Sony VAIO CW 14-inch Laptop

Dell Studio |Dell Studio One, VAIOs from Sony are well-known for their appeal in the laptop segment, especially for their build quality and design. The 14-inch Sony VAIO CW continues in that tradition, distinguishing itself from the masses with stylish (and thoughtful) design and great performance, while packing in a healthy Nvidia GPU.

The Sony VAIO CW series of laptops is available in various colors. Our review unit (VPCCW16FG/W) was icy white all around, with the VAIO logo engraved on its non-glossy screen lid's (no fingerprints here!) center. Prop the screen up to reveal a chiclet-styled keyboard with plenty of palmrest to park your hands while typing. The palmrest is slightly raised and prominent - this actually aids comfort while typing. The VAIO CW is very well built, has rounded edges, and feels like a premium laptop. It weighs all of 2.4-kg with a six-cell battery, which is lesser compared to 15-inch laptops like Dell Studio 15 Artist Edition and Acer Aspire 5542G perched in our Top 5 Mainstream Laptop recommendations.

The Sony VAIO CW comes with a 14-inch LED backlit screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio, supporting a maximum resolution of 1366x768, and a 1.3MP webcam is recessed on its top bezel. The Sony VAIO CW's screen isn't as bright as the Samsung R470's but at par with the likes of Dell Inspiron 14z and Lenovo Ideapad Y450. It offers good viewing angles and watching movies as well as reading text is pretty good. Typing on the chiclet-styled keyboard is extremely comfortable and the key feedback is just about right. The VAIO CW's touchpad and the two mouse buttons are nice to work with. The laptop's hinge (below the screen) has a host of quick-launch buttons: for launching a browser, turning off the screen, or launching the VAIO's app console--all this really helps in day-to-day usage.

Despite its 14-inch frame, the Sony VAIO CW is incredibly powerful under the hood. It has an Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53-GHz processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 320GB hard drive, and a GeForce GT230M graphics card. Besides the standard offering of input-output ports, the Sony VAIO CW doesn't skimp on must-haves like Gigabit Ethernet, Draft-N Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth connectivity. The VAIO CW doesn't come with an eSATA port, but includes HDMI-out (to play HD content on an LCD TV) and FireWire (transfer images or video from your camera, handycam) ports, along with Sony's proprietary MagicGate slot . Apart from 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium, Sony also bundles in a host of proprietary apps for managing your multimedia content. A very healthy set of features, overall, from the Sony VAIO CW.

The Sony VAIO CW is one of the most powerful mainstream laptop we've encountered for some time. Its WorldBench 6 scored past 100 without a hiccup, and our round of synthetic benchmarks posted very high numbers on the VAIO CW. What's interesting, though, is its bundled Nvidia GPU--the GeForce GT230M. Apart from handling HD content and 3D applications, the graphics card is enough to satisfy gamers with modest expectations--yes, you can game on it, if you like gaming on a 14-inch screen that is. The Sony VAIO CW is a very good compact, all-purpose laptop in terms of pure performance. Onboard sound from the speakers situated on the hinge is good, but not great.

But it has a glaring trade-off with battery performance--the bundled six-cell battery failed to last an hour on our benchmarks. The most you can expect from the Sony VAIO CW is over two hours, on a conservative battery plan, which is poor compared to other mainstream laptop offerings.