VAIO CW Series Notebook PC

The Sony VAIO VPCCW21FX/W is a sweet little mid-priced laptop chock full of both processing power and bells and whistles.



When shopping for a laptop, it’s very hard find one that’s a good performer and has all of the features that you want without spending a ton of cash. There are lots of lower end systems out there at great prices ($360 to $599), but they don’t have a lot of features or horsepower. There’s also a great selection of top of the line systems ($899 and up), but the midrange systems always force you to make trade offs. This one has a better processor and more memory and disk space, but no video card. That one has a serviceable processor, less memory and disk space, but it’s got a video card, stereo Bluetooth and a webcam. I don’t know about you, but I want it all, and I don’t want to pay a premium for it, so I’m constantly comparing and contrasting them looking for the best value for my buck.

The Sony VPCCW21FX/W has all that and a side of fries. It sports an Intel i3 quad core processor (2.13GHz), 4GB of DDR3 RAM (with room for 8GB), a 500GB hard drive, an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card with 256MB of dedicated video RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS, a 14” HD quality widescreen, A2DP Bluetooth, Wireless b/g/n, Gigabit Ethernet port, CD/DVD player/burner, Multimedia card reader, ExpressCard /34 media slot, high quality webcam with motion and face tracking technology, HDMI and VGA video outputs, IEEE 1394 firewire input and 3 USB 2.0 inputs.

It’s truly in the portable category, weighing in at a scant 5.3 lbs, and it’s truly in the midrange system category, with a price that weighs in at between $809-$849 (Best Buy had it for $809 last week).

The only 2 drawbacks to this system are the less than stellar audio (decent but tiny speakers) and the choice of colors (Blue or Ice White are the only colors available off the shelves in the retail stores), but both are things that I can live with.

As I said, there are plenty of systems out there that offer more, but as an all around standout performer at a great price point, this VAIO is the pick of the litter.