# Sony Vaio CW26FG Review



## codename_romeo (Feb 22, 2010)

Forgive me for any mistakes or ignorance on my part as this is my first take at writing a review on any laptop. 

  Well let’s begin:
*sp.sony-asia.com/media/150/74697

  Manufacturer: Sony
  Model: VPCCW26FG
  Colour: White
  Price: 56000 INR + 5000 (for additional one year warranty, optional)
  Detailed Configuration:
  Processor: Intel i5 M520 @ 2.4 GHz
  Ram: 4 GB of DDR3 (i suppose 1066 MHz)
  Hard Disk: 500GB @ 5400rpm
  Graphics Unit: Nvidia Geforce GT 330 M
  Display Resolution: 1600 x 900
  Size: 14 inch
  Weight: 2.4 Kg (including the battery)
  OS Provided: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
USB Ports: 3
HDMI: Yes
i.LINK(IEEE 1394) 										 										 											4 pin (S400) x 1 

Display Output Connector 										 										 											Analogue RGB, mini D-sub 15 pin x 1 

Wireless LAN Type 										 										 											Integrated Wireless LAN IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 										 										 											Bluetooth standard Ver. 2.1+EDR


No recovery disc or installation disc is provided. Sony vaio recovery centre can be used to create recovery discs. It takes 4 single layer DVD or 2 Dual layer DVD. Recovery partition is present.
  If someone is interested in fresh start installation they can download the home premium iso from Microsoft website and use the serial key provided at the base of the laptop. Rest all necessary drivers can be downloaded from the Sony vaio support page for the particular model or else can be installed from the recovery discs which we make. 

  Windows Experience Index

  Processor: 6.7
  Memory: 5.9
  Graphics: Aero 6.3
  Gaming Graphics: 6.3
  HDD: 5.8
  Overall: 5.8



  Build Quality and Looks:
                                                   At 2.4Kgs I don’t know whether to call it heavy or not, but then at least one thing is for sure it feels real sturdy when held in hands. No flex behind the display or on the keyboard. The only place I felt a bit of flex was below the optical disk drive, in an area of about a square cm. Overall looks excellent in white, more appropriately pearl white and not exactly white. Palm rest are made up of slightly glossy surface but doesn’t attract finger prints. 

  Rating: 4.5/5

   Display:
                   Well if you ask me I have seen many a laptops, including machines from dell, hp, Acer, Sony, Apple etc. And in case of display till date the best laptop I used to feel was from dell, but after seeing the brilliance of this display I was left spell bound. Its way better than those provided with dell or hp. Acer I would not even compare and Apple all together has a display with different aspect ratio. Some may say that on a 14 inch screen 1600x900 resolutions is meaningless, but I would say it always leaves you with some more of work space on the desktop.
  Sometimes I have noticed that while watching certain movies the screen tends to be a bit grainy.

  Rating:  4/5


  Gaming:
                  Haven’t really tried a lot of titles on this laptop yet, had modern warfare 2 with me, so was able to try that only. And with the performance I got from it I was pretty much impressed. 
  With all settings set to high and resolution of 1360x768 and anti aliasing set to 2x, I was getting a constant of 30+ fps outside and when inside a building I used to get 40+ fps. Which I must say is good enough for laptop which isn’t primarily built for gaming. In intense fights I say 30 fps, but never anything lower than that. May be I am just in level two, so I can’t say for sure, but then I don’t expect it to fall much either ways. Anyways there is still an option of turning off the AA setting, which for sure will prevent fps to fall below 30 under any circumstances. And when I pushed the resolution all the way to 1600x900 I got about 18 to 20fps outside in intense fights and 28 fps inside, it was with all settings high and AA set to 2x.

  Rating: 5/5 

  Really couldn’t have asked for anything more than this from a laptop in this price bracket and with such portability.

  Daily performance: 
                                        For applications like word, spreadsheet and PowerPoint this machine is more than adequately powered.  It handles multitasking quite comfortably and hasn’t shown any kind of lag in any of the applications. So for internet browsing or general office applications its more than one can ask for.

