The VAIO range of laptops from Sony is generally well-regarded among the public, albeit with a pinch of salt, especially when it comes to their pricing strategies. With the mildly priced and placed E series of laptops, Sony is trying to alleviate that issue, although I must say they haven’t been quite successful. Here’s what I have to say.
While the device manages to end up having the feel and finish of a well-built VAIO product, with a nice, white, low-fingerprint-attracting coating, tiled and all, it displays little potential as a performing machine. The laptop comes with easy multimedia buttons that provide instant access to the VAIO Care, the picture gallery, or the web browser, and this will be convenient for amateur/novice users. Sony has put attention to detail here, making their line up more accessible.
The 15.5” screen is a full HD display, and leaves one wanting. Again, it should suffice for those who are not very much interested in viewing a lot of media content on their laptop, but I’m guessing that audience shall be a minority. This is surprising indeed for a Sony screen, but it’s true. The display does rack up the pixels; it just doesn't rack them up well enough.
The chiclet-style keyboard is a delight to use, however. While it gives up the novelty of a numeric keypad, it utilises that as a gained opportunity to deliver a wonderfully smooth typing experience.
The trackpad had mixed reactions, though. It works, for the most part, but the lack of physical clicks, and the weird feeling that the depressions simulating these provide can be a little uncanny and underwhelming at times.
The device comes with an HDMI out, 4 USB ports, and a webcam, for video chats, so most connectivity options are covered here. For accessibility to novices, again, the laptop comes built in with buttons that launch update services for the drivers and the operating system, so that even those without any information on how to do these tasks can stay secure and efficient.
On the software front, you get Windows 7 Home Basic, but this comes at the cost of major bloatware, a common complaint in this area. With the problem being elevated by the inclusion of Sony’s own first-party ‘tools’ such as VAIO Gate, and a Picture Motion Browser (PMB) for browsing through media files, the system takes a lot of time to respond to everyday situations like opening a program or launching a web-service.
All in all, while Sony understands the market demographic and what audience it’s trying to claim, and nails the physical conveniences and build-quality issues, it exacerbates the issue on the software/experience side by introducing a lot of bloatware, as well as low-end hardware for the price.
Go for this if you want something to flaunt without burning a hole in your wallet, but don’t expect to actually be able to show it off in functionality with much aplomb.