Move too far, however, and the camera will lose track of you.Ĭlick to EnlargeThe Sony S Series 15 offers a healthy number of ports. The software's best feature by far, however, is its face-tracking option, which accurately follows your face as you move in front of the laptop. The ArcSoft Webcam Suite offered a host of capabilities including Masque, which allows you to digitally insert your face into an existing image. In our office, video was darker than we would have liked, but when we moved to a sundrenched room the colors perked up quite a bit. However, the temperature of the Sony's underside shot up to a blistering 102 degrees, well above our 95-degree comfort threshold.Ĭlick to EnlargeThe 1.3-megapixel webcam on the S Series 15 provided pixilated images. Its touchpad stayed equally cool, reaching just 83 degrees. This issue cropped up more when the VAIO S Series 15 was in our lap.Īfter streaming a Hulu video for 15 minutes, the S Series 15's keyboard reached a relatively mild 81 degrees. While we were able to execute multitouch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom and three-finger swipe fairly easily, the pad would occasionally mistake left clicks for right, and vice versa. The S Series 15's 4.7 x 2.6-inch Synaptics multitouch clickpad is large enough for easy navigation, but we experienced inconsistent results.
Fortunately, this didn't impact our typing speed, as we scored our usual 75 words per minute while using the Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor. This left more room on the palm rest for our left hand, but it did make us more conscious of the clickpad, causing us to alter the position of our right hand. Oddly, Sony chose to eschew the usual practice of lining up the S Series 15's clickpad with the keyboard's G and H keys, instead choosing to make the pad slightly offset to the right. Key travel was short and didn't offer enough feedback. In fact, it actually seemed to make things slightly worse, by lowering the overall volume.Ĭlick to EnlargeThe S Series 15's backlit keyboard felt a bit too spongy for our liking. Not even the S Series 15's Dolby Home Theater audio software, which features three preset options including Movies, Music, and Games, could make our listening experience any better. Bass heavy songs like The Yin Yang Twins' "Whisper Song," were actually difficult to hear since the bass was nonexistent. While listening to Killswitch Engage's "Rose of Sharon," guitar riffs sounded as if they were coming out of an old AM radio. The laptop's two Intel High Definition Audio speakers made songs we regularly listen to sound almost unrecognizable. Unfortunately, Sony has once again saddled an otherwise good multimedia machine with lackluster audio performance. One of our biggest problems with Sony's previous version of the VAIO S Series 15 was its poor audio performance.
And with a brightness rating of 270 lux, the S Series 15's display proved to be brighter than the category average of 259 lux, and above the Acer Aspire M5's 158 lux. We were able to watch videos and scroll web pages from a 45-degree angle without noticing any color distortion or washout. Viewing angles on the S Series 15's display were equally appealing. We were able to see much more content above the fold on sites such as, CNN.com and than we could on other notebooks with lower resolution screens. The hig-resolution display also made viewing websites a joy. As we watched a trailer for the next James Bond flick, "Skyfall," shadowy corridors looked like deep pools of black ink, while Daniel Craig's blue eyes sparkled like twin sapphires. Click to EnlargeThe Sony S Series 15's 15.5-inch 1920 x 1080 display with IPS technology offers superb color and contrast.
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