  Rating: 4/5

  People who would want to use this machine for daily word processing or internet browsing should better go in for models which are lower priced than this. Because investing so much on a machine, whose power you would never use would be unwise according to me.


  Keyboard: 

*sp.sony-asia.com/media/168/83748

                      This laptop isn’t backlit. And that was one of the main reasons why I bought the white coloured laptop. Even when it’s not backlight the light from screen is more than sufficient to light up the keyboard even in rooms with absolutely no light.  I guess the key stroke isn’t more than 2mm and 19mm key pitch. But then this isolated kind of keys (each key is isolated from the other) is a sheer treat to type on. May be it will take some time to get used to typing on this type of keyboard but then I find it really comfortable. This again is subject to person likes and dislikes. 

  Rating: 4/5

  Track pad:


*sp.sony-asia.com/media/150/74701

                    The track pad is not glossy like the ones present in hp laptops. It has a slight rough texture which according to me helps getting a better feel while using it. Personally no matter how good a track pad gets, it can never beat the ones provided with macbooks or macbook pro. And moreover I find myself more comfortable using a standard mouse than a mouse pad or track pad. Yeah you can zoom in and zoom out of web pages, explorer windows, desktop, documents using the pinch in and pinch out finger movements on the track pad. 

  Rating: 3/5

  Heating Woes:
                             This is a field in which this laptop really impressed me a lot. I was always worried about laptops heating up a lot, because I have been used to seeing hp and dell laptops more often than Sony vaio. I have used this laptop on stretch for 14 hours and it didn’t seem to show any kind of heating problems. The rear of the laptop was totally cold, keyboard didn’t show any signs of heating and yeah the palm rest (left side) was a bit warm, but nothing that you would notice unless you are intentionally looking for it. There is minimum sound made by the system cooling fan, so no buzzing or hissing sound. 

  Rating: 5/5
  Battery Life:
                         Not very sure of how much battery life can be drained out of this one, but I guess then that depends on the type applications we run on it. I have obviously the display was at 50% of full brightness. Even at level I had not problems in reading the eBook I was reading. Though the official claim is of 2.5Hrs it seems to be giving more than that. But yeah there is one problem regarding battery life and that is that if I fully charge the battery i.e. 100% and leave the machine shut down at night, the following morning when I wake up and witch it on ( after around a gap of 14 hrs or so) the battery life would show only 88%. I don’t know whether it’s a battery depletion problem or just the sensor or software issue.

  Rating: 3.5/5 


  Conclusion: 
        An excellent value for money product contrary to my own belief that Sony Vaio laptops are not value for money products, and that Sony charges a premium for its laptops. But after experiencing this laptop I really don’t think that I am going to go back to any other company for laptops (the only exception may be Apple). If you are looking for a laptop in the similar price I would suggest that this one is a real good buy.


For Pics i have used those floated by sony on their official website.


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## desiibond (Feb 22, 2010)

nice review. would've been better if you included more pictures (display, battery, ports) and also benchmarks like sisoft sandra and everest ultimate, superpi.


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## codename_romeo (Feb 22, 2010)

Will do that asap @desibond......... just give me a couple of days


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## Akshay (Feb 22, 2010)

Nice n crisp review...


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## codename_romeo (Feb 23, 2010)

^^Thank you
@ desibond what exactly you want me to collect from everest and sisoft sandra???


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## Faun (Feb 23, 2010)

nice review.


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## codename_romeo (Feb 23, 2010)

Anyone who needs any additional info on this laptop can pm me....... would be glad to help you people out......
Queries about any other laptops are also welcome, will try to solve issues to the best of my knowledge


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## shantanu (Feb 23, 2010)

nicely written, do include some pics of your's


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## codename_romeo (Feb 23, 2010)

will do mr webmaster......................


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## ashu888ashu888 (Feb 24, 2010)

codename_romeo said:


> Anyone who needs any additional info on this laptop can pm me....... would be glad to help you people out......
> Queries about any other laptops are also welcome, will try to solve issues to the best of my knowledge


Thanx for the review, even i am planning to buy a lappy by 1st week of march (2010 ofcourse)..,.

I dnt think its the E Series Vaio lappy right..??...

plz the me the following things...

