P300 - to buy or not to buy

I am thinking of ordering a P300u here in Singapore this weekend. The unit on special offer this week in Singapore at S$2499 (about US$1850) inc tax.

Spec:
CPU: T9300
GPU: NV8600GS (256MB)
RAM: 2GB (plus 1GB after upgrade so total 3GB)
HD: 320GB
OS: Vista Premium
Others: 1xbattery, DVD/CDRW not included, can pay additional S$99 to get abovementioned RAM upgrade, extra 4gb thumbdrive, additional 2yr warranty (first year international, 2nd and 3rd year local Singapore parts plus labor), printer, other goodies (bag, mouse, headset)

I like the light form factor and the look but have some doubt concerning the GPU. There has been reports of failure due to NV8x00 series resulting in replacement of units in this and other forums. Does any one here experienced this in the p300?

I use my laptop as my primary computer; I travel a lot and do mostly office documents on Word and Excel, some photo editing and am an occasionally game player. I would like to start on video editing some family movie clips. So my next question: Is the p300u a good buy today? What other options are there?

Thanks.

 

Well, I've been thinking alot about P300 too.
Until Sony reveils the new series a month ago. The SR and Z are 13.3" and 13.1"

For US$1299. You get VGN-SR129E/B
- Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26G ( P300 has T9300 w/ 2.5Ghz, but the Vaio uses the new P series processor, which uses less power than T)
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 (cant compare with the LG 8600GS thou)
- Weight 4.14 lbs ( P300 3lbs 8.6oz, but Vaio has DVDRW included internally!!)
- 250GB 5400rpm (vs P300's 320GB)
- Both have 2GB ram (ram is not a good comparison thou, since they are dirt cheap nowadays)
- Both uses LED panels.
- I would expect better battery duration for Sony, from energy saved on CPU and GPU)

Comparing both, the only benefits of getting the P300 is the graphic card and HDMI!!!!!!!!!.

But I heard that the P300 has some heating issue when gaming. Not sure will this happen on SR or not thou.

 

Thanks, but the series you mentioned are not available in Singapore now. I just checked the official Sony Singapore website and it does not list them at all. For comparison, the nearest series to the P300U is the SZ series and these cost about US$750 more.

 

Well, your warranty should cover the GPU failure. I'm actually quite surprised at the price. I thought it would be higher.

 

I would definitely recommend the Sony SR w/3470 over the P300. The 8600M GS on the P300 is more than compensated by superior battery life (up to 9 hrs on extended w/IGC), better build quality (this might be a matter of opinion), a power friendly CPU that still delivers (although i admit the T9300 is nice), etc.

Basically you would be paying $550 USD for the better graphics card. Not worth it IMO.

Even though it's not available in Singapore right now, I would wait... I'm pretty sure it'll appear online eventually... it did in HK...

 

Just went thru the Sony Hong Kong website and I have to say the SR and Z series sure looks good right now. There are a couple of concerns though.

1. The warranty is for 1 year local (Hong Kong). This is practically useless to me which means if I get one from Hong Kong, I am in effect on my own if anything were to happen. This unit will be my primary machine so I cannot afford to have this unit go down for any length of time.

2. The story about Sony including a lot of bloatware and planted spyware into their equipment a few months back. Have they changed?

 

Hello I got a P300 laptop its amazing laptop.

About the heating while playing games, laptops are not build to play games and yes if you do play them your laptops get hot.

So if you have more quests about the P300 ask ahead.

 

I don't think they would do that with their new laptops...

Sony has a fairly good reputation of dishing out quality laptops (albeit a little pricey at times) but yeah in general I think they're quite nice.

Unless you really need a laptop right now, I would wait for a review of the SR before making your choice. =)

As for the issue with the warranty, I'm not quite sure how you could work around that. Maybe you could give Sony VAIO SG a call to ask if they'll have the new laptops in stock anytime soon?

 

The new stock based on the offer price of S$2499 has just arrived at the stores in Singapore (manufacture date 24 July) but it turns out LG has somewhat crippled the units by replacing the original AGN wireless with ABG wireless only. Vista Premium comes with SP1 preinstalled.

After much discussion with the salesperson, I was offered a package deal at S$2950 or abt US$2150 for the following.

- LG P300u (CPU T9300, 4GB RAM)
- Extra copy of WIN XP (need this for the office) to replace VISTA Premium (seems Premium license does not cover downgrade to XP)
- 2 additional years of International warranty
- 1xLG slim external DVD writer

The LG screen and keyboard looks and feels great; we ran intense graphics thru the unit and the heat feels much lower than comparable like ASUS. So all in all it seems to be a good unit but the price seems excessively now that all the little extras are included and yet not getting the latest wireless N.

