Sony Vaio CR series

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39030093,49291871,00.htm

Reviewed 30 July 2007

Reviewed by Rory Reid

The CR series is is the latest in a line of colourful laptops from Sony, designed for the style-conscious user. They come in a range of colours, including white, pink, blue and the flagship red. Unlike the slightly tacky-looking C series, the CR promises a premium finish and modern components, without breaking the bank -- it comes in under £1,000. Is that even possible for a Sony Vaio?

Design
The CR series' biggest selling point is that it comes in a range of colours, the best of which, in our opinion, is 'Blazing Red' (listed as the VGN-CR11Z/R.CEK on the Sony Web site). Unfortunately Sony's designers have made a horrible mistake -- they've forgotten to make it drool-proof. If the laptop's curved edges, glossy, metallic lid and chrome accents don't get your juices flowing, you're probably dead.

The front edge of the laptop protrudes about half a centimetre further than the lid, giving it a slight underbite. This lower lip section houses a set of media shortcut keys (play, pause, stop, rewind and fast-forward) plus six status lights that indicate power, hard drive activity, Wi-Fi, battery life and whether the laptop is reading from a memory card. These are nothing out of the ordinary, but the chrome backdrop makes them look superb.

There are a further six shortcut keys above the keyboard -- one for launching Sony's interpretation of Media Center, three for controlling the volume level, one for launching the webcam (situated above the screen), and another for switching the display off. The latter may sound pointless, but it comes in handy when the CR is attached to a second display or when you're feeling really anal about preserving battery life.

The CR's keyboard bears a resemblance to those on the MacBook. The keys are spaced approximately 3mm apart and don't have the sloping edges seen on a standard desktop keyboard. This means the CR is less likely to trap foreign particles between each button. Unfortunately there's not quite enough travel on the keys -- we'd prefer them to sink slightly more after each press.

The underside of most Windows-based laptops are usually cluttered with unsightly vents, screws and access panels. The CR is no different, but for one small detail: Sony has added a 45mm-long LED light strip that pulsates, showing different light patterns depending on what the laptop is doing (booting, shutting down, hibernating). This is ultimately quite pointless, but it'll help your tech-addled mind remember not to shove the laptop in to a suitcase or bag while it's still switched on.

Features
We didn't expect much in the way of features from the CR. Why should we? It's a Sony, it's sexy and it costs less than £1,000. But we were pleasantly surprised: it uses Intel's latest Centrino Duo platform, a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo T7100 CPU and 2GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM. That's generous, considering it has a massive Vaio logo on the lid.

Sony doesn't skimp on the graphics, either. You get an ATI Mobility Radeon X2300 video adaptor, which has 256MB dedicated memory, but can leech even more from system memory for a total of 831MB. It doesn't provide Alienware-level graphics performance, but it gives you the peace of mind that if you want to run a 3D game, you can. We were slightly disappointed, however, that the CR does not come with a DVI or HDMI port. Instead you get analogue D-Sub and S-Video video connectors.

The CR uses an LED backlight behind its 14.1-inch panel. This type of screen couple of benefits over traditional CCFL displays, most notably improved brightness and fewer environmentally unfriendly components. It also uses Sony's glossy X-Black coating. This renders the laptop nearly unusable in direct sunlight, but enhances image quality in evenly lit rooms. Contrast is high and colours look great, but the native resolution is a relatively low 1,280x800 pixels. This isn't a major problem, but if you like to multitask with lots of windows, you'll start to wish you had more pixels to play with.

Whereas the blue, pink and white Vaio CR11S models come with 120GB hard drives, the flagship red CR11Z model comes with a 160GB drive. Sony makes a point of reminding us it's equivalent to 34 standard DVDs -- ample storage in a laptop of this type. You can never have too much storage space, however, so we'll remind you that it's possible to add an external hard drive to the CR via any of its three USB ports, or the four-pin FireWire port on the left side. The laptop also comes with Memory Stick, SD memory card and a 34mm ExpressCard reader, plus a dual-layer DVD rewriter drive. Blu-ray is not an option here.

All flavours of Wi-Fi are catered for: the adaptor supports 802.11a, b, g and even the 300Mbps 802.11 draft n standard. Bluetooth is also present, which is handy if you want to transfer files to and from your mobile phone without the hassle of cables. Infrared is absent, but really, who cares?

The CR ships with Windows Vista Home Premium edition, Microsoft Works 8.0, Intervideo WinDVD, Norton Internet Security, Picasa 2, Roxio Easy Media Creator Home and Skype software. This is a pretty good bundle considering the price -- you can start putting the laptop to good use straight out of the box. Sony provides a one-year return to base warranty as standard.

Performance
The Sony Vaio CR11Z -- our test model -- offers above average performance. This is unsurprising -- it uses the very latest Centrino Duo chipset. Sony has opted not to fit it with Intel's quickest mobile CPU (2.3GHz), but the 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo is definitely no slouch -- especially with 2GB of RAM backing it up. It scored 3,725 in PCMark 2007, which is in line with our expectations for a machine of this spec. It's fast enough to cope with pretty much everything except hardcore video editing and compression.

3D performance was slightly above average, for a laptop. It returned a 3DMark 2006 score of 762, and ran F.E.A.R at 12 frames per second with all the graphics settings on the maximum level -- anti-aliasing at 4x and anisotropic filtering at 8x. At the default F.E.A.R settings, the laptop ran the game at 19fps, which is just about playable. Just.

The CR's glossy screen means it's not the ideal outdoor laptop, but its battery life is commendable nontheless. Sony quotes a figure of 3 hours 45 minutes, though we're guessing this is only possible when the laptop is used for light desktop duties such as surfing the Web. Our battery-testing software, Battery Eater, failed to record a result for some reason, but we'll update this review when we can test the CR's battery properly.

Conclusion
We've no reservations about recommending the Vaio CR series. It's stunningly attractive, well-equipped and affordable. It'll never be as trendy as a MacBook, but the two are comparable for features and price. Buy one now if you can.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Nick Hide