Sony VAIO E15 (SVE15116FXS)

While plenty of attention is given to slim portable ultrabooks and big bruising gaming rigs, for most people, a reasonably priced desktop replacement laptop is all that a shopper is looking for when they are shopping for a new laptop. The Sony VAIO E15 (SVE15116FXS) fits that bill nicely, sitting right at the intersection of affordability and usability. This entry-level desktop replacement laptop already had a ledger full of great features?like a selection of premium media editing programs and an advanced webcam sensor?but a new third-generation Intel Core i5 processor puts it over the top with category-leading performance.

Design
The new VAIO line updates with a wraparound design, where the grey plastic surface of the chassis appears to be folded back upon itself to form the bottom and palm rest of the chassis. It's more cosmetic than structural, but it does make for a slick-looking design. The lid is covered in bare brushed aluminum, with a polished chrome VAIO badge in the center. Along the leading edge of the lid is a strip of plastic, but being the same dull silvery color of the aluminum, it blends well. Measuring 1.32 by 14.65 by 9.99 inches (HWD) the plastic and metal construction weighs 5.3 pounds?a shade lighter than many similar systems, like the previous Editors' Choice, the 5.6-pound Asus U56E-BBL6 ($699.99 list, 4 stars) or the 5.75-pound Asus K53SD-DS51 ($779.99 street, 3 stars).

The VAIO E15 has a full-sized keyboard, complete with a 10-key numeric pad, and backlit chiclet keys. The keys are comfortable enough, but the backlight seeps out around the keys to a distracting degree. The touchpad is smooth and responsive, with right and left click functions integrated into the pad, and clickpad functionality across the entire surface. Touchpad gesture support is solid, with the two-fingered zoom and rotate, three-fingered swiping forward and back, and other functions working smoothly.

The VAIO E15 features a 15.5-inch display, with boilerplate 1,366-by-768 resolution. The widescreen display is brightly lit, and provides enough real-estate for tiling two windows side-by-side for effective multitasking. Sony beefs it up a bit with 3D support when connected to a 3D capable display via HDMI. The accompanying Intel HD Audio produces crisp, clear sound, but when I tested it with streaming music, it did get a bit tinny at high volume, but only slightly. The bass levels won't compete with an actual subwoofer, but the VAIO E15 still manages to provide decent low-end for a laptop.

Features
Above the keyboard are three dedicated buttons, labeled Assist, Web, and VAIO. The Assist button opens Sony's VAIO Care help and troubleshooting utility, which also offers easy to use menus for system settings, performance management, and security. The Web button opens up Internet Explorer with a single click, while the VAIO button pulls up Sony's VAIO Media browser.

Along either side of the VAIO E15, you will find a selection of ports, with three USB 2.0 ports, a single USB 3.0 port with sleep and charge capability, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI out. On the right, you'll find a tray-loading optical drive, and on the left, jacks for headphone and mic. On the front edge of the palmrest, you'll also find two media card reader slots, one for Sony's ProDuo media, another for various SD card formats (SD, SDHC).

The VAIO E15 is equipped with a 1.3-megapixel webcam, which uses the same Exmor sensor technology seen in the newest Sony Cybershot cameras. Sony has added some extra functionality to the webcam in the form of a different type of gesture control. Instead of using fingers on the touchpad, it uses hand motions in the air. Hold your hand up, palm forward, in front of the webcam, and it will let you move forward and back between Web pages (in Internet Explorer 9), PowerPoint slides, or music tracks with just the wave of a hand, pause and resume playback, and even adjust the volume. The final function, volume control, gave us some trouble in testing, but otherwise all of the hand-waving worked fine, even if we did feel a little silly using it.

The VAIO E15 is equipped with a 750GB hard drive, which is common in entry-level systems, like the Lenovo IdeaPad Z570-10249ZU ($699.99 list, 3.5 stars) and the Asus U56E-BBL6 , which both had drives of similar specs. Inside you'll also find 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0, and a tray-loading DVD+-RW optical drive on the side.

