Sony VAIO YB Series VPCYB35KX/B 11.6-Inch Laptop (Black)

So in this market of not-quite laptop/more-than-a netbook, it’s easy to get bogged down and flustered, trying to figure out which system is the one for you. Sony has tried to bring its own netbook/notebook to the market with the Vaio YB series, but hasn’t really succeeded. It hasn’t altogether failed though either, but let’s break it down and figure things out.

Pros:

1.) Incredibly easy out-of-box experience. Connect battery, turn on. Run through a very simple Windows 7 setup, and you’re done.

2.) Not an altogether awful amount of pre-installed software (though still far too many Vaio entries in Programs/Features). The 500GB hard drive (456GB after formatting) has 437GB available, which is pretty reasonable after a Windows 7 installation.

3.) The system itself feels fairly solid, despite its platicky nature, with little to no flex anywhere.

4.) A nice array of ports for an 11.6″ laptop, with 3x USB, 1x HDMI, Ethernet, VGA, headphone/microphone, SD Card/Memory Stick.

5.) Nice resolution for the screen size, at 1366×768, and very bright.

6.) Decent battery life (4-5 hours).

7.) Raised palm rests that are quite comfortable, solid, and not smudge-magnets like many other systems.

However, the cons have to come in here, and there’s a lot of them…

Cons:

1.) The screen, while featuring a lovely resolution, is desperately (and I mean desperately) lacking in contrast. Viewing angles are atrocious, vertically and horizontally, and I’m just not happy with the way text is displayed due to the lack of contrast. Black text just looks faded and grey.

2.) There’s one fan in the system, and that’s on the left side of the system. It’s always blowing, and makes a noticeable whining in a quiet room. I wouldn’t classify it as obnoxious, even under full power, but it’s definitely present, and runs 100% of the time.

3.) There’s 4GB of DDR3 in the system, but with Windows 7 32bit installed, only 3.5GB is actually usable. Even more bizarrely, after opening up the panel on the underside, I found my system is equipped with one stick of 4GB RAM. But despite having two slots total in the computer, it’s only capable of 4GB max (even with Windows 7 64bit – tested)! So one slot will always stay empty…

4.) The trackpad, despite being very responsive, is very, very small. Curiously, it supports multitouch (but not for scrolling – that’s taken care of on one side of the trackpad with one finger, and is adjustable). Pinch to zoom and rotate is present, but good luck doing that with one hand. I found I had to use the index fingers of two hands to make it work. A bigger trackpad would help.

5.) The physical trackpad buttons are very loud and click-y. Definitely not conveying a high-end system here (which of course, it’s not).

6.) The E-series dual-core AMD processor in the system just seems to struggle doing the most menial tasks. Watching HD YouTube videos pretty much means not doing anything else, and there’s just a general sense of “slow” surrounding the entire computer. This isn’t helped by the pedestrian 500GB 5400rpm Hitachi hard drive inside. Thankfully the drive is easily swapped out for something faster (7200rpm drive or SSD, please!). The unfortunate thing is this computer feels slightly less netbook-y, but altogether not enough notebook-y.

7.) The keyboard’s keys are not full size. You get used to this for the most part, except for two absolutely obnoxious keys: The right shift key and the question mark key. The right shift is the same size as every other normal letter, and I just can’t get used to it. Any time I use this key (which is all the time), I have to look down at it to see where I’m pressing. And entering a question mark is even more difficult, since that key is even smaller than the right shift – and they’re both next to each other! Ohh the pain!

8.) While the keyboard has a nice, chiclet-style feel to it, the higher rows of keys (the numbers especially) have a noticeably “tinny” sound to them, which once again doesn’t convey quality…

9.) The power LEDs (yes, there are two of them, side and top, for no good reason), are astonishingly bright. These things light up a pitch-black bedroom. Good luck to your wife/husband/partner sleeping with you using your Vaio. Bright green fills the darkness. Oh, and you can’t cover the larger of the two LEDs (the one on the side) with some felt or duct tape, because the LED houses the actual power button!

10.) Extremely tinny/thin sound, but this isn’t altogether unexpected. Use earphones.

11.) Last and definitely least, there are 5 individual stickers on the laptop out of the box. While easily removed, it feels like an advertisement for everything about your new computer. Windows 7 sticker, AMD E sticker, Dual Core Graphics sticker, Energy Star sticker, and the Sony goodness-this-thing-has-HDMI-and-weighs-only-3.2lbs sticker. So many stickers!

