Sony Vaio EE2E1E/WI review

The horribly named EE2E1E/WI is one of the few laptops in Sony’s Vaio range with an AMD processor. At £500, it’s easier on the pocket than many of Sony’s 15.5in notebooks. However, we were immediately sceptical about whether the dual-core Athlon II X2 P320, 3GB of RAM and Mobility Radeon HD 4200 would match Intel-based laptops at this price.

Unfortunately for Sony, our doubts were bourne out by the results of our benchmark tests. An Overall score of 54 is particularly poor for a laptop of this size and price. It also failed to impress in our Call of Duty 4 test, producing a frame rate of just 3.5fps. Even battery life was a disappointment at two hours and 44 minutes.

This is a pity, as in every other respect, this is a great laptop. The glossy display, although rather reflective, is bright and clear. Its resolution of 1,366×768 gives plenty of desktop real estate and you can use the HDMI output if you want to watch 1080p video on a suitably equipped HD TV. Sound from the built in speakers is generally clear and loud, although the underpowered bass (as with all laptops) means that some tracks sounded a bit empty.

The keyboard lends itself to swift, accurate typing thanks to its flat, widely spaced keys. The trackpad is positioned below the spacebar, set slightly to the left of centre. There’s plenty of space for your wrists and the trackpad won’t get in the way of your typing. Although the EE2E1E/WI’s silver lid and white keyboard look good, dirt shows up easily on white plastic, and we noticed that the buttons below the trackpad had already begun to look a little grubby after minimal use. The wrist rest quickly became warm, although it wasn’t hot enough to make typing uncomfortable.

Usually, we wouldn’t complain about a 320GB hard disk, but it’s capacity is stingy given the corners cut on the processor and GPU. The laptop’s other features are as we’d expect at this price, with a DVD re-writer and two memory card reader slots that between them can handle SD and Memory Stick Pro Duo cards. We were pleased to find four USB ports, but you’re out of luck if you need FireWire or eSATA. Networking support is provided a Gigabit Ethernet port and 802.11n WiFi.

Although it looks good and is comfortable to use, the Vaio EE2E1E/WI is underpowered for its price. The dual-core Athlon processor can’t compete with similarly priced Core i3 and Core i5 laptops. Although the display and build quality are up to Sony’s usual high standards, there’s just not enough here to justify the price. Samsung’s R530 is even cheaper, with an equally good screen but better performance.