A Windows Vista Home Premium laptop powered by a 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T5750 and 2GB of RAM, the VGN-NR485 bagged a respectable WorldBench 6 score of 75. That's pretty solid performance for a laptop that stands among the cheapest machines on our current Top 10 All-Purpose Laptops chart (as of 10/29/08). It sells for $849 ($200 more than Toshiba's bargain-basement Satellite Pro L300D-EZ1001V, which the Sony bested by roughly 20 points in WorldBench 6 tests). It has the speed to handle almost any kind of application. The only performance problem we encountered was in our 3D gaming tests, which the VGN-NR485 couldn't run because of its lousy integrated Intel graphics chip.
The 6.2-pound laptop managed to last long enough in our battery life tests. It fell just short of 4 hours (3 hours, 56 minutes), ranking toward the top of the leaderboard. Surpassing this value unit was Lenovo's ThinkPad SL400, which costs $1223 and has an optional high-powered battery; it lasted 5 hours, 8 minutes in our tests as a result of the add-on.
As for features, the 14.2-by-10.6-by-1.5-inch VGN-NR485 packs a fair amount of punch, including dedicated front-mounted SD and Memory Stick slots, four USB ports, and an ExpressCard/34 slot. Typical for a sub-$1000 laptop, the optical drive is a standard (not high-definition) DVD burner. Beneath the stylish navy blue waffle exterior lies an impressively large 200GB hard drive. You can't reach it for upgrades, but barring a failure you shouldn't need to replace it. Though the 15.4-inch screen has a high-gloss finish that tends to reflect overhead lights, it's very bright and has an easy-to-read 1280-by-800-pixel resolution.
No comments:
Post a Comment