IN BRIEF: An attractive and powerful offering that will keep the mobile worker on the move

Sony has continually improved its offerings in the ultraportable laptop arena, with the S Series being its all-in-one, two-spindle laptop. The Sony VAIO VGNS3XP (£1799 inc. VAT) takes the firmly established S Series and squeezes more in the way of performance into it. The chassis is a compact and portable 2kg in weight. Considering there is a double density DVD rewriter fitted as standard, the S3XP offers everything the deskbound, as well as the mobile user, may wish for. Double density discs allow for the storing of up to 9.4GB of fi les on a single DVD-R. With the chassis curving away to the back, the hinges holding the screen in place are lower than the keyboard. This forces the user to set the screen at an angle for optimum viewing. In real terms, this curvature means the screen is further away from the user than a conventional screen, therefore placing less stress on the eye.

PURE POWER

At this price point, it comes as no surprise that Sony has switched to the use of the Intel 915PM chipset, which brings with it the inclusion of PCI-Express, enhanced audio and improved WLAN as standard. Powered by an Intel Pentium M 755 processor, running at 2GHz, with 1024MB DDRII memory supporting it, the VAIO is as high specified as currently possible in such a form factor. The 533MHz Front Side Bus helps to process data with little or no sign of lag. Sony has always supplied a host of software with its laptops, typically aimed at the manipulation of multimedia.

With SonicStage for sound and a number of Adobe products, including Photoshop, the S3XP needs a good hard disk. Fortunately, it’s supplied with a Fujitsu hard drive sporting 80GB of storage split over two partitions, so users will find plenty of space to store additional applications and files.

The 13.3-inch TFT panel takes advantage of ambient light sensors, with the addition of two lamps making the brightness of the screen more economical, even in battery mode. With X-black technology as standard, image quality is excellent. While there is a degree of reflection on such a panel, we found that this did not really hamper the user’s view.

The use of the 915PM chipset means that more of the thermal temperature is able to be devoted to the graphics sub-system than was previously possible. The really big change for this machine is the move away from ATi graphics to the nVidia GeForce Go6200 GPU.

Sporting 128MB of dedicated memory and supporting Turbocache technology, which takes advantage of system memory when performing power-hungry tasks, the S3XP scored a 3DMark 2003 of 2397. Running 3DMark 2001, the same system scored 9324. The GeForce Go6200 is designed to offer mainstream, as opposed to cutting-edge, performance in a laptop. While it lacks the power of the ATi Mobility Radeon 9700, it offers acceptable performance. With so much performance crammed into such a compact chassis – the S3XP measures 314 x 212 x 37mm – heat is a potential problem with the unit. With previous versions of the S Series, such a build-up of heat has not been an issue. Sadly, this is not the case with the VGN-S3XP, as we found the right-hand side of the chassis grew very warm to the touch.

The Sony VAIO VGN- S3XP is an attractive and highly usable laptop. While its core elements are all in place and it offers performance and battery life to the mobile user, the build up of heat was a worrying sign in an otherwise excellent laptop.

PRICE £1799 (inc. VAT)
PROCESSOR Intel Pentium M 755
MEMORY 1024GB DDRII SDRAM
HARD DRIVE Fujitsu 80GB
SCREEN SIZE AND TYPE 13.3-inch TFT
DISPLAY RESOLUTION 1280 x 800 pixels
GRAPHICS CARD nVidia GeForce Go6200
DIMENSIONS 314 x 212 x 37mm
WEIGHT 2kg
PC CARDS (TYPE II/III) 1/0
WIRELESS LAN Intel 802.11g
ETHERNET 10/100
MODEM Yes
USB PORTS 2
FIREWIRE 1 (mini)
STANDARD WARRANTY 1 yr RTB
WARRANTY UPGRADE 2 yrs (£176)
CONTACT
www.sony.co.uk