Medium-size entertainment laptops are a favorite selection. They pack, or a minimum of ought to pack, plenty of energy to complete justice to music, movies and games at household, yet are even now portable sufficient to make use of around the move for more serious pursuits. On paper, Sony's new CW-series Vaio VPCCW1S1E certainly appears to have the specs to satisfy, but does it deliver the goods in practice?
You can find five models inside the CW series. They all possess the same specification,
differing only from the colour of their case. Sony supplied us by using a garish pink model. The outer lid and big, raised wrist rest are completed inside similar deep shade of pink, however the monitor bezel and keyboard surround have a paler, pearly finish. If the colour were distinct, this would all be rather fetching.
The 14-inch chassis can make the VPCCW1S1E a beneficial dimension for slipping into a bag, but its Two.4kg weight is at the upper end of what we'd consider suitable for carrying all-around all day.
Screens with 16:9 aspect ratios are quick becoming standard problem. The widescreen-movie-friendly shape creates sense on an entertainment laptop like the VPCCW1S1E, even although you've to sacrifice vertical pixels.
The glossy screen does a good job with video, but the viewing angles are a little bit too narrow for a few persons to sit all-around the pc, even though perhaps that situation isn't probably to occur having a 14-inch screen anyway. One welcome contact is often a button below the monitor that turns off the display to save power when you're listening to music.
The normal Vaio keyboard is present and accurate, and, as normal, is quite very good. It's full-width with full-size keys, but it's instead bendy. It is doesn't exhibit adequate flex for you to notice it while typing, but there's extra than we'd anticipate at this sort of price. We have no complaints about the multi-touch trackpad, even though. It's a good size and operates really nicely.
We were able to play the latest resource-intensive game titles with out any trouble with detail settings turned up relatively high, and all house multimedia applications we tested ran with ease.
The keyboard is really a product of comfort, with large keys that offer a perfect typing action. The isolated essential style – with every key protruding by way of individual holes from the chassis – creates lots of space among the keys and makes it less difficult to kind at speed not having mistakes.
Processor performance is seldom an issue with any mid-range laptop computer, and the VPCCW1S1E is well-equipped by using a 2.13GHz Intel Core Two Duo P7450 chip. That mentioned, the machine's PCMark05 benchmark score of 4,871 is a little lower than we expected. The same processor scored 5,407 inside the Sony Vaio VGN-AW41MF/H, albeit when twinned using a somewhat far better graphics chip.
The result is stylish and uncomplicated around the eye, while at 41mm in depth the chassis is really a great deal thicker than several of its rivals.
Good quality is beneficial, with the screen held firmly in place when typing. The thick lid gives ample protection for the screen, even though some of the plastics close to the keyboard flex a bit under pressure.
The VPCCW1S1E is no slouch when it comes to 3D graphics overall performance. Its Nvidia GeForce GT 230M chipset scored 6,164 in 3DMark06. This puts it near the top in the league in terms of general-purpose laptops, and even the most recent DirectX 10 video games have to run good at medium detail settings.
Little enough to make use of for the move, battery life is an crucial issue for the pc like the VPCCW1S1E. It racked up 1 hour and 48 minutes in Battery Eater's intensive Classic test, and just beneath 4 hours inside much less demanding Reader's analyze. That suggests a typical usage time of all over 3 hours, which isn't wonderful but is plenty of to have some work performed. The pre-boot, Mozilla-based Web browser means you'll be able to stretch the battery still further if you ever just must work online.
If your concept of a great all-round laptop computer includes 3D-gaming capability, the Sony Vaio VPCCW1S1E have to be a really strong contender for your cash. It costs a smaller amount than the similar HP Pavilion dv3-2230ea, but has dramatically much better 3D graphics overall performance, and also you won't miss the multi-touch screen.
