Sony VAIO VGN-CR190 REVIEW

The Sony VAIO VGN-CR190 is the latest family laptop from Sony. It is extremely stylish , colorful and consumer friendly. This CR series is clearly aimed at college students looking for a fun and functional notebooks.

Design
VAIO VGN-CR190 is commonly available in colors with names like “sangria” and “cosmopolitan” ,dove, and indigo . The lid of the notebook also has a nice glossy finish which makes it look very clean. Its 1.67" at its thickest point and has a weight of around 5.5 pounds , not thin or light by today’s standards. The 14.1" glossy screen has a native resolution of 1280 x 800 and the display features are fairly bright. With amazing horizontal viewing angles, watching a DVD on VAIO CR is a delight. The most unique feature of VAIO VGN-CR190 is the keyboard which resembles a lot like a MacBook rather than a PC keyboard. If you are able to adapt yourself to the lack of dedicated keys then this keyboard is a joy to work with. The touchpad is nice and large with a very usable and responsive surface. The battery life of VAIO VGN-CR190 is 2-3.5 hrs according to SONY , however I obtained 3 hours and 2 minutes of battery life using the notebook at half screen brightness, wireless off, and a mixture of Word usage and idling.

Performance
VAIO VGN-CR190 comes with a latest-generation Core 2 Duo processor, integrated Intel GMA X3100 graphics, and 802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi. This notebook has a decent storage space of 160gb and 1gb of memory(667Mhz). The VAIO CR series' ports and connections are mostly average for the category, though we appreciate the CR series' integrated 1.3-megapixel Webcam. The notebook scored unexpectedly low in the 3D Mark 05 Results with a score of 780 3DMarks. This is due to the fact that the CR uses the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 which shares the notebook’s system RAM. If the notebook had 2GB or more memory the benchmark would have been slightly more impressive.

Conclusion
Sony VAIO VGN-CR190 is nice looking notebook with amazing colors that are sure to appeal to the college students. Its not quite as powerful as some other notebooks in the $1,000+ range due to the integrated X1300 graphics. In terms of appearance and features VAIO VGN-CR190 provides stiff competition to the MacBook.

Pros
+ Great looks with variety of colors to choose from
+ Core 2 Duo processors and up to 4GB of RAM provide plenty of system performance

Cons
- Bad Vertical viewing angles
- not much of a gaming notebook.

Value For Money

Our Rating