Sony VAIO VPCS11V9E/B review

Intel’s innovation has allowed Sony to refresh several of its most popular families, and the VAIO S Series is no exception. Aimed at the business user who also likes a little entertainment here and there, the S11V9E is a tough but lightweight 13.3in laptop that also packs a discrete graphics chip.

The big step forward is the move to Intel’s HM55 Express chipset and Core i5 processor. The Core i5-520M in this machine runs at 2.4GHz, with the Turbo Boost feature dynamically pushing either of the two cores up (to a maximum of 2.933GHz) or down depending on your needs. It’s one of the new batch of 32nm processors, and supports Virtualisation Technology and Hyper-Threading.

Paired with 4GB of DDR3 memory, the VAIO S Series coasted through our application benchmarks with a score of 1.55 – just a fraction short of the 45nm Core i7-720QM inside the Dell Studio 15, which demonstrates just how advanced these latest CPUs are.

But speed isn’t the only intended benefit. The 32nm Core i5s have a TDP of just 35W, and Sony has opted for a six-cell, 5,000mAh battery in the S11V9E, so we were hopeful of good battery life to go with that performance.

We had to disable Sony’s Battery Saver option, which restricts the charge to 80% of capacity to prolong the battery’s life – we’d rather get the extra 20% and take our chances in the long run – and without this limit, the Sony managed more than five hours in our light-use battery test, and 1hr 24mins under full load.

The latter figure is partly down to the more power-hungry GeForce 310M graphics chugging away – Sony hasn’t made the graphics switchable, despite the latest Core i5 processors having Intel graphics built into the chip. It does give the Sony another dimension as an entertainment system – it effortlessly decodes HD video and managed an acceptable 56fps in our Low quality Crysis test – so it’s perfect for a bit of light gaming after work.