Sony Vaio Pro 13 - bad wifi

[SoFarAndNear]

This is just an information!

I recently bought a Sony Vaio Pro 13 ultra-book in Thailand. The laptop itself is very nice. But I have big problem with the wifi. The wifi performance is weaker than my other 6 year old laptop. Sony denies that this is a design or hardware error but many people already complained about this. There is already a 184 page thread in the offical sony forum about this where many hundred or thousand of worldwide customers complaining about this. And sony has stopped replying for some months.

Unfortunately I bought the laptop already and then found out about this wifi issue. The laptop itself is great. Nice design, very good processing power, brilliant display but the wifi is a real killer I just can sit in the same room where the wifi router is to have a signal which allows me to do average work. But if you are in another room, so 1 wall between you and router you cant stream videos on Youtube. Only thing what I can do is using a 4 year old wifi usb stick which performs much better. And this for a 40.000THB laptop

As I said just an information if someone is looking for this device and not sure of buying it.

[thrilled]

Maybe buy A wifi booster

[SoFarAndNear]

Maybe buy A wifi booster

Yes I know. But I am very disappointed that Sony is still selling this model even after the failure was public discussed for 6 months. It is a 40k baht laptop. You shouldnt have to buy an extra wifi usb module to get a similar signal than a 5 year old laptop.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[Bender]

^^ 40k for a laptop that doesnt work properly, that whats i call a total rippoff, you should have gone for a macbook... for nearly the same price!

[DogNo1]

Yeah. I bought one about 6 months ago but took it back within the two week refund period. Truly terrible WiFi strength!

[RandomSand]

If you have live with it then a <1000 baht USB dongle would sort the problem out.

[Pib]

OP: just to confirm when you say signal strength are you talking actual signal level like how many reception bars or are you talking signal speed? I did a some googling and think I ended up at the Sony site you mentioned and there were definitely a lot of gripes about the wifi performance for sure, but at the same time it seems a lot of folks had downloaded some new drivers and got their wifi working fine. Seems we are seeing more and complains about wifi performance nowdays for most laptops/smartphones/tablets....some of that is definitely poor design but some of that is purely wifi interference since everybody and his brother seems to have a wifi router competing with signals from other nearby wifi routers.

I know you said your 6 year old laptop wifi works better which would imply that your home wifi signal/connection if fine but I was wondering if you have used free apps such as iiSSIDer for you PC or various apps for a smartphone/tablet like Wifi Analyzer for Android (maybe they have an IOS app also) to see what type of competing wifi signals are around you and possibly causing a bad/slow connection. Some wifi chips can deal with competing signals better than others. Like a neighbor's wifi router which has a strong signal possibly interfering/competing with your wifi router signal....many times just setting your wifi router to use a different channel can fix things....like taking it out of "Auto" channel selection and manually selecting the router to work on a different channel, like channel 1, 6 or 11 since the bandwidth of these channels do not overlap with each other. There are some good tutorials in the iiSSIDer app regarding wifi interference, especially where they talk adjacent channel and co-channel interference.

Good luck.

P.S. For sure there at devices out there with crappy wifi chips which no updated driver will ever fix....I have a cheap Chinese tablet like that....but when I see in forums quite a few posters who say their wifi is working fine...new drivers fixed their problem...or some other fix worked...a person would think that maybe the wifi chip will work fine with that new driver, selecting a new wifi router channel, etc...

[userabcd]

Could you not try to change/upgrade the internal wifi card? but this could impact your warranty.

[Pib]

Could you not try to change/upgrade the internal wifi card? but this could impact your warranty.

That can be very chancy with laptops since laptop drivers are very specific...plus you have the form & fit factor to consider. And of course the warranty issue you mentioned. Upgrading a desktop wifi card would is usually a piece of cake especially if its a plug-in type, but for laptops wifi card/chip upgrade can be a tiptoe through the mine field.

[DogNo1]

Well, I used my Sony Ultrabook 13 with my home MAC Airport Extreme. Every other computer, tablet and phone had a speedy Internet connection while the Sony 13's speed was dreadful. I hassled with updating every driver that I could think of but nothing helped. I think that the Sony 13 model line has either a poor wireless card or poor placement of the antenna. I could have used my 801.11ac dongle to try to rescue it but decided to invest my money in a better model computer.

[SoFarAndNear]

I will try to upgrade the internal wifi adapter with the latest Intel AC wireless adapter (http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Wireless-AC-7260NGW-Bluetooth-802-11ac/dp/B00GN3CBL4/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1392005433&sr=8-4&keywords=intel+7260+ac+m.2). Someone wrote that this defintely increased his wifi strength. Unfortunalty I cant find this wifi adapter Thailand. The new ultra books using extremely small parts. I opened the laptop and the wifi adapter is not much bigger then a 10 baht coin. So have for a friend from US who will come soon and bring that adapter to me.

[Chicog]

No real point in having an 802.11ac dongle if you haven't got an 802.11ac router.

Probably any 802.11n dongle would do to improve things.