Sony VAIO SVE14A15FNB Review

Good gaming performance

The left side of the notebook tends to get quite warm when the discrete card kicks in, and the hot air expelled from the vents on the side can get somewhat uncomfortable if you use the notebook on your lap for extended periods of time. After you install a software, the AMD utility automatically detects the type of application and selects the right GPU for it.  In case it doesn’t show up on the list, you can manually add ‘EXE’ and assign it a card. The keyboard is very comfortable and the backlighting really helps in low light conditions. The speakers are placed above the keyboard and produce very decent audio quality. The audio fidelity is quite good for movies and music, although you'll want to wear headphones if you want to hear some bass.

Solid build and feel

Battery Life
Thanks to switchable graphics, we managed to get decent battery life in Battery Eater Pro. The Sony VAIO E-series lasted for 1 hour and 35 minutes - which is pretty good but could have been better if Sony would have gone with an Nvidia GPU. Under real world usage, you should be able to get about four hours of battery life.

Verdict and Price in India
The Sony VAIO SVE14A15FNB is priced at Rs.55,990, which puts it up against the Asus K55VM and the Toshiba L850 in terms of pricing. The latter two feature quad-core Ivy Bridge CPUs that do really well in tasks like video encoding, so if you do a lot of that, we recommend you pick the Asus K55VM over the Sony. However, the new E-series is very good for media playback, especially due to the higher resolution screen. It’s also a bit smaller, is more portable, has a much better keyboard that’s backlit, an ambient light sensor for the display, and great design and build quality. If you’re in the market for a good all-round multimedia notebook with good attention to detail, then the Sony SVE14A15FNB is one of the better options out there.