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SonyVaio E-Series VPC-EH1J1E review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £479
inc VAT

The EH1's design can't hide the fact that its Pentium processor is under-powered, and it also lacks USB3 support

The Sony EH1J1E is typical of Sony’s budget laptops. Although it doesn’t come in a range of garish colours (there’s a choice of white, black and dark blue) it has an interesting texture on the lid and wrist-rest: a faceted design like the surface of a large gem. It’s the first laptop we’ve seen for a while with a Pentium processor, in this case a B940 running at 2GHz.

Sony Vaio EH1J1E

The Pentium is Intel’s budget range, and the B940 doesn’t look impressive on paper. Its two cores aren’t effectively doubled by Hyper-Threading, and it doesn’t support Turbo Boost for brief increases in clock speed. As a result, its score of 30 overall in our multimedia benchmarks wasn’t much of a surprise.

A score of 52 in the image-editing test shows it’s fast enough for single-threaded applications, but the scores dropped to 31 and 22 in the multi-threaded video-encoding and multi-tasking tests, so demanding applications such as HD video editors won’t run too quickly.

Sony Vaio EH1J1E right port

Graphics performance is what we’d expect at this price. The integrated Intel GMA 3150 chip can just about handle HD video content, but it wouldn’t run our Dirt 3 benchmark. You might find it runs old 3D games, but newer titles are unlikely to work.

As with many laptop screens, the EH1’s has a glossy finish that makes colours more intense but reflects light sources. If you’re not looking at the screen square on, contrast suffers due to poor vertical viewing angles, so you’ll have to position the laptop and tilt the screen carefully. Overall image quality was average: the backlight wasn’t entirely even and a bit dim.

Its 1,366×768 resolution is the norm for 15.6in screens. It can display all the detail in 720p HD content, but 1080p content will be downscaled unless you connect a suitable external screen. You have a choice of VGA or HDMI outputs for video; the latter can also output audio to AV amplifier. You’ll almost certainly want to avoid using the EH1’s built-in speakers which sound tinny and brash.

Sony Vaio EH1J1E keyboard

The EH1’s keyboard has Sony’s usual Chiclet-style keys, which look smart and have a light action with plenty of feedback for touch-typists. The layout is fairly standard, with a large Enter key, but the left Shift key isn’t wide enough for our liking. Sony has even shoehorned in a four-column numberpad. The touchpad has a rough surface but is responsive, and its two large buttons have a comfortably light action.

Sony Vaio EH1J1E left ports

The battery lasted almost five hours in our light-use test but, in any case, the EH1 weighs 2.7kg so it’s not particularly suited to a life on the road. It’s not powerful enough to serve as a desktop replacement either, and you can buy the more powerful Packard Bell EasyNote TS11-HR-040UK for the same money without losing out in other departments. In fact, the TS11 also includes a USB3 port which the EH1 lacks, so is a wiser investment.

Basic Specifications

Rating***
ProcessorIntel Pentium B940
Processor clock speed2GHz
Memory4.00GB
Memory slots2
Memory slots free1
Maximum memory8GB
Size370x248x43mm
Weight2.7kg
SoundConexant SmartAudio HD
Pointing devicetouchpad

Display

Viewable size15.5 in
Native resolution1,366×768
Graphics ProcessorIntel HD Graphics
Graphics/video portsVGA, HDMI
Graphics Memory64MB

Storage

Total storage capacity320GB
Optical drive typeDVD+/-RW +/-DL

Ports and Expansion

USB ports4
Bluetoothyes
Wired network ports1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support802.11b/g/n
PC Card slotsnone
Supported memory cardsSDHC, Memory Stick Pro Duo
Other portsminijack audio output, minijack microphone input

Miscellaneous

Carrying caseNo
Operating systemWindows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Operating system restore optionrestore partition
Software includedMicrosoft Office 2010 Starter
Optional extras£99;

Buying Information

Warrantyone year RTB
Price£479
Detailswww.sony.co.uk
Supplierhttp://www.sonystyle.co.uk

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