Unfortunately, that 750GB hard drive does come with a fair amount of clutter, both in the form of bloatware?like a 30-day trial of Kaspersky Internet Security, Skype, an eBay link on the desktop, and a Bing branded toolbar prepackaged with IE9?and Sony's own VAIO utilities, like VAIO messenger. But it's not all unwanted bloat, as Sony throws in a free copy of ACID Music Studio, Sound Forge Audio Studio, and Vegas Movie Studio Platinum HD. Considering the fact that every value laptop will include preinstalled programs, the inclusion of three premium media tools is a real plus, and offers more out of the box value than most competitors can offer. Sony also covers the VAIO E15 with a one-year warranty, which includes toll-free phone support and on-site service and repair.

Performance
The VAIO E15 really shines among other entry-level laptops, thanks to its Intel Core i5-3210M processor, a 2.5GHz dual-core processor that's one of the first third-generation Intel CPUs (also called Ivy Bridge) we've seen coming to market. Paired with 8GB of RAM, the new processor helped the VAIO E15 to reset the performance bar across nearly all of our tests.

In raw performance it topped the best entry-level systems seen this winter, scoring 2.86 points in Cinebench R11.5?ahead of the Asus K53SD-DS51 (2.77) and the Sony VAIO VPC-EH35FM/B ($629.99 list, 4 stars), which scored 2.78 points. In PCMark 7, our general productivity test, it left every other system in the dust with a score of 2,495 points, ahead of the Asus (2,255 points) the Sony (2,400 points) and the Acer Aspire TimelineX 5830TG-6614 ($779.99 list, 4 stars) (2,388 points). This lead extends beyond word processing and multitasking, however. In multimedia tests, the Ivy Bridge-powered VAIO E15 surged further ahead, tying the leading Photoshop CS5 times of 3 minute 55 seconds scored by the VAIO E15 and Asus K53SD-DS51 , and breezing past them all in Handbrake (1:39).

The new Intel chipset also features an upgrade in integrated graphics, with Intel HD Graphics 4000 putting forward performance that previously was unheard of without a discrete graphics card. In 3DMark 06, the VAIO E15 scored 6,651 points at 1,024-by-768 resolution, ahead of the Nvidia-equipped Asus K53SD-DS51, but falling behind the Acer Aspire TimelineX 5830TG-6614 . Despite the graphics upgrade, however, the Core i5 Ivy Bridge processor doesn't quite have enough oomph for high-end gaming to get off the ground, with baseline scores of 28 frames per second (fps) in Crysis and 27 fps in Lost Planet 2, just a bit shy of the 30 fps that we consider playable scores. It does, however, mean that you'll have more than sufficient support for a range of other games, such as World of Warcraft.

The only area where the VAIO E15 didn't exceed expectations was in battery-life. It lasted 4 hours 34 minutes in MobileMark?falling short of even the 4:53 that the Sony VAIO VPC-EH35FM/B produced using an identical 44Wh battery. It's a far cry from the 9:01 of the Acer Aspire TimelineX, or the 7:42 of the Asus U56-BBL6, but those laptops also packed in much larger batteries (the Asus U56-BBL6, for example, has a giant 74Wh battery).

Even without the addition of a third-generation Intel processor, and the boost to processing and graphics performance that come with it, the Sony VAIO E15 (SVE15116FXS) is a strong laptop, combining slick design and solid construction with a healthy selection of hardware and software and plenty of features. Extras like webcam gesture control and a suite of premium media tools make the VAIO E15 compelling on its own, and thanks to an Ivy Bridge Intel Core i5 processor, the Sony VAIO E15 (SVE15116FXS) stands head and shoulders above other entry-level desktop replacements, replacing our previous Editors' Choice among entry-level desktop replacements, the Asus U56-BBL6.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Sony VAIO E15 (SVE15116FXS) with several other laptops side by side.

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