Sony VAIO VPC-EB1S0E review

Well this is exactly the market I'm looking at, Dell do an Inspiron with an i3 for £399, but I'm far from impressed by this, normally a Sony screen is a byword for quality, and Sony usually make their dedicated graphics switch-able. But my real problem is the stupid 16 x 9 screens that everything seems to sport now. I could understand this if it was fitted with a Blu-ray player maybe, but this adoption of a video standard display resolution for a laptop,just doesn't make sense for everyday use IMHO. A 15.6" screen would be fine at 1440 x 900, but at 1366 x 768 I will leave it on the shelf. Good to see the i3 delivering real usable performance, and look forward to someone making a laptop with an i3 and a "business screen".

By stokegabriel on 2 Feb 2010

Looks nice

But I'd never buy a Sony again. I had a FW31 which cost me £800. A month after I bought it the power button snapped off when I turned it on (it's held on by a miniscule piece of plastic). Sony replaced it fine. It snapped off again a couple of months later. Sony told me it was no longer covered by warranty as they had used "reinforced" parts to repair it and it shouldn't come off under normal operation. Just how much can you reinforce a 3mm piece of plastic. They wanted £255 to put a new one one. Apparently it is connected to the entire motherboard of the machine....OK Sony. As a result I have sold this laptop, and my sony TV, surround sound system, blu-ray player, digital camera and PS3 and have no intention of ever doing business with them again.

By ralphuk100 on 3 Feb 2010

Sony laptops and warranties are also on my no-buy list after my girlfriend's laptop died a death 2 years after purchase, apparently without any recourse, and with an estimated bill of £750 to fix it.

By Penguat on 3 Feb 2010

I'm a bit puzzled by Sony's apparent reputation for screen quality. The range of viewing angles on my FZ21M is terrible (particularly when watching dark videos) and yet screen quality is touted as a selling feature of this model, with stickers all over with "Widescreen X-Black LCD".

Sony's laptop screens seem to bear no relation to the screens on (for instance) Macbook Pros. I suspect Apple screens are more expensive, but why do Sony seem to get away with sub-standard screens (in my experience)?

By c6ten on 4 Feb 2010

Poor choice in spec, Sony!

The ageing Clarksfied i7-720QM of the Dell studio 15 is old news. Quad-core mobile processors have been and gone and frankly left an unpleasant after taste. Intel's new Arrandale i7's are all dual core and the way forward in terms of power conservation.

But I appreciate the frustration with this particular variant of the E-Series. It just doesn't make sense to add a dedicated GPU to this price range of laptop. Leave it for the i5's or i7's to handle.

What's more interesting is that you can spec the E-Series on SonyStyle with a tasty 1GB GDDR3 Radeon 5650, which when coupled with an i5 520M will make a reasonable portable gamer.

By dpazz on 14 Feb 2010

Thanks for the warnings

I was interested in the VPC EB1Z0E so I thought I'd check out a 'similar' review. Having read the interesting comments about Sony build quiality though, I'll look elsewhere. Thanks for the warning!

By projexe on 19 Mar 2010