Review Sony Vaio SV-T14124CXS Notebook

Though Sony notebooks usually offer a colorful range of options, the default silver/white scheme is perhaps the defining color of the series. The T14 offers a smooth brushed aluminum lid and a more matte plastic base with distinct edges and corners. The relatively flat design can be attributed to the reserved use of curves, yet the notebook avoids the inevitable boxy look by incorporating slanted sides and chrome trimmings where appropriate without looking excessive. The lack of any overly glossy surfaces (aside from the display itself) also helps in keeping surfaces relatively free from visible fingerprints or grease. It’s an attractive look that could easily pass as something more expensive.

Quality-wise, the outer lid has average resistance to pressure as a slight depression can be seen when pushed down with a hand. In contrast, the keyboard and palm rests perform much more favorably with less warping from applied pressure or side-to-side twisting. The exception here is the area around the Enter key, though this is attributed to the hollow space directly underneath for the DVD or Blu-ray drive. The only major complaint is the hinges as they allow too much wobbling of the screen, similar to what we observed with the T15.

The overall weight of 2.00 kg is lighter than the competing Toshiba Satellite P845T (2.16 kg), about the same as the Acer Aspire M5-481PT (2.01 kg), and heavier than the more expensive ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch (1.52 kg). The T14 is also thinner than the Toshiba above, yet thicker than the X1 Carbon, which evidently puts it in the mainstream range with regards to weight and size. In fact, its 22 mm thickness barely passes the Intel Ultrabook specifications, so the T14 is clearly aiming for consumers on a tighter budget than say a Samsung Series 9 Lenovo X1 Carbon.

Keyboard

The non-backlit Chiclet keyboard is of ample size (28.25 cm x 10.5 cm) and feels similar to the backlit version as found on the larger Vaio T15. This means that the keys are unfortunately quite soft and shallow with poor overall feedback. In fact, feedback while typing is so low that it can be easy to miss a letter or two at first. Jumping between a desktop keyboard and the T14 is thus quite a shift, though we can appreciate the reduced noise and clatter on the Vaio. For many users, it may take a good amount of time before adapting comfortably to the very short travel.

Aside from the basic keys, Sony provides the usual Assist, Web, and VAIO auxiliary keys. Assist will launch VAIOCare while VAIO provides an easy one-window access to basic system functions including wireless, brightness, and network sharing. Regardless, dedicated volume keys are sorely missing and still require a combination Fn input to control.

Touchpad

The smooth and matte touchpad (10 cm x 5.5 cm) is narrow and is almost as tall as it is wide, which is fitting for a widescreen setup. Even so, it wouldn’t have hurt to increase its vertical length for more headroom during navigation. We ran into no accuracy issues with the touchpad as even multi-touch controls worked reliably, though the Zoom function feels clunky with a delayed onscreen response. The integrated left and right click keys offer strong feedback and a clear pressure point for easy use despite the short travel. For times when an external mouse is not available, the touchpad will work reliably as intended.

Touchscreen

A capacitive touchscreen is slowly becoming the norm with mainstream Windows 8 notebooks, though its usefulness and practicality on a regular notebook is debatable. Nonetheless, the multi-touch touchscreen on the T14 works flawlessly and without input issues and is even great for some simple gaming. The lack of a special tablet mode, however, does mean that reaching out to the screen to perform simple touch-based tasks can be tiresome after a while. 

Color space reproduction is about 56 percent of the sRGB standard, which is typical of budget or consumer-level displays. Compared to a few of its immediate competitors, the T14 exhibits a very similar range of available colors with no noteworthy differences. These touchscreen notebooks are certainly far and away from covering the adobeRGB spectrum and are not fit for professional graphic artists where color accuracy is usually of utmost importance.

Additional display measurements were performed with an X-Rite spectral profiler. The T14 showed both poor grayscale performance and color accuracy in most situations. Red and blue in particular are represented with much poorer precision compared to green, leading to an almost equally inaccurate representation of purple or magenta. Gamma is also on the low side at a recorded 1.64, which can produce images with too much emphasis on white.

Note that the results for color saturation below may not be entirely accurate due to an error in a number of the pattern change prompts during testing. However, it does reflect similar findings in that green remains much more accurate in all saturation levels compared to red and blue.

System performance is average or even slightly below for users who are accustomed to lightning SSD speeds. Since the SSD provides little boosting benefits, cold booting is a bit slow (about 13 seconds) and navigation on Windows 8 is far from instantaneous.

We ran four consecutive iterations of PCMark 7 to confirm that the secondary SSD provides minimal boost in performance. Final scores should rise notably after each repetition should a hybrid HDD/SSD drive be present. The final score peaks at about 2800 points, which is still below some competitors like the Acer M5-481PT (4052 points), but only marginally better than the HDD-only Satellite P845T (2657 points). Subjectively, it is difficult to feel on the T14 the performance gains that the hybrid drive would offer over a dedicated HDD system in everyday tasks.

We subject the T14 to processing stress with monitoring tools (CPU-Z, GPU-Z, and HWiNFO) active in order to observe any potential throttling issues. With Prime95 active, both CPU cores were able to operate at their maximum 1900 MHz clock rate without any drops or problems. Similarly, the GPU jumped form 350 MHz to a constant 1000 MHz when FurMark was active. CPU temperature more or less peaked at about 60 degrees C during this period.

When both Prime95 and FurMark were active simultaneously, the GPU was seen fluctuating in the 900 to 1000 MHz range while the CPU remained at 1900 MHz. CPU temperature did rise to over 70 degrees C, though no throttling or stability issues were observed and a post 3DMark 06 run returned no noteworthy reductions in final scores.

Running on batteries will reduce GPU performance significantly while CPU performance remains intact. Running 3DMark 06 on batteries, for example, will return a similar CPU score (2377 points), but the overall score decreases from 3602 points on AC power to just 2102 points. According to GPU-Z, GPU clock remains at 350 MHz until the AC adapter is connected.

The T14 uses a lightweight removable Li-Polymer battery rated at 43 Whr and 3760 mAh. The capacity is on the small side compared to other 14-inch notebooks like the Satellite P845T (48 Whr), ThinkPad X1 Carbon (45 Whr), IdeaPad U410 (44 Whr), and even Sony’s own Vaio E14 (59 Whr). A few smaller 13.3-inch notebooks, such as the Yoga 13 (54.7 Whr) and Satellite L830 (48 Whr), have larger capacity batteries still.

Maximum runtime was assessed with Battery Eater, first by using its Reader’s Test at minimum screen brightness on the Power Saver profile for maximum battery life. We recorded a runtime of over 7 hours before automatic shutdown. On the other end of the spectrum, minimum battery life was recorded to be about 1.5 hours by using the Battery Eater Classic Test on the High Performance profile at maximum screen brightness.

Our more realistic WLAN test puts the screen at 150 cd/m2 brightness (setting 10/10) while looping our continuous script to simulate typical browsing conditions. Under these settings, the notebook shutdown after about 4 hours.

Users can expect 4 to 5 hours of continuous use from the T14, which is standard amongst many 14-inch notebooks. A few can deliver about 1 to 2 hours of more runtime, such as the X1 Carbon Touch or Acer M5-581PT, but the T14 is thankfully not as short-lived as say the Satellite L830, which averaged just 3 hours in the same WLAN test. If users can accept lower brightness settings, squeezing out an extra hour from the T14 should be within reach.