Otaku Gadgets

Sony is one of those companies that give a lot of attention to the appearance and the details of their laptops. Apple of course leads the industry in this (read Jobs is) but Sony is a good second in the design aspect. From their Vaio series of high-end laptops comes the well-designed and good looking Sony Vaio VGN-NW125J/T.

This laptop is equipped to handle HD content with a 16:9 screen and a 15-inch screen. Sony quality means that the experience is quite good in these regards and the price is also right for the experience that you get. At $800, Sony is probably coming down from the expensive pedestal that Vaios are usually placed on. I mean for a Vaio this size this is downright affordable. The software bundle that comes along with the laptop is also great.

There are some shortcomings as well though. Even through it is light, it has a short battery life. The size might also be a problem for some people. Want to find out how? Read on dear reader.

The VGN-NW125J/T comes with a great bundle of software. You get the full version of Microsoft Office along with a 12-month subscription of Norton Internet Security. Now that is a really good deal. As you can tell by now from the software bundle, this is a student laptop. The softwares come on discs with the laptop at the time of purchase.

Even with the extra chassis width, Sony has included only a six-cell battery with the laptop. This is bad because it shortens the battery life to a mere 3 hours, which is lower by a good full hour or two in comparison with the competition. Others in this category are carrying eight-cell batteries, like the Toshiba E105-S1602.

The design of the laptop has the mark of the Vaio aesthetic sense all over it. It has a textured plastic finish that looks very good on the laptop. This finish is found on the lid and it extends to the keyboard area as well.

The touchpad has a separate texture on it. It has a dotted surface that is good for tactile feedback but we, as users, have been brought up on smooth touch pads. So how well you will adapt will depend entirely on you. I say it shouldn’t take long after you get over the novelty of the experience. Reviewers have reported it to be very responsive although taking time to get used to. It has a vertical scroll area on the right edge and a horizontal scroll area on the bottom edge. The buttons on the touchpad have been reported as being quite good as well.

The keyboard on the NW125 should make you feel pretty good about owning a Vaio. One good thing about premium companies is that they get these small things right to make for a better user experience. Unlike the Asus UX50V mentioned earlier, this laptop does not have a separate number pad and that is a good thing. This means that the keyboard has space enough to be more spread out. Reviewers have noted that the keyboard on the NW125 is a good to type on. It has the flat, cutout keys that you would find on Apple MacBooks and the Asus UX50V. This keyboard always evokes mixed responses. The keys have a shorter travel, a muted click and are well spaced out. It is both liked and disliked by people for these very reasons. There are no dedicated media control keys. You have to use the function combo keys to perform multimedia functions.

The NW125 has a 15.5-inch screen with a native resolution of 1366×768 and a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9. It is good for HD although it does only 720p and not 1080p. The screen has the much disliked and often hated glossy finish. While it is good for the display (better colors), it is bad because of all the glares that will keep blinding you. However, reviewers report that the glare and reflection is not all that high on this screen.

On the ports front you have VGA out, HDMI out, headphone and microphone ports, 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 eSATA, multi-format card reader and even a mini firewire. That last one is really not used any more but Sony and a few others seem to still have them on new laptops. May be it is a backward compatibility step.

There is an ExpressCard/34 slot, which is not as good as an ExpressCard/54 slot but it is better than nothing at all. It has Ethernet and WiFi (802.11b/g/n) but no Bluetooth, which is really frustrating. Why a laptop in this price range has to skip the Bluetooth I do not know. However, with the sacrifice of one USB port every now and then you can have Bluetooth via a cheap $10 dongle.

The NW125 runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 processor that clocks at 2.1 GHz, which is a midrange Core 2 Duo processor. It comes with 4GB of DDR2 SDRAM (800Mhz) memory. That is sufficient for all your applications and more or less unless you use something really complex. A 320GB SATA hard disk spinning at 5400rpm provides the storage. Everything is connected via an Intel GM45 chipset with graphics being handled by the onboard Intel GMA 4500MHD. It comes with a DVD burner.

The new Vaio VGN-NW125J/T has similar features as the Asus UX50V-RX05, which is also a recent release. However, the UX50V is run by a single core processor while the NW125 has a Dual Core processor. When it comes to design though, it is really up to the individual buyer. Personally, the like the tapered edges on the Asus UX50V-RX05 but there are many who would prefer the NW125’s classy textured design to the Asus UX50V.

The Vaio VGN-NW125J/T has an extra-wide chassis that might need a bigger than standard bag to carry it around. However, if the size is not a deterrent for you then this Vaio will likely serve you quite well.

So even though it cannot play games as such, it is a decent laptop for the price.

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