Sony VAIO W Netbook Reviewed — Display Over Battery
Sony’s entry into the crowded netbook field got tongues wagging. The company is known for its VAIO premium notebook brand, and the VAIO W crossed firmly into the low price category. On paper, the VAIO W is a fairly standard netbook, although the colorful Sony styling and the high-res display set it apart from the rest of the field. Computer Shopper has reviewed the Sony netbook and found that while the display is very nice, the battery life is not that great.
The reviewer loved the it, although some folks may find it too high-res (1366×768) for the 10-inch display. The resolution can be a big advantage over the standard netbook display resolution (1024×600). Unfortunately, it sounds like the higher-resolution display pushed the graphics subsystem too hard:
On 3DMark06, which measures graphics performance, the VAIO W’s score was among the slowest we’ve seen, at 76. The GMA 950 graphics integrated within Intel’s 945 chipset is anemic even on netbooks with only 1,024×576 pixels to push, so we’re not surprised that its performance was even more lackluster on the higher-resolution 1,366×768 display.
The other deficiency noted about the VAIO W is battery life. The review found that the Sony netbook could only achieve 2 hours and 24 minutes of life through their battery test. Average battery life for this test was noted at 4 hours, making the VAIO W much worse in this vital category.
The VAIO W is $499, putting it on the high end of netbook pricing. The styling and higher-resolution display make it a nice netbook, if you can overlook the deficiencies of performance and battery life.
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Or you can buy an Acer Aspire One 751 and get 1368×768 at 11.6″ with a GMA500 PowerVR GPU to drive it for $349. Windows 7 (7600.16385) runs very well on it.
Once again: We need Touchscreens and Windows 7 on notebooks ASAP to make them more pratical than they already are.
Apple is gonna come out and claim that space real soon!
I meant NETbooks
I’m really surprised they’re having such problems with the high-res screen, but then again the chipset Intel uses with the Atom is a power hog – Intel needs to push out Pinetrail real soon.
Rant aside, the high-res screen on my old 2133 never has given me problems ever. It works well on the desktop and office/web apps. Cool Edit Pro runs great and the machine has the muscle to run uncompressed CD quality digital audio. The display handles 720p WMV content beautifully, and I’ve even encoded short 2-minute HD movie trailers using WME on it with no sweat.
3DMark06 is, in truth, a gamers benchmark. While it does give good comparison numbers, I think a more accurate performance measurement for netbooks is to just run a suite of applications, as users would in the real world, and see how the device performs.
That battery life figure is just plain sad for a new netbook. Even my TC1100 on its current battery can last about that long, and that battery is probably several years old!
If you’re looking at 3DMark performance on a netbook, though, something’s wrong. Nobody buys a netbook to play games, unless they’re using StreamMyGame to tie into a gaming desktop at home (which I do with my TC1100 sometimes). Heck, I don’t really believe in gaming notebooks, either, given how they’re bulky, heavy, run way too hot, and again, lacking in the battery life department!
(I mean, I’d like a fairly compact netbook/tablet that lasts all day on a single battery and chews through Crysis maxed out like butter while encoding HD video in the background at the same time, but the technology isn’t there yet-and if it was, it would be way out of my budget!)