February 16th, 2008Review Of Sony VAIO NR160E/T
Sony’s NR notebooks are intended to be affordable, chic, and decent all-around PCs that aren’t base of the neither barrel or top-of-the-line. Think “midrange notebook†with a fancy shell. They are available in three different colors, have a unique textured surface, and are middle-of-the-road in terms of specs and presentation. Though we like the aesthetic the NR’s a bit sluggish and has a ton of bloat ware (pre-loaded software that eats up precious resources). Though it would be semi-easy to remedy these two negatives, out of the box the NR is a smidge disappointing.
Features and Design
The most notable feature of the NR series is its sleek design, which features smooth edges, a textured outside and three colors to choose from: Silk (white), Wenge Brown and Granite Silver.
The frame has an interesting texture to it, and certainly makes it look more elegant than your standard run-of-the-mill notebook. The textured surface is found on the back of the LCD, but not the front, and on the entirety of the palm rest.
The VAIO NR is a modern notebook in that it’s using the Intel 965 chipset, but it doesn’t sport all the bleeding edge components we’ve seen in recent notebook reviews. For example, it features an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, but it’s a low-end chip with just 2MB of L2 cache (instead of 4MB found on higher-end models) and runs at just 1.5GHz. On the RAM front it has just 1GB (two 512MB firewood of DDR2 5300). The NR we received for review has a 160GB 5400rpm SATA hard drive, variations of this notebook receive in a 250GB hard drive, and slightly faster processors .
Yep, it’s got the Intel 965 chipset but sadly it’s lacking support for the next-gen wireless N standard. It does support B and G, of course. Its Ethernet is also a bit old school, running at older Fast Ethernet speeds rather than Gigabit.
The NR comes with a 15.4†widescreen, glossy display. It features XBRITE-ECO technology which Sony claims provides improved brightness and clarity while consuming less power than traditional LCDS. Let’s take a fast tour around the NR and check out its ports. We have an 8X DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW drive, two USB and a Kensington lock. Express Card /34 slot, two USB ports, microphone, earphone, FireWire and exhaust. Here we have an SD card reader, Memory Stick reader, activity lights and Wi-Fi switch.
Most notebooks these days have a few shortcut buttons below the LCD, and the NR is no exception. This laptop has two buttons: One which is cryptically labeled “S1†and another labeled AV mode. The S1 mode is a shortcut button that you can customize to implement numerous tasks such as muting the volume, putting the NR to sleep, etc.
The AV Mode button launches a giant taskbar at the top of the screen that lets you open the DVD software or go on the Internet. The S1 is a customizable quick-launch button, and AV mode is a quick-launcher for DVDs and the Internet.
Our first impression of the NR is that it’s attractive and sleek. It seems a bit thinner than most 15.4†notebooks we’ve sampled. The specs say 1.2â€-1.5â€, so it’s certainly not a boat anchor, especially given its relatively low weight of 6.2lbs.
We booted to Windows and were right away impressed by how bright and crisp the display was. It’s beautiful, and the glossy finish makes everything look sharp. The native resolution is 1280×800, which is decent for a 15.4†display.
We checked out the OS configuration and were dismayed to see how much bloatware (installed trial software) comes included with the system. Easily the biggest transgression is an animated AOL icon that sits on the desktop and is constantly changing colors and shapes. Here’s the whole list of either pre-installed or could-be installed trial software: Norton Internet Security 2007 trial, Microsoft workplace 2007 trial, AOL, AOL video, MS workings SafeIT document shredder trial, Adobe Acrobat Connect trial, Intuit Quickbooks Starter edition, six casual games, Napster trial, LocationFree, Corel Paint Shop Pro XI trial, AIM 6.0, VAIO Click to DVD, Corel Snapfire, Roxio Easy Media Creator 9, SonicStage Mastering Studio, and finally there’s even more software in the various VAIO suites.
That’s a lot of software, a ton of trialware, and basically a bunch of software that we would not want on our notebook. Adding insult to injury, Sony installed an AOL toolbar on Internet Explorer. And it also added a transparent “taskbar†to the desktop that is just above the regular taskbar. It let you launch things like “VAIO Entertainment Center†which then lets you install all the trialware and such. Thankfully, you can easily disable this taskbar.
Battery
We tested the NR’s battery life by playing a DVD movie with the screen brightness set to its middle level. We also had WiFi enabled and an internet connection established. With these settings we were able to squeeze two hours and 20 minutes out of the NR, which is very respectable.
The NR series from Sony is a mixed bag. We don’t really expect tremendous performance from a notebook with this type of price tag, but this notebook is sluggish, needs more RAM, and also has more needless software than any notebook we’ve ever reviewed. All these things lead us to one this is a notebook for the family, not enthusiasts or business explorer. It’s not for anybody who does anything but waves the Net and email. For those types of basic tasks, however, it’s more than enough in addition to looks good while doing it.
Advantage:
• Decent battery life
• Affordable
Disadvantage:
• Lots of bloatware
• Only 1GB of RAM
• Sluggish performance
