Vaio Computers Trying To Woo High-End Consumers

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I'm not sure how these guys think they can take a "poorly performing" brand and attempt to "woo high-end consumers" less than a year and a half later. Who knows though, maybe they can pull it off.

In March 2014, Sony sold its poorly-performing laptop division to an investment fund in the midst of an ongoing global downturn in PC sales. The new group, dubbed Vaio Corp, has been selling computers in Japan and now is looking to broaden its horizons to the United States by focusing on high-end laptops, The Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday.
 
High end laptops? I think I'll stick with MSI or ASUS... Hell even Lenovo before a vaio. My MSI laptop has been outstanding. And so Sony is making a laptop/tablet with the same specs as my MSI laptop but for 2x the price just because it's a touch screen.... A touch screen that's 3" smaller. Riiiiight. No thanks. "Over priced" doesn't quite do it justice.
 
They were always priced as high end laptops but had none of the features of such.

VIAO was among my last choices.
 
I've never thought of Vaio as even a half-decent brand. I've known a few people (generally coworkers) that have had a few of their "higher end" laptops (that seemed to be trying to emulate the Macbook approach) but they always seemed quite cheap by comparison with unimpressive specs. At least when you get a Macbook, the performance specs might not be top notch, but the rest of the build quality is. So you end up with at least something in the trade-off.

What I'm actually thinking looks good now is the Google Pixel (assuming a non Chrome OS).
 
Also, if I wanted to pay for an overpriced laptop, I'd probably go with the Razer ones. At least performance and build-quality is where it should be. They're just expensive...
 
I know many VAIO loyal customers. They are not unlike the Apple Mac customers. They could possibly succeed.
 
I'm thinking they're never going to woo anymore customers unless they get their butts moving on Windows 10 drivers.
 
amddragonpc said:
I know many VAIO loyal customers. They are not unlike the Apple Mac customers. They could possibly succeed.
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This.

It really depends on what they mean by High-End consumers.
If by High-End, they mean people willing to pay extra $ for inferior, poorly designed hardware, then they might have a chance.

If they mean selling fast, high end computers to techies, then no chance.
 
The VAIO Z line was always targeted at a niche market back then. Performance in a small form factor and priced for professionals.

Back in 2011, what other laptop had a full fledged Intel mobile CPU (none of that slow ULV shit), 2x256GB SSDs in RAID0 (500MB/s read/write way back then), a 1920x1080 13.3" screen while weighing only 2.6lb and almost as slim as the Macbook Air? Not a single one I can think of besides the VAIO. 2012 design changes brought fourth a mobile quad core processor which you still can't find commonly in a laptop now in 2015 with a similar form factor. Was it perfect? Not at all but it was a high end machine that was well made. It was just priced out of people's price points and Sony just destroyed the brand with their low end consumer laptops.

But the biggest problem was Sony just sat on their engineered design from 2011 and did relatively little to innovate afterwards besides doing mild refreshes.
 
I've had at least 6 VAIO laptops over the years with the rest of my family sporting them as well. They were always well built and they've all lasted well over 5 years. The only times they required any servicing was to replace the battery and 2 times HDDs died, but that's just normal wear and tear.

In fact whenever anyone came to me asking for advice, I would tell them to either buy a Mac or a Sony VAIO if they want good solid hardware that the manufacturer hasn't cheaped out on.

Glad to see they are making a return to North America.
 
nutzo said:
This.

It really depends on what they mean by High-End consumers.
If by High-End, they mean people willing to pay extra $ for inferior, poorly designed hardware, then they might have a chance.

If they mean selling fast, high end computers to techies, then no chance.
Click to expand...

Hilarious. Is there another device on the market that has a quad core processor that isn't gimped, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a display with 95% Adobe RGB gamut? Not in this form factor nor would it be cheap either in any other form factors. i.e. HP Dreamcolor
 
dgingeri said:
I'm thinking they're never going to woo anymore customers unless they get their butts moving on Windows 10 drivers.
Click to expand...

It's my understanding that Sony is on the hook for the systems they designed and sold, and Vaio is only responsible for what they've designed and sold.
 
I had a ivy bridge generation Vaio S15, at the time it was a really nice machine. Magnesium chassis, 1080p IPS display, dedicated graphics card (which actually OC'd pretty damn well btw), less than an inch thick and weighed 4.4lbs. Swapped out the HDD with an SSD and moved the HDD to the optical bay. Also had a sheet battery that clipped onto the bottom and doubled the battery life to 8-10hrs.

Then I got a Surface Pro and realized I never really wanted a laptop in the first place.
 
Dev1ant said:
Hilarious. Is there another device on the market that has a quad core processor that isn't gimped, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a display with 95% Adobe RGB gamut? Not in this form factor nor would it be cheap either in any other form factors. i.e. HP Dreamcolor
Click to expand...

So you point at one high end model as the norm?

My experience with Sony laptops is limited to dealing with the junk a couple of the Sr. managers bought for themselves, as compared to the Dell laptops everyone else in the office used.

The Sony's where small, but they where also under powered. The early ones had to many non standard parts, which limited any upgrades.
All these Sony laptops ended up being retired well before the larger/heavier Dells. With the Dells, I added memory, larger/faster drives, loaded Windows 7 64 bit (no cost since the licenses are already included in our Microsoft contract) and passed then down to lower level users. With the Sonys, they where either too slow, had non standard drives, limited memory expansion, or no Windows 7/64 bit drivers.

I recently upgraded one of the older Dell laptops to Windows 10. After running the initial updates which loaded a few additional drivers, all the hardware was recognized and everything works. I'm tempted to throw a cheap $80 250GB SSD drive in one to see if it will be usable for a few more years..
 
Sony's higher end laptops were actually pretty nice. I bought a 13" Sony Vaio SZ back in 2007. It was basically a PC Macbook Air with better looks/specs/price. Still works fine.
 
BryanSTG said:
That is not normal and it definitely is not from just "wear and tear".
Click to expand...

Yes it is. A laptop being used for more then 3 years is going to need a new battery and hard disc failure after that time frame is also very likely regaedless of what manufacturer you go with.
 
westrock2000 said:
A $1000 chromebook is the biggest ripoff in the history of computing.
Click to expand...
Based on the specs, and as I clearly stated "assuming a non-Chrome OS" it looks competitive to me, appears to be a nice form-factor, and is made out of metal. Seems like a decent light-weight machine with decent performance for less than a Macbook. I don't see the issue.
 
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