It's easy to get excited Sony delivers one of its many super-expensive ultra-portables, like the VAIO TT or Z Series, to our door, but in the past its mainstream laptops have been a little hit and miss. For all the lustre and acclaim its VAIO brand engenders in consumers, the reality isn't always the all singing, all dancing computing experience people imagine. However, in the new NW Series, we reckon Sony might have finally the mainstream affordable laptop.
One thing we particularly like about the VGN-NW11S/S we're looking at today is the lack of one material that's so abundant elsewhere: glossy plastic. This is actually true of most of Sony's laptops, making it one of the few manufacturers that hasn't jumped on this particular bandwagon. You still get a glossy display mind, but this is nothing like as irritating as dealing with fingerprints, dust and grease adorning every inch of the chassis.
Instead, Sony has opted for a textured plastic finish - in this instance silver, though a brown version is also available. We dare say it won't be to everyone's taste, but it's very hard wearing and exemplifies the decent build quality seen throughout the machine. There are some nice touches dotted around the NW11, too. Particularly worthy of praise is the touchpad, which comprises a moulded clear plastic plate integrated into the palm rest. Not only does it look rather fetching, its textured surface offers great tactile feedback - the two buttons are very good, too.
Above the touchpad we have the now commonplace isolation keyboard. Sony is the company that started it all, though, so it can hardly be accused of imitation. Initially the white keys appear a bit jarring in contrast to their silver surroundings, but it's a foible one quickly gets over and the keyboard itself is a peach. Keys have a lovely firm responsive action and the layout is perfect - we really can't think of a criticism.
Specification
For storage there's a 320GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, which is about what you'd expect and more than sufficient for most needs. Draft-N Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth are all present, too, so the NW11S ticks most of the boxes where basic features are concerned. While this version comes with a DVD writer, a Blu-ray ROM/DVD-RW combo drive version is also available, though given the lack of a Full HD display option we'd advise against it unless you absolutely must have Blu-ray. Since we're on the topic of the display, Sony describes this as a 15.5in laptop - not 15.6in like everyone else. We're not sure whether there's a real physical difference or whether Sony is just being perverse (more on the latter), but it has the same 16:9 aspect, 1,366 x 768 native resolution as every other laptop of its type, so the argument is moot. And, while the 'X-Black' finish has always been 90 per cent canny marketing and 10 per cent truth, the NW11 does deliver richer colours and deeper blacks than many. This makes it an above average effort, but on the other hand viewing angles are narrower than some contemporaries, so it's not the best laptop for watching a DVD with a few friends.
If there's a chink in the NW11's multimedia amour, however, it really lies with the speakers. Unlike the similarly priced and featured Dell Studio 1555, the NW11 doesn't have a mid-range woofer, so relies entirely on a couple of largely underpowered speakers. These are passable for the occasional online video and might even suffice for a TV show, but they're too tinny and lacking in body for anything more serious.
Typically Sony is just a little more parsimonious (read stingy) than most when it comes to connectivity. To an extent this is true of the NW Series, for instance there's no eSATA and none of the USB ports are ‘sleep & charge' enabled, but overall it serves up all the things most people will need and a few they probably won't. This list includes three USB ports, VGA and HDMI for video, a mini-FireWire port, a 34mm ExpressCard slot and (on the front) memory card slots of Sony's propriety formats and the more common SD format. One unusual addition is a modem connection (just in case), though you get just the two audio jacks - one line-in, one line-out. As we noted earlier, the Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 in the NW11 isn't at the bleeding-edge of Intel's processor range (as the comparison to the Dell Studio 1555 demonstrates), but it's still a very capable performer, scoring over 3,000 in PCMark Vantage. That's a good score for any laptop in this price range and in real-world use any productivity, image editing and multimedia tasks you throw at it should be dealt with smoothly. This includes high-definition video, though editing HD camcorder footage - while still possible - will prove more challenging. Gaming performance is good (particularly for the price), though that's only true of mid-tier titles - the most recent and demanding games will still require significant compromise.
This decent performance is made all the more impressive by the battery life on offer. While the six-cell, 4,400mAh capacity battery isn't a whopper by modern standards, it delivered precisely four hours of use in MobileMark 2007's Productivity segment - extending to an impressive four hours and 34 minutes in the low intensity Reader test. Both these results surpassed the Dell Studio 1555 we reviewed recently, though in the DVD playback test it fell behind with a still creditable two hours and 32 minutes. Given this test is run at 100 per cent screen brightness, reducing this a little will give you enough life to watch most films.
