The
Sony VAIO NS20 is a basic laptop from Sony VAIO which offers a refreshing sparkle of style and features to an otherwise rather dull budget laptop market.
For just £450-500 you get solid laptop with a slim profile for good looks and portability. Its smooth rounded corners and edges give the VAIO NS an elegant and attractive feel. Gentle curves also keep exterior dimensions to a minimum and ensure that this laptop is really easy to slip into a bag or carrying case.
Excellent picture quality
With a good-size 15.4” widescreen display, the VAIO NS allows you to fully appreciate your multimedia entertainment without compromising portability.
Sony "X-black" LCD technology ensures images are bright and sharp for truly realistic and natural-looking pictures. I had never seen this in action an took it for a simple branding excersise but the intense contrast and colours bring multimedia files to life vividly on screen and it stacks up well compared to a price-competitive
Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop. Its anti-reflective coating minimizes glare to allow enjoyment of movies, games and photo slideshows outside in the garden as well as from a wide variety of viewing angles.
Good connectivity
The VAIO NS also features a wide variety of connections including Sony's i.LINK™ for digital camcorders, a VGA (ie analogue) port which is good for most projectors an ExpressCard 34mm slot for memory cards, the laptop also accepts MemoryStick as you'd expect. Some models also featue an S-Video output for connecting up your laptop to a TV.
Solid hardware
It's well built for a budget laptop, with the kind of quality you'd expect from Sony. Its Intel Core Duo processor and 3Gb DDR2 RAM copes well with Vista and runs standard Office Suite software with ease.
And so this is where the mini-review should end. We've used them and we think they cope well with the demands of Vista Home Premium, offering a very pleasant user experience. Girls should keep their eyes open for the stunning pink models!
Silly software - but sound multimedia all round
Proprietary Sony VAIO software uses built-in intelligence to make simple work of organising rapidly growing – and potentially chaotic – collections of music and digital photos and video clips. VAIO Music Box uses a powerful ’12 Tone Analysis’ system to categorise music into different genres and moods, then automatically builds playlists that you can select to match the moment (hmm...).
VAIO Movie Story takes the work and complexity out of managing photos and video by vastly simplifying the task of arranging your pictures, adding effects and judicious editing to show them at their best, then synching the images to music. The result is a quality slideshow to enjoy and share – a long way from the original mass of pictures on the hard disk.
Sony’s trademark quality and attention to detail is evident wherever you look, from the X-black LCD enhanced screen to the clear tone of the integrated speakers and the provision of four USB ports for maximum connectivity. Along with the peace of mind that comes with the global status of the brand, this makes the VAIO NS hard to beat in its class.
Sony VAIO NS Series laptops at
Cheap Laptops