Sony Vaio NW160J: 15-inch Blu Ray Laptop Under $1000
August 5 2009 Categorized Under: Laptops Tags; blu-ray, NW160J, sony, sony blu ray laptop, sony gaming laptop, sony sub 1k laptop, sony vaio laptop, vaio, vaio blu ray laptop, vaio gaming laptop one Commented
Sony has been pushing their Blu Ray standard For quite some time now and it was only a matter of time before we started seeing Blu Ray making appearances in their own line of laptops. That time has come and gone. We have been witness to Sony putting out Blu Ray equipped Vaio laptops for quite some time now. The new Sony Vaio NW160J is the latest addition to other Blu Ray equipped Vaio laptops but has one major difference. It is a sub-1k laptop that also has some gaming capabilities.
The NW160J is meant to be a 15-inch multimedia laptop with some above average gaming capabilities. Although it is more expensive than similar competing laptops, it has the potential to fulfill the needs of a highly niche market. For those who want a great built quality in something that it smaller than mammoth 17” laptops, this is the perfect laptop.
The laptop looks quite good and has a pattern that will remind you of wood. The lid of the laptop looks classy and has the Vaio logo across the center. The pattern is all over the lid and follows it to the interiors.
Reviewers report that the keyboard has a fantastic feel and is one of the best keyboards in the market. The keys are well spaced out and have a good travel and click without feeling too loose. There is no individual number pad on the keyboard but that is becoming quite a common thing in laptops of this size. The touchpad has generated similar reactions. It is a well-sized touchpad that has a great texture that helps in traction. It is not too smooth and it is not too deeply set either. Over all the tracking is said to be quite accurate and devoid of hiccups.
There are three hotkeys beside the power button for mute, launching the web browser and for toggling display on/off. Everything else such as volume control, display brightness, etc. is controlled through the function keys. If you press the web browser button whilst the Vaio is powered down, it will launch a light OS (Linux-based in all likelihood) that will allow you to do some quick surfing and photo browsing. This is becoming quite a common feature these days and Linux is making its presence felt in the mainstream laptops through these light OS’s.
The laptop comes bundled with all the common Sony media applications like Media Plus and Media Jukebox. This is okay if you like such software but I would suggest using standard applications that are used everywhere. They usually have better development processes and are more robust.
The native resolution on this laptop is 1366×768 and the screen size is 15.6 inches. With its 16:9 aspect ratio, this is one great laptop for entertainment on the move. You won’t be able to achieve full 1080p HD on this (which is a waste really because it has Blu Ray) but you will enjoy your movies sufficiently. However, testers report that the viewing angles aren’t that great on this laptop. Blu Ray being a Sony format, it loads and plays quite effortlessly on the laptop. One thing it lacks is good sound via the speakers. The speakers are apparently not all that powerful and the peak volume is not high enough. The sound quality through headphones is likely to be good because it is a Sony.
On the card reader area you have a slot for Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick format, obviously. You also have a normal SD card reader. There is also an HDMI output for those who want to utilize the Blu Ray to its full extent. Surprisingly there is also a mini firewire port, which is rarely used these days. Sony probably wants to make sure that the laptop is backward compatible.
The laptop runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 running at 2.1GHz. This is absolutely not the top of the line and you would expect something so very expensive to have a stronger CPU. But it does not and that is a negative point against it.
Coming to the memory, it has 4GB of DDR2 SDRAM running at 800MHz. This is actually quite enough for most of the things that you would be doing with it. You can also upgrade it if you want to but for most users this will be sufficient.
For storage you have a 320GB SATA drive spinning in 5400rpm. Given that this part could have been a faster 7200rpm drive, this is another point against the laptop.
The chipset used is the Mobile Intel PM45 Express. An ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 card handles the graphics. This is a major point in favor of the laptop because this ATI card will allow you to have a good gaming experience. Gaming on such machines is often to be overlooked due to weak graphics. But since this ATI Mobility Radeon solution will allow you to play some decent games, it may be worth the premium that you will be paying for this laptop.
It comes bundled with Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 and you can of course upgrade to Windows 7 later. If you are planning to upgrade (and you should) you should know that there are separate versions of Windows 7. There’s one where you can upgrade from Vista. But every time you need to reinstall Windows 7, you will need to reinstall Vista and then upgrade from that. So be sure about what you are buying before you pick the wrong one.
We now come to ports and I have already mentioned the HDMI and card slots. There is also a VGA out for this laptop, if you have been getting worried about that. It has stereo speakers and the usual ports for headphones and a microphone. There are three USB 2.0 ports on the NW160J and there’s also an ExpressCard/34. That last one will make a lot of people happy. On the connectivity front it has Bluetooth, Ethernet and WiFi (802.11b/g/n).
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