The Sony Vaio E is among the newest line of laptops from Sony which sports the newer Intel Core i5 processors and came in a variety of colors.
The review unit that we got was this marine-blue (metallic teal, they say) one with a clear-coat layer on top of subtle patterns starting from the lid all the way to the palm rest.
This 14-inch model of the Vaio E is relatively large and heavy — not meant to be carried around a lot but really intended to be mostly on the desk. The Vaio logo somewhats floats and casts a small shadow on the lid.
There are a plethora of ports and slots peppered around the sides of the unit — 3 USB 2.0, LAN, HDMI, eSATA, VGA, SD card and HG Duo slots. Even the WiFi has its own physical switch while the DVD drive is placed on the right side of the unit.
The full-sized keyboard features chiclet-type keys, typical of a Vaio laptop, and spaced considerably apart from each other. The recessed trackpad is fairly-sized and has a textured surface (more like pimpled) in contrast with the smooth palm rest while the left and right click buttons are separated.
The 14-inch glossy display is bright and crisp with 8 levels of brightness you can set to control screen contrast and power consumption. However, the glossy display is also prone to glare in the outdoors or against bright light sources.
The speakers are lined up across the entire length of the laptop just above the keyboard. The speaker volume is somewhere between mid to high and although there’s a noticeable lack of bass on the system, it’s very usable when watching movies.
The Vaio E is powered by an Intel Core i5 520M processor (2 cores, 4 threads) running at a base clock speed of 2.4GHz but can go up to 2.93GHz via Turbo Boost.
Graphics is provided by an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 with 1GB GDDR3 which is a mid-class DirectX11 GPU that is capable of running graphics-intensive games. Add to that a 4GB DDR3 RAM and you have a pretty decent all-around workhorse for a laptop (see complete specs here).
Windows Experience Index gives it a base score of 5.7 with the CPU getting a nice high sub-score of 6.7. Battery life suffers due to the discreet graphics card and the powerful CPU — we only get just over 2 hours on a single full charge. BatteryBar gives it about 2.5 hours with the 6-cell 5600mAh Li-Ion battery. If Sony added a switchable graphics feature using at least an Intel HD, it would have helped in power-saving mode.
The unit also comes with an Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 AGN so it is capable of doing Intel Wireless Display.
The Sony Vaio E comes pre-installed with a 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium and retails for Php76,999 which puts it the the top of the heap (in terms of price point) among Core i5 laptops in the market.
DVD drive? not the blue-ray one?
@techny – I think the Blu-ray one is optional. My review unit does not have it.
@abeolandres Sir, any suggestions where I can get my dell xps laptop fixed? The best place? Thank you
Twitter: gamerumble
says:
Yummy laptop! I always liked the chiclet-type keys. The display is a little too small for gaming though… And very usual for Sony, it goes for 76,999!?
Sir Abe, may I ask how you create this kind of scoring? Do you have a software for it? Photoshopped? Thanks!
Il buy this one…. if I have the money
mahal
ASUS na lang
too expensive @76.999!
http://www.batangasnetwork.com
Twitter: Teknisyan
says:
nice review!
Twitter: rene
says:
mahal … might as well get a Mac
@rene
mahal nga hehe, macbook na lng for that price range.
Twitter: january14n
says:
ang mahal talaga ni sony.
@gameblogger: interesting how many people really want to use laptops for gaming when it’s really a desktop that’s called for. a laptop has to be portable and as such even if you want to and can use it for gaming, one really should accept the fact that compromises have to be made. (i.e screen size, battery life, reduced resolutions and settings, etc.)
anyway, the scoring system Abe uses is the Windows Experience Index built into every Windows 7 system (started with Vista actually). I’m surprised you don’t recognize it as i suppose you’re a game blogger, and most (i say most, not all) gamers game on windows..
sony laging overprice! ganda sana ng color for a change
I think the price is too steep, my 76thousand can buy me a netbook ( which I already have) plus my dream iphone 4.
nice article:)
a bit too pricey for me
medyo mahal
bibili ako nito
X10 is too big…
Twitter: gamerumble
says:
@beef – Sorry, I don’t really blog about how the game performs on a certain system but rather, what the game is all about.
People would want a laptop to game on for several reasons and for the same reason that you would want to use a laptop.
Thanks for the free info on windows experience index, learned something today.
Sony Vaio Laptop Sucks! Got a Vaio VGN -CS215-J model and it broke down in less than a year. Tried to have it repaired in the Sony Service Center (Solid) here in Manila and they wont fix it as part of my warranty. There’s no world wide warranty for Sony. You need to go to country of origin where it was bought to have it fixed. STUPID!I would seriously think twice before buying a Sony. Sony support service in Philippines SUCKS!
bought my asus g60jx in the u.s. for only 46k pesos and it performs better in terms of windows experience index than this very expensive laptop. asus rocks!
i hope that i can run street fighter 4 without problems in this laptop!
[...] unit has a nice back-lit keyboard with a very stylish design that reminds me of that Sony Vaio E we reviewed [...]
Sony is better than Mac’s but I do agree that the Sony Customer Service sucks. They bellow around with simple details that could be easily solved with a simple phone call.