Laptop prices have come down in price so much in the last few years that slowly more and more households are buying one. One brand that we all (normally) trust is Sony, and their Vaio range of laptops are very respected in the professional world, and some people see them as a status symbol. However Sony are venturing into the budget side of laptops, with their Sony Vaio VGN-N38E/W laptop, which costs just £479.
It has got some very sleek looks - somewhat similar to the Macbooks sexy white outer - and some very reasonable specifications for the price. But how does it actually come up in a review? We find out!
Sony Vaio N38E/W Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86GH / 1024MB / 120GB / TFT15.4 / DVDRW / Win Vista Home Premium Review
The Sony Vaio VGN-N38E/W is a new laptop from Sony, and one of their first to be released at such low prices (under £500 ($1000)). It features an Intel Pentium dual-core 1.86GHz processor, a gig of ram, 120gb hard drive space and a DVD ± RW.
The memory is 1GB (2×512) DDR2 SDRAM (533MhHz), and supports up to a maximum of 2GB of ram in total.
The DVD drive on the VGN-N38E/W laptop is a DVD +- RW/+-R DL/RAM, which is about standard now a days and more than what you need for typical use. It supports CDR’s, CDRWs, DVDs, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM and everything in between!
The display size is quite small (but not uncommon in budget laptops at this size) at 15.4 inches (with screen resolution of 1280×800). This is more than adequate for browsing the web and watching movies, and as I doubt you will be playing games, shouldn’t be a problem. The graphics card is an 224mb Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950, which even though it is 224mb and may sound large, isn’t great for games (it’ll play all but the most recent, but in very low quality mode). This laptop is obviously not intended for gamers by a long stretch.
As it is a Sony Vaio laptop, it of course supports Sony Memory Sticks. All main models of Memory Sticks are supported (Memory Stick standard, Memory Stick Dur, Memory Stick Pro Standard, Memory Stick Pro Duo), and when transferring data the transfer rate is very fast. An SD slot is also present.
There are only two USB 2.0 ports on this laptop, which isn’t enough really for some people, but depending on what you require it may be enough. There is always of course the option of purchasing a USB hub.
For display output there is a VGA connector so you can set your normal display monitor as a display on the laptop. When at home I make full use of this, it is very handy.
The Sony Vaio VGN-N38E comes with a built in v92 56k modem - although I doubt this gets much use by many of its owners. Something that a very large percent of this laptops owners will use is the integrated 54mbps wifi (802.11b/g). It has a range of 100m, and works fine with Windows. As well as the modem and wifi connectivity in this laptop there is also a 100 base tx/10 base t Ethernet connection (for those who haven’t yet gone wifi!)
The Vaio claims to have 3d surround sound, but to be honest its not that great. The sound quality of the speakers are very reasonable for a laptop, and are more than what you need for casually listening to music while surfing the web or whatever activities you get up to.
There are not many additional buttons for this laptop present. Only the power button, wifi switch, 2 shortcut keys, mute and buttons for volume control.
The Vaio N38E is bundled with quite a few software packages, including Google Picasa for photo management, Easy Media creator 9 and Click to DVD 2.6 for CD/DVD burning, Adobe Reader 8, Microsoft Works 8.5, and a 60 day trial of Microsoft Office 2007 for your office needs, Skype for VOIP, Norton Internet Security 2007 (including a 90 days free virus update), and a HDD recovery tool. The installed operating system is Microsoft Vista, and even though many complain about Vista and compatibility problems it worked perfectly out of the box with this laptop.
I think that when the designers at Sony designed this Vaio laptop they preferred style over substance (I mean, cmon, look at it! It looks very sexy!) - but saying that they still have gone to great efforts to ensure its a quality product. I personally can’t find any faults with it. It is really great, the laptop keys feel great when typing, and it just works straight out of the box - no hassle.
If you need a latop…:
- … that works with no hassle at all
- … connects to wifi networks with ease
- … has a vaio status symbol (!)
- … for anything but playing gams
- … and very reasonably priced
this probably is the best you will find. And you can find it at Play.com for just £479.99 delivered (inc vat).
Edit: Consider buying it from Amazon.co.uk, too
Buying second hand from Amazon.co.uk is quite a bit cheaper - Sony VAIO N38 E/W Notebook -Core Duo T2130 1.86GHz 2×512Mb 120Gb DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM 15.4″ TFT Window Vista Home Premium