Overall, this isn’t a horrible system. If you have big hands look elsewhere as the keyboard (and to a lesser degree – trackpad) will drive you mental, but if you can get past the cons, it’s quite a nice, solid computer. It’s hard to recommend, but not exactly easy to dismiss. For the money, though, be sure it’s what you want.

3 stars out of 5.

This is a great product. Sturdy construction, great screen resolution, super lightweight, boots up reasonably fast (it’s Windows 7), 4GB of memory – value wise, it’s hard to beat. Battery life is not staggering compared to some of the Apple products I own, but I needed a windows based machine for a specific application and this one did the trick.

This is a great laptop. It isn’t any mac book pro, but it is 1000 dollars cheaper. It wakes in a flash when you open it, has a great sleek design, light for travel, and is good with video. Make sure the WiFi connection at your house it good because it can get a little slow. overall great product

I got mine 2 years ago and I still love it! Battery is still great and I never had any problems so far. I use it pretty much every day for reports and I use it for internet as well. Also if you have a Sony camera, you will like it even more because you can just stick the memory card in the netbook. Recomended!

Bought it as a X’mas Gift for my kid.
So far so good, the original configuration may have not favoured it on some reviews:

1) Screen Brightness: can be adjusted to a decent brightness, not bad and not dark at all…
2) Stickers: 1 Large, 4 small, not a big deal, take it out if you’d like to…
3) Fan Noise: minimal and barey noticeable in the bedroom at night…
4) Sound strength: after configuring it and also adjusting the Equalizer in the Windows Media Player, resulted in strong Speakers…
5) Highly recommend “Buffalo Technology MediaStation 8x Portable DVD Writer with LED Power Indicator DVSM-PC58U2VB”, where the LCD tell you if it has enough power to run on 1 USB plug (blue LCD) or 2 USB plugs (red LED) depending on your computer’s USB capabilities, in the case of this wonderful Y Series Sony, 1 USB was enough., to install MS Office, PhotoImpact and what have you…
6) The size and finish of this netbook is a blessing frequent travellers and kids, light and yet functional Windows 7 32-Bit Home Premium SP-1 Edition.

Hope it helps some folks out here. Thanks.

This is a great product!The page size is 10 inches wide,and 5 inches high,so some scrolling is needed.the sound is low,but headphones or speakers work great for movies,music and such.Be sure to get a mouse along with this,as the pad is tiny,and hard to manuver.The chiclet type keys are easier then the normal keys,so typing is faster.I like the power cord,because it is angled so you can use it any which way without damaging the plug.Although you might spend another 50-100 bucks for the mouse,speakers,and disk reader/writer,this is a great ,light little laptop. For this price,its a steal!I’d buy this for students,travelers,and people who are on planes/trains often.But for anyone on a budget,trust me,this thing is the number one choice.

I bought this computer because I needed a small laptop to take with me that has WI-FI and can do laptop things like word and number processing and was light and easy to use. I have been using it for a week now and I just read the reviews here today. I agree the screen isn’t the best. I agree the right shift key and question mark key are small. I agree with the plasticky feeling. All of those are livable things. What isn’t to me is the lack of USB 3.0. How can a new computer like this not have USB 3.0? Especially since there are no optical drives and a SD card reader comes installed. Unforgivable really. I sure hope they change the BIOS to allow a larger RAM size as well. Four GIG is good for a small computer like this but 6 or 8 would be better. I gave it a 3 because of those two things alone. The other things don’t bother me much at all since I use the left Shift key and don’t care much about the small question mark key. Although it feels plasticky it is light and seems to be holding up fine. If I want shorter battery life I can use a brighter screen setting. In the end this is by its very nature a compromise computer. If you want a full featured laptop then I’d buy one. If you want a netbook you’re out of luck unless you buy a tablet, which have replaced netbooks. As a notebook computer it’s OK. Not great, not bad, just acceptable. For me it does what I want in a format I like and can use but as far as costs are concerned the development money went into the wrong things. For almost $500.00 it should have been more like a small laptop than a netbook. I would have added USB 3.0, dropped the HDMI and the SD card reader, added a small SSD, dropped the RAM to 2 GIGS but with the option and ability to upgrade to 4, 6 or 8 GIG. Incidentally why do manufacturers put the USB slots so far forward in the form factor? When you use a wireless MODEM they are always in the way. And for that matter why can’t they put the hardware for a wireless MODEM right in the case? I’m sure you could flash it to any wireless companies specs and then you wouldn’t need an add on card. Now that computer I’d gladly and happily pay $500.00 for!

This is an excellent computers. A great value for the price. I recommend this computer to anyone is looking for a laptop for everyday use. Buy it