Sony VAIO V505 series

Reviewed on 3/11/04    Release date: 2/3/04    Three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and cool-looking Sony VAIOs. The Sony VAIO V505 is no exception, sporting the trademark purplish-gray, magnesium-alloy case of most VAIOs, along with just the right combination of ports and slots. It also offers integrated 802.11b/g wireless and your choice of built-in DVD/CD-RW or DVD-RW drives. The Sony VAIO V505 laptop's performance is less impressive, but it's sufficient for basic tasks, such as Web surfing and e-mail. While we're not thrilled about its one-year warranty, you should give the Sony VAIO V505 serious consideration if you're shopping for a thin-and-light laptop.

Design of Sony VAIO V505 series

The makers of thin-and-light laptops would do well to emulate the Sony VAIO V505's design. The demure, 1.4-by-10.9-by-9.5-inch case weighs a modest 4.4 pounds, petite for a thin-and-light, yet it includes a healthy selection of features. For starters, the keyboard is wide enough not to cramp your fingers. The touchpad and the two rectangular mouse buttons are also sufficiently large. The 12.1-inch screen with a 1,024x768 native resolution isn't gigantic, but it's big enough to gaze at for hours.

The touchpad and the two mouse buttons are sufficiently large.	The keyboard is wide enough not to cramp your fingers.

Sony lines the sides of the Sony VAIO V505 with a balanced assortment of ports, slots, and buttons. The front edge offers a handy on/off button for the integrated 802.11b/g wireless hardware, which lets you conserve battery life by easily turning wireless off when you're not using it. (You can also use Windows XP's software controls to switch off wireless networking.) On the right edge are a 56Kbps modem and Ethernet jacks, along with a Memory Stick slot and one USB 2.0 port. Another USB 2.0 port sits on the opposite edge, joined by FireWire, VGA, headphone, and microphone ports, plus one Type II PC Card slot.

When you order the Sony VAIO V505, you can fill its single internal bay with either a DVD/CD-RW combo drive or a DVD-RW drive. On one hand, we wish the DVD-rewritable drive also supported the DVD+RW standard, like the dual-format DVD+RW drive in the Sony VAIO GRT series does. On the other hand, it's great that a notebook this small has a DVD burner at all. Whichever drive you choose for the Sony VAIO V505, make sure your mind is made up, because unfortunately, the bay is fixed--that is, you can't swap out the drive later to insert another module.

Features of Sony VAIO V505 series

The Sony VAIO V505's long list of available specs (some fixed, some configurable) speaks to everyone from speed fiends to budget hounds. You can buy the system with a Pentium M, Pentium 4-M, or mobile Celeron processor rated anywhere from 1.2GHz to 2.4GHz. Main DDR SDRAM memory runs at a fast 333MHz and comes in increments ranging from 256MB to 2GB. Hard drives measure 40GB, 60GB, or 80GB, but all offer the same average 4,200rpm speed. Two secondary storage drives are available: a DVD/CD-RW combo and a DVD-RW.

A few of the Sony VAIO V505's components are the same for every model in the series. All configurations include a solid, if not sizzling, 32MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 graphics chip and a bright 12.1-inch display with a 1,024x768 native resolution. If you order your laptop with internal wireless, you'll get an Intel Pro/wireless 2200 802.11b/g mini-PCI card.

The Sony VAIO V505 comes with various music, photo, and video applications. Highlights include several Sony apps, such as DVGate Plus, for importing video from a digital video (DV) camera, then editing and saving the streams to your system or to a disc; PictureGear Studio, for arranging pictures in online photo albums, on digital postcards, and more; and SonicStage, for splicing together music clips. For more cash, Sony will preinstall Adobe Photoshop and Premiere. You can choose either Windows XP Home or XP Professional as the operating system, and office suite options include Microsoft Office Small Business and Standard Editions, as well as the pared-down Works 7.0 minisuite.

Performance of Sony VAIO V505 series

The Sony VAIO V505 finished second in mobile performance in CNET Labs' small test group. The laptop scored 17 percent higher than the Toshiba Satellite M30-M35 series, which uses Toshiba's Power Saver utility to save battery life by throttling its CPU to very low levels. Unfortunately, Sony's own CPU throttling allowed the Dell Inspiron 500m to best the Sony by 10 percent. The Sony VAIO V505's score of 124 in MobileMark is about 14 percent lower than the average score we've seen from Pentium M-1.4GHz-based systems in the past, which means that mobile performance is not the Sony's strongest suit.

Performance analysis written by CNET Labs assistant lab manager Eric Franklin.

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