Should I still get this or wait for others? I need to run XP but heard that the new Montevino and graphics card are not supported under XP.

 

Just picked up my P300u this morning. It cost me S$2499 (US$1770) inc tax with the following.

CPU T9300
RAM 3GB 667
HD 250GB
Ext DVD/RW drive (USB powered, slim and light)
Vista Business / XP Pro
3 year international warranty
Free gifts: 1x4GB Thumbdrive, leather carrying bag

All in all a fairly good deal compared with what I was quoted a couple of weeks ago. The experience so far has been decidedly mixed; I had reinstalled WIN XP Pro using the recovery disc that came with the set but took me a long time to figure out that the Turbo Cache memory (1GB) built in cannot be used in XP (there was no driver to be found at all). This wasted a good 2 hours of my time. Meanwhile, I stupidly installed SP3 which seems to overwrite the network device drivers (both wireless and LAN). After going thru some of the posts here, I finally had to uninstall and reinstall the driver disc. Hope this is the worst of the problem as the unit is a beauty to work with. The keyboard is very good (not as nice as the ThinkPads but close enough), the sound is better than anything I had previously and the screen is a beauty; however, the external DVD drive is unfortunately very slow. All in all a wonderful light laptop with a lot of power to spare. For those interested, I charged up the battery this afternoon and have been installing and transfering files for the last 3 hours on battery power with WiFi on and screen brightness at 70%. As of right now, the meter shows at least another hour left so the battery is better than I expected for a machine with a dedicated graphics card and normal (not extended) battery.

More updates later.

 

This laptop is so very tempting, I hope they keep this style of high spec'd 13". However I will be waiting for the next gen of video cards before I decide to splurge (a mobile hd4000 series perhaps?) because while the increase in performance from what I have now is significant, I don't think it is significant enough.

 

Hi,

May i know where did you buy it ?

Thinking of buying it...

Thanks!

Regards,

Jon Lau

 

Bought mine in PC-Connect at Funan Centre in Singapore. The one I purchased was the last T9300 equiped with 3 years International Warranty. They just wanted to get rid of the last piece so it worked out well for me. I compared their offer with the one offered by Newstead with a comparable processor. The Newstead offer does not include XP, the external drive and 2nd/3rd year warranty is only local Singapore. The deal breaker was the newer P300 in Singapore are now all equipped with abg wifi only compared with my abgn version. Don't know why they downgrade this part.

Hope it helps you with your purchase. Good luck.

 

I love mine ... had it a week now, P300 is best machine I've owned to date ... my prior machines where Dell Latitudes, C640, D820, Sony Z, IBM Z61t, Dell XPS, and now the P300 ...

In my experience Dell and IBM turned out to be a disappointment overall, the P300 is a keeper, I'll like it so much and my wife is in the market for a new notebook too, and we're going to go LG for sure, just waiting to see what the new 15.4 " thin/light models look, I had hoped they'd be out by now ...

Hope this helps.

 

You shouldn't really compare LG P300 with Sony SR..... LG P300 is soooo much better than Sony SR by an immeasurable margin.

Let's see.... LG P300 is lighter, smaller has a much better GPU and looks much better than Sony SR.

Sony SR is a budget notebook whereas the P300 is comparable with the Thinkpad X300, which is a top notch professional notebook. How can you even compare pos SR with P300?

With regards to battery, LG's P300 has surprisingly better battery life than SR. From my research, LG P300 uses a far more advanced way to work with batteries to give a much better result.

To put things in perspective, LG P300 can deliver 4+ hours of battery life where as the Sony SR can barely squeeze out 3 hours with the dedicated graphics card and 6 cell battery, *** is this?

Having said all this, you'll be happy to know that I do not own a P300 and thus I am not biased either way. Having used both, it's clear P300 is much better. How can you 2 computers where one is smaller and more powerful?

 

um... the P300 smaller?

P300 : 315 x 236.5 x 21.2, 25.8 - 32.1 mm
SR : 315 x 233. 6 x 25.4 - 33.8 mm

you're right, the P300 is clearly much smaller.

A much better GPU? where are you getting your results? the P300 got around ~2500 (and that's with at T9300) on 3DMark06 http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/notebooks/0,39050489,42799529p-2,00.htm while the SR got ~2000 (with a P8400). And if you're that ignorant, T9300 > P8400. Although comparing the specs of a 8600M GS and the 3470 should reveal the obvious truth that he 8600M GS is clearly not "much better".

The Sony SR a budget notebook? Oh wow, do you like grow money in your garden or something? Or do you pick them from trees?

The P300 comparable with the X300? Um... yeah, aside from the 13.3" screens common to both, I don't know what else you're comparing. Perhaps their gaming abilities? their weight? their battery life? Oh wait there are no similarities there.