1.) is the white colored body, glossy..??? if yes then is it a fingerprint magnet or less of it..?? 

2.) wat series vaio is it..?? s series or any other..??

3.) from where u bought the lappy..??

4.) wat was bundled extra stuff along with the lappy..?? 

5.) also, plz tell me how is the GPU, gt 330m, its 1GB right...?

6.) any eSATA port (i know its not mentioned in ur review)..

7.) so the battery life in real time is approx. more than 2.5 hrs right..? was it u viewing a movie or jus doin surfing/music..?

8.) Reading ur "Heation woes" , "Gaming" & "Display"segment, i was really impressed at it...especially the neating segment, im getting inclined towards this lappy...  congrats again dude, and very well written review, really appreciate it.. 
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I am also surveying a lot of lappys so if u can shed sum light then i wud be gr8ful... (for ur info... i will buy a lappy in the range of 50-56K INR) 
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Cheers n e-peace.....


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## codename_romeo (Feb 25, 2010)

No its not the E series which is expected to be launched in india in the month of march. It will cost you around 60k. Comes with a 1gb ati radeon card and i guess i5 /i3 processor.

1. I would call the surface glossy but then it does not qualify as a finger magnet. rather  it doesnt hold on to any finger prints or oil from finger at all(unless you have soaked your fingers in cooking oil)
2. Its the CW series and the exact model number is VPCCW26FG, the S series is the one which has only BLACK as colour option and has backlit keyboard. Had read some reviews it may have heating problems.
3. Bought it from a shop from Bhubaneswar, Orissa. (if you want details will pm you)
4. Didnt get  much with the laptop, the standard Vaio bag(impressed by the quality of the bag), a logitech usb optical mouse and 4 blank Sony DVDs for burning the recovery disks.
5. No its 512mb DDR3. If you need more benchmarks will run a couple of more games and let you know. 
6. No esata port.
7. Surfing and music gives me more than the stated time. Will do a battery test while running a HD movie and  post the results.

Thanks for the appreciation 

If you try to configure the Dell studio 15 as close s you can to the cw26fg, you get 
1. a slightly better processor 2.53GHz instead of 2.4gHz
2. a weaker GPU ati 4570 instead of nvidia M 330GT
3. a 15  inch laptop instead of 14 inch
4. a screen resolution of 1366x768 instead of 1600x900.
Price would be 53.5k. So against dell its your call a better gpu or a better cpu? It mainly depends on what you want from your laptop.

If you go in for apple you get:
1. Core2Duo 2.25Ghz processor
2. Nvidia 9400 gpu with 256mb of shared memory
3. MAC OSX ( i really wish i could use it on my laptop )
4. 250 GB of HDD

Price would be 56K unless you go in for student discount, which would make it about 53K.

Lemme know if you need details on any particular models . I dont have much of idea about recent HP laptops as their website seems to be too complex for a simple person like me(no offense meant).

adIos......
Keep posting


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## Akshay (Feb 25, 2010)

codename_romeo said:


> I dont have much of idea about recent HP laptops as their website seems to be too complex for a simple person like me(no offense meant).



HP needs to totally revamp their website. It is impossible to find a system based on our need and it is also difficult to know a systems specifications.


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## ashu888ashu888 (Feb 25, 2010)

codename_romeo said:


> Lemme know if you need details on any particular models . I dont have much of idea about recent HP laptops as their website seems to be too complex for a simple person like me(no offense meant).
> 
> adIos......
> Keep posting


thanx for the info dude, really appreciate it.. 

WIll go to Croma (Mumbai) and ask abt this lappy, it seems really good..and yeah, HP site sucks big time (hope HP is listening)... i jus cant find a single model on their site 

I had a talk with a customer exe of Vaio (at croma, Mumbai) he told me the E Series will be launched by 25th feb and will be in their croma stores by 1st week of march (he also took my number to inform me abt it as and wen it arrives) .. lets see... 


Akshay said:


> HP needs to totally revamp their website. It is impossible to find a system based on our need and it is also difficult to know a systems specifications.


Agree to u totally..


