• Sony VAIO CW: An All-rounder

    Sony VAIO CW: An All-rounder

    Roydon Cerejo, Nov 23, 2009 1357 hrs IST

    Styled brilliantly with plenty of ergonomic features

    Good gaming performance, comfortable keyboard, doesn't heat up much, stylish design, good pricing

    Strictly average battery, slightly heavy

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If you remember, Sony announced a couple new notebooks with quite aggressive price tags just a few of weeks back. Along with the super sexy 'X' series, we also have the mainstream CW series which is what we've got for review today. Until now, if you wanted a solid performing multimedia notebook that was reasonably priced, we had just two major options, either a Dell or an HP. Now, Sony is all set to enter this space and compete with the bigwigs in this category. 





The VPCCW16FG/P that we got for review comes packed with plenty of brute force. For starters, we have an Intel Core2Duo P8700 running at 2.5GHz in the heart of the notebook. We have Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit for proper utilization of the 4GB DDR3 memory. The best bit is the graphics card which is Nvidia's latest GT 230M which comes with 512MB of GDDR3 RAM. If this is anything like the GT220, which is the desktop variant, we can easily expect some good gaming performance. To view all this goodness, we have a 14-inch LED backlit display.

Apart from the good specifications, being a Sony, the build quality of the notebook is very good with strong plastics used for the chassis. You get multiple colors to choose from and following the tradition, Sony sends us a pink notebook for review.

Bundle

There wasn't much of a bundle provided other than the charger since this was a review piece but checking the site, the retail piece as well will come with just a charger and battery as standard with other optional accessories available.

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Discussion Board
(7) Comments
arun
,gandhinagar, on Apr 14, 2010 03:28 PM
guys wat about the toshiba laptops? have heard that thet are lot more eficient than sony and dell.. is that true?? some of the superb and chalenging models are still not available in India ??!!
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george simon
,lucknow, on Mar 02, 2010 09:08 PM
he guys check out the new cw... they have'nt changed the price but have now put an intel core i5 with geforce GT330M graphics card n a 500gb hd...
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dude
,kochi, on Nov 24, 2009 07:00 PM
ookay.... did some digging around and here's what i found about them... ATI 4670 ATI 4650 NVIDIA GT230M ATI 4570 check out notebookcheck.net. it has all details about notebook gpu-s The 4670 comes in the dell studio xps which, frankly, is expensive... dunno which intel processor the hp dv6 comes with... so, the best option seems to be the sony itself...
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XsK. SimKill
,it was Baambay, now Amrika, on Nov 23, 2009 11:54 PM
Guys guys guy, dont get all excited just because of the gfx card name. A gt220 or 230 does not imply the desktop variant coming to the portable format. nVidia has just renamed the 9 series (laptop) cards into the GT series. I mean, have you even considered how much power the desktop GT series draw? The GT220-230 is nothing more than a slightly overclocked 9300GT/9400Gt which is really nothing to write home about. I believe techtree should explicitly mention the M names after the cards ie like GT220M or GT230M which would make stuff clearer. Frankly amount of RAM on the card does not matter if its not fast enough to use that memory. Basically this is just a usual release to be expected in the end of 2009
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Karthik Kumar
,New Delhi, on Nov 23, 2009 04:47 PM
EXACT same specs(apart from ATI 4570 instead of GT230M) on Dell Studio 15(not 14) with Backlit keyboard AND a 9-cell battery comes to 52k (without tax) Better value than this for those looking at a bigger package.
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Aswin
,Chennai, on Nov 23, 2009 08:21 PM
Ati 4570 is a very bad Graphics card for gaming. Its manufactured using 55nm so it heats up fast and eats battery life.The shader speed which allows you to crank up special effects is just 660Mhz in ATI while its 1.1Ghz. We cant compare apples for apples here. Dell Studio has a solid reputation for overheating. Vaio is smaller lighter and the 44k model with 210m graphics card still eats Studio with the out dated 4570 for breakfast. I have nothing against Dell but after seein Vaio I got a frnd to pick one for me during black friday to get some nice deal
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dude
,kochi, on Nov 23, 2009 07:25 PM
hey techtree guys, can you do a comparo between the various graphics cards in them midrange (40-60k) laptops?" It'd be really enlightening.... Most of the ppl (myself included) don't know which card's better... I don't know which performs better- an ATI 4570 or a Nvidia GT210/230M.... the memory's the same, you see... It's kinda hard, I know- the CPU and the RAM bottlenecks...but, it sure could be fun and really informative... You could be the first guys in India to do this... I don't think any other site in India has done this b4. Come ON, guys, give it a shot!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :P At least some rudimentary info would have been nice..... PLS!!!!
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