"LG P300 uses a far more advanced way to work with batteries to give a much better result." Oh enlighten us on this "far more advanced" way you speak of. And I thought Montevina on the SR was advanced. 4+ hours of battery life? the P300 hardly had enough juice to run a 2 hr movie on medium brightness. Albeit, the P300 has slightly better battery life than the SR.

You're right, the P300 is clearly better than the SR by a "immeasurable margin"

 

The P300 is not immeasurably better than the new Sony SR; both are fine units but in terms of value (both are priced the same here) and my personal preferences, the P300 is the better value based on the bundles offered here in Singapore.

1. Specs (LG P300 vs Sony SR13)
a. Faster CPU - T9300 vs P8400
b. More memory - 3GB vs 2GB (based on the bundles offered, I was quoted $100+ for extra 1GB for the SR)
c. Graphics - the Nvidia on the P300 may be slightly faster than the ATI but not by much; SR can be switched to the integrated graphics to reduce heat and save power which may actually give the advantage to the SR
d. Bigger HD - 320GB vs 250GB
e. HDMI on the P300 is a nice feature
f. Battery: the advantage is with the Sony; Sony allows you to get an extended battery option, this is not available with LG although I am getting about 3hr 20+ mins of normal non-gaming use on my P300. The original battery from LG is cheaper than the SR.
g. Ports: 3USB but no modem for the P300, 2USB plus modem but no gigabit LAN on SR. I would prefer to have an extra USB port myself and hardly use the modem now. Would be nice to have firewire or e-SATA.

2. Physical
a. Size: almost the same except the LG comes with an external disc drive. This extra unit puts it at a disadvantage
b. Overall weight: almost the same; LG is 1.6kg vs 1.9kg but the external drive is about 300-400g so it makes it almost even.

3. Other
a. Warranty: P300 comes with 3 years International coverage vs 1 year local from Sony
b. OS: I prefer the Vista Business (downgrade to XP Pro) for P300 vs Vista Premium for SR. My corporate applications must be run under XP (local IT requirement by my company) so this saves me a good S$150 for the license for XP
c. Screen: I prefer the P300 screen vs the SR after putting them side by side to compare, but this is strictly a personal preference. Both are excellent screens, though.
d. Software: LG did not load up the P300 with too much bloatware; we all know we are getting a lot of other software with the SR. If you use them, they are great, if not ...
e. Extra freebies: One LG dealer is throwing in an AIO printer, bag, mouse, keyboard, 4gb thumb drive while Sony officially offers only a bag to go with your purchase.
f. Keyboard: I like the keyboard on the P300 better, the SR has those strange keys I am just not used to and no PgUp, PgDn, Home and End keys. I would have like to have a hardware switch for the Wireless on the P300.

All in all, actual usability of both machines should be same for most applications (including gaming). But the way I see it, the P300 is the better buy.

 

The SR CANNOT switch. You get either integrated graphics (X3100) OR delicated (ATI).
Only the SZ and the new Z-series have two graphic cards onboard and the ability of switching.

People on the Sony forum mentioned about getting 3.3 hr on SR with standard battery that has ATI graphics.

Thus, in Canada, P300 comes with T8100 with a price tag of $1599, similar to the SR with ATI graphics.

 

My mistake I thought the SR came with a hybrid graphics option. Strangely the SR with ATI graphics here is equiped with the newer P series C2D chips so it should give better performance vs the P300 which does not have the newer P CPUs.

There is also a version here in Singapore with the T8100 going for S$2299 (abt US$1630) so it will seem that Canada is cheaper. Good deal you guys are having. Do you also have the 3 year International warranty?

 

Im sorry, might be a bit fast here, could care and didnt have time to read all the posts

However! I can only advice to buy this laptop, I have a p-300 myself and its the best thing ever! The casis feeling, the screen, the weight, the performance, heat and noise.. everything is just great! things works as indeded! no wierd errors or crashes or things that wasnt assembled right or too fast.

Only thing you gotta take into counter is, its NOT a gaming laptop, though it does pretty **** good when overclocked.

Ive scored above 4000 in 3dmark06 in 1280x768 on this little bugger, and has oced it stable for several months from default 500/700 til 675 / 875.

 

No 13" laptop is a gaming laptop, if your definition of a "gaming laptop" is a laptop that has the very best laptop graphics card on the market.

However, the P300 has the very best graphics card available in 13" laptops.

You will be able to play lots of modern games at playable rates, including Team Fortress 2 and the upcoming Warhammer Online.

People constantly ask if a given graphics card can run Crysis at high detail and high frame rates. Crysis is a single game title, with higher-than-usual requirements. The ability to play a single title with questionably engaging game-play does not a "gaming laptop" make.

edit: The p300 is the "gaming laptop" of 13" laptops.