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## harish_21_10 (Mar 12, 2010)

Pretty good review there.. Thanks for sharing...


codename_romeo said:


> 5. No its 512mb DDR3. If you need more benchmarks will run a couple of more games and let you know.
> 7. Surfing and music gives me more than the stated time. Will do a battery test while running a HD movie and  post the results.


Got something to post for the gaming performance and the battery life?Looking forward to it..

I have also sent you a PM in regard to the same laptop and also for some advice.


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## harish_21_10 (Mar 12, 2010)

codename_romeo said:


> But yeah there is one problem regarding battery life and that is that if I fully charge the battery i.e. 100% and leave the machine shut down at night, the following morning when I wake up and witch it on ( after around a gap of 14 hrs or so) the battery life would show only 88%. I don’t know whether it’s a battery depletion problem or just the sensor or software issue.


Came across a topic for similar issue, on another forum, check it here 
If it helps then do post...would be handy to know the solution..


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## azaad_shri75 (Mar 14, 2010)

is gfx gt230 or 330?

---------- Post added at 06:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:25 PM ----------

ok its gt330, just checked.


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## cyberjunkie (Mar 15, 2010)

Except for the slightly loose battery back that we found on one of the models we reviewed, it's mostly good. Yep, the Sony CW series is good value for money. I believe the cheapest model starts for less than Rs. 40,000.


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## Akshay (Mar 15, 2010)

E series is launched in India.. checked in chroma. It is priced at 49,990/- for i3 processr, 4gb ram, 500gb hdd, 1gb ati 5450 (not sure of the number), 15.5" screen. Looks cool but little glossy - *www.sony.co.in/productcategory/it-pc-series-vpce#IT+PC+Series+VPCE


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## codename_romeo (Mar 15, 2010)

Yeah the E series was to be launched in the month of march , and yeah its available for sale now.


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## Akshay (Mar 15, 2010)

@harish

Thnx for the link. Was about to recommend Sony but this seems to be a major problem..


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## harish_21_10 (Mar 16, 2010)

Akshay said:


> @harish
> 
> Thnx for the link. Was about to recommend Sony but this seems to be a major problem..



Happy to help..so did it make any difference? Do let us know...


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## ashu888ashu888 (Mar 17, 2010)

Akshay said:


> E series is launched in India.. checked in chroma. It is priced at 49,990/- for i3 processr, 4gb ram, 500gb hdd, 1gb ati 5450 (not sure of the number), 15.5" screen. Looks cool but little glossy - *www.sony.co.in/productcategory/it-pc-series-vpce#IT+PC+Series+VPCE





codename_romeo said:


> Yeah the E series was to be launched in the month of march , and yeah its available for sale now.


yup, its launched on 8th march,2010 and i got my lappy (E Series) on9th march,2010 for a reduced price of 48K )from my local dealer... 

well, the screen is glossy, but view is jus NOT a trouble (maybe im using scratchguard .. but still, the screen viewing is crisp and clear while gaming  or watching movies (hd as well as non hd) 
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Cheers n e-peace....


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## shantanu (Mar 21, 2010)

where are the pics romeo ?


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## codename_romeo (Mar 21, 2010)

Dude digi cam screwed up. Will get back asap. Dont wantu post pics from my E 63. Would spoil the entire beauty of the laptop


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## Akshay (Mar 23, 2010)

Congrats on ur new laptop. How is the battery life?


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## codename_romeo (Mar 24, 2010)

Getting more than 2.5 hrs with brightness at more than 50%. SO pretty good till now. Thats about watching movies and browsing the net, dont play games when its on battery.


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## Akshay (Apr 26, 2010)

Got the Sony Vaio VPCEB16FG/B from Rs.46250 from Lamington Road.

The screen is awesome. However, the adapter cable is too short compared to what I had with HP.


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## satyamy (Apr 26, 2010)

i think Vaio is always costlier compared to Lenovo & HP's


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## socrates (Apr 26, 2010)

Nice review buddy. You said that you can DL the Win 7 ISO from the microsoft site. Is it possible for you to paste the link, I have a Acer 3810TZ running Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit, bought in Feb 2010 (see *www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=125756) would like to have a copy of the OS if possible.


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