Digital Trends

Sony VAIO NR160E/T February 1st, 2008 | by Josh Norem

Features and Design

The most notable feature of the NR series is its sleek design, which features smooth edges, a textured surface and three colors to choose from: Silk (white), Wenge Brown and Granite Silver.

The Chassis

The chassis has an interesting texture to it, and certainly makes it look more elegant than your standard run-of-the-mill notebook. The textured surface is found on the back of the LCD, but not the front, and on the entirety of the palm rest. 

CPU, Chipset, RAM, Storage 

The VAIO NR is a modern notebook in that it’s using the Intel 965 chipset, but it doesn’t sport all the bleeding edge components we’ve seen in recent notebook reviews. For example, it features an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, but it’s a low-end chip with just 2MB of L2 cache (instead of 4MB found on higher-end models) and runs at just 1.5GHz. On the RAM front it has just 1GB (two 512MB sticks of DDR2 5300). The NR we received for review has a 160GB 5400rpm SATA hard drive, variations of this notebook include a 250GB hard drive, and slightly faster processors (same notebook, different model number), you will have to visit SonyStyle.com to see what their variation/model number of the week is.

Internet Connectivity

Yep, it’s got the Intel 965 chipset but sadly it’s lacking support for the next-gen wireless N standard. It does support B and G, of course. Its Ethernet is also a bit old school, running at older Fast Ethernet speeds rather than Gigabit. 

Display

The NR comes with a 15.4” widescreen, glossy display. It features XBRITE-ECO technology which Sony claims provides enhanced brightness and clarity while consuming less power than traditional LCDS. 

Ports and connectors.

Let’s take a quick tour around the NR and check out its ports.

We have an 8X DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW drive, two USB and a Kensington lock.

Express Card /34 slot, two USB ports, microphone, headphone, FireWire and exhaust.

Here we have an SD card reader, Memory Stick reader, activity lights and WiFi switch.

Not much to see here other than the battery, Ethernet and 56K ports, and AC jack.

Extra buttons

Most notebooks these days have a few shortcut buttons below the LCD, and the NR is no exception. This laptop has two buttons: One which is cryptically labeled “S1” and another labeled AV mode. The S1 mode is a shortcut button that you can customize to perform numerous tasks such as muting the volume, putting the NR to sleep, etc.

The AV Mode button launches a giant taskbar at the top of the screen that lets you open the DVD software or go on the Internet.

The S1 is a customizable quick-launch button, and AV mode is a quick-launcher for DVDs and the Internet.

Software bundle

Like most pre-built systems the NR includes a slew of pre-installed software, as well as the option to install numerous ancillary programs. The list is long and includes AOL, Norton, Microsoft Works, Office 2007 Trial, Corel Paint Shop Pro, and much, much more.