or a two-finger gesture to scroll. Having said that you can set the edge to scroll so all is not lost.
CASE BUILD QUALITY:
The case build quality is reasonable but, let's face it, all laptops are compared to Apple macbooks as the benchmark. Personally I don't get on with OSX and most of my software and games won't run on it so for me it's not an option. But the Vaio does not stack up on every comparison. For a start, rap the casing with your knuckles and it gives a bit and sounds hollow, quite unlike the satisfying tough metal of an macbook. And if you use this computer on your lap you'll notice the fan placed on the bottom (not the side!) gives out a lot of hot air straight onto your leg. This, no doubt, is why Sony recommend always using this laptop on a flat surface. Hmm, seems like a design flaw to me. You can easily get round this with a laptop cushion though. There are other design flaws too that let this laptop down. The screen is connected by a narrow hinge so if you take hold of either size you can 'wobble' it back and forwards. Not good. Having said that it does overall look, and feel, very smart.
CONNECTIVITY AND PORT PLACEMENT:
The connectivity is great. I can't understand why other laptops of a similar price do not feature USB 3 ports as it is clearly the future (this one obviously does). The addition of a mobile SIM card slot for dongleless internet on the go is also potentially very useful. However I do have a bit of a problem with the port placing. Why is the headphone port right at the back? How daft is that? The HDMI is about halfway down which is sometimes a... Read more
7 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Very disappointed, By
R. W. Foster "Bobby" (Ireland) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What is this?)
This review is from: Sony Vaio SA3T9E 13.3 inch Laptop (Intel i7 2.8GHz, RAM 4GB, Windows 7 Professional Premium 64-bit) 128GB Flash Drive- Carbon Black (Personal Computers)
I spent a long time coming to the decision to buy this, my first, laptop. It was a very expensive purchase but I was influenced by the build quality, which seemed very sturdy compared to many of the flimsy models I had seen; by the future-proofing of its components eg the processor, Solid State Drive, USB3 etc; by my perception of Sony as a high-quality manufacturer.My disappointment began when I discovered that the laptop metal casing was not perfect and showed imperfections and signs of poor finishing. Unfortunately I only noticed this after I had set up the laptop and personalised all the settings and, I presumed, too late to return....my fault for not closely examining it immediately on receipt.
All went well for a couple of weeks until Vaio Care, Sony's program which keeps an eye on updates, maintenance, errors etc, started throwing up an error every time I opened it. I knew that it was mistakenly reporting the supposed error as it related to the preparation of recovery media which I had already completed. I made a second set of recovery discs but still the errors showed. I contacted Vaio Support to be told, and I quote, "Please be informed that this is a normal error message that should disappear soon after awhile." Further contact with Vaio Support has failed to resolve this "normal error" and I was finally told that I would need to perform a Full System Recovery which would restore my laptop to the original factory condition and remove all traces of my personal data and settings. This I am unwilling to do and I am, therefore, left with a laptop flawed physically and running with a "normal error" which cannot be easily resolved.
My faith in Sony, both as a manufacturer and in terms of their aftercare, has dropped massively and I would be very wary of purchasing any of their products again.
Update to my review: While continuing to show the false error message the Vaio Care program now insists that an update is available every time I open it. Installing this supposed update makes no apparent difference to the version of Vaio Care that is installed. Another "normal error?"
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