TechFind Says :-
This completes a generally impressive performance from the NW11S. It's not without its faults, it could do with better speakers and an eSATA port wouldn't hurt, but it's fundamentally a very good laptop made all the better by its hard wearing, non-glossy exterior. If you can stretch to it then the Dell Studio 1555, which is more expensive sans its current discounted pricing, is still marginally the better machine, but if not then this will do the job nicely. Verdict
It's not quite perfect, but the NW11S is easily the best mainstream laptop Sony has produced in a long while. It has a nicely balanced specification and feature set, is reasonably priced and won't attract the dust, grease and grime so prevalent on laptops these days.
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Instead, Sony has opted for a textured plastic finish - in this instance silver, though a brown version is also available. We dare say it won't be to everyone's taste, but it's very hard wearing and exemplifies the decent build quality seen throughout the machine. There are some nice touches dotted around the NW11, too. Particularly worthy of praise is the touchpad, which comprises a moulded clear plastic plate integrated into the palm rest. Not only does it look rather fetching, its textured surface offers great tactile feedback - the two buttons are very good, too.
Above the touchpad we have the now commonplace isolation keyboard. Sony is the company that started it all, though, so it can hardly be accused of imitation. Initially the white keys appear a bit jarring in contrast to their silver surroundings, but it's a foible one quickly gets over and the keyboard itself is a peach. Keys have a lovely firm responsive action and the layout is perfect - we really can't think of a criticism.
Specification
For storage there's a 320GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, which is about what you'd expect and more than sufficient for most needs. Draft-N Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth are all present, too, so the NW11S ticks most of the boxes where basic features are concerned. While this version comes with a DVD writer, a Blu-ray ROM/DVD-RW combo drive version is also available, though given the lack of a Full HD display option we'd advise against it unless you absolutely must have Blu-ray. Since we're on the topic of the display, Sony describes this as a 15.5in laptop - not 15.6in like everyone else. We're not sure whether there's a real physical difference or whether Sony is just being perverse (more on the latter), but it has the same 16:9 aspect, 1,366 x 768 native resolution as every other laptop of its type, so the argument is moot. And, while the 'X-Black' finish has always been 90 per cent canny marketing and 10 per cent truth, the NW11 does deliver richer colours and deeper blacks than many. This makes it an above average effort, but on the other hand viewing angles are narrower than some contemporaries, so it's not the best laptop for watching a DVD with a few friends.
If there's a chink in the NW11's multimedia amour, however, it really lies with the speakers. Unlike the similarly priced and featured Dell Studio 1555, the NW11 doesn't have a mid-range woofer, so relies entirely on a couple of largely underpowered speakers. These are passable for the occasional online video and might even suffice for a TV show, but they're too tinny and lacking in body for anything more serious.
Typically Sony is just a little more parsimonious (read stingy) than most when it comes to connectivity. To an extent this is true of the NW Series, for instance there's no eSATA and none of the USB ports are ‘sleep & charge' enabled, but overall it serves up all the things most people will need and a few they probably won't. This list includes three USB ports, VGA and HDMI for video, a mini-FireWire port, a 34mm ExpressCard slot and (on the front) memory card slots of Sony's propriety formats and the more common SD format. One unusual addition is a modem connection (just in case), though you get just the two audio jacks - one line-in, one line-out. As we noted earlier, the Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 in the NW11 isn't at the bleeding-edge of Intel's processor range (as the comparison to the Dell Studio 1555 demonstrates), but it's still a very capable performer, scoring over 3,000 in PCMark Vantage. That's a good score for any laptop in this price range and in real-world use any productivity, image editing and multimedia tasks you throw at it should be dealt with smoothly. This includes high-definition video, though editing HD camcorder footage - while still possible - will prove more challenging. Gaming performance is good (particularly for the price), though that's only true of mid-tier titles - the most recent and demanding games will still require significant compromise.This decent performance is made all the more impressive by the battery life on offer. While the six-cell, 4,400mAh capacity battery isn't a whopper by modern standards, it delivered precisely four hours of use in MobileMark 2007's Productivity segment - extending to an impressive four hours and 34 minutes in the low intensity Reader test. Both these results surpassed the Dell Studio 1555 we reviewed recently, though in the DVD playback test it fell behind with a still creditable two hours and 32 minutes. Given this test is run at 100 per cent screen brightness, reducing this a little will give you enough life to watch most films.
TechFind Says :-
This completes a generally impressive performance from the NW11S. It's not without its faults, it could do with better speakers and an eSATA port wouldn't hurt, but it's fundamentally a very good laptop made all the better by its hard wearing, non-glossy exterior. If you can stretch to it then the Dell Studio 1555, which is more expensive sans its current discounted pricing, is still marginally the better machine, but if not then this will do the job nicely. Verdict
It's not quite perfect, but the NW11S is easily the best mainstream laptop Sony has produced in a long while. It has a nicely balanced specification and feature set, is reasonably priced and won't attract the dust, grease and grime so prevalent on laptops these days.
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