Budget Sony Vaio hell-bent on style

The new Sony Vaio VGN-NR21M/S straddles the world of wee ultra portable notebooks and jumbo desktop replacements, but to rise above the middle class laptop slop it’s got to have that X-Factor.

Its achingly affordable sub £500 price tag could easily be the clincher but this Vaio oozes bucket-loads of slimline style, flaunting soft rounded edges and a fetching dimpled silver veneer to catch the eye.

Its 1.66Ghz Intel Duo Core 2 processor and 15.4-inch display aren’t too shabby either.

Top talents
Processing grunt – The Sony Vaio VGN-NR21M/S was born to breeze through general office tasks, alongside Internet and multimedia shenanigans. This is all thanks to a 1.66GHz Intel Duo Core 2 processor providing the muscle and 2048MB of memory cache for firing-up and running multiple software and apps in its stride.

Hefty hard drive – If you’re a multimedia hound, hoarding vast libraries of music, photos and video, then you’re going to need a healthy helping of storage. The Sony Vaio VGN-NR21M/S’s super-size 200GB hard drive is a bit of a beast in a mid-range laptop.

Right connections – Contending with an overload of PC peripherals? Well, don’t fret because this Vaio is overrun with four USB ports, a Firewire connection for express data transferring and two memory card slots – one for Memory Sticks, the other for SD cards.

Best price: £487.70 (including delivery) on 03 April 2008

Closest rivals
HP Pavilion dv6750
Best price: £519.99 (including delivery) on 03 April 2008.
Apart from falling 40GB short on the hard drive count, the HP Pavilion dv6750 matches the Vaio all the way to the feature bank. But this laptop is billed as a portable entertainer, with a HD-DVD player (alright, Blu-ray won HD the war but it’s still not to be sniffed at), a remote control and QuickLaunch software to line-up your films with the touch of a button.

Toshiba P200-1JV
Best price: £559.99 (including delivery) on 03 April 2008.
Another lappy that mirrors the Vaio feature line-up but for a little extra outlay, you’ll receive an eye-poppinginly expansive 17.1-inch display. The Toshiba P200-1JV is designed to sit regally on your desktop so you can watch HD-DVD movies or hit the gaming trail.

Acer Aspire 5920G-302G25Mi
Best Price: £399.99 (including delivery) on 03 April 2008.
This £399.99 price tag looks like a one time only deal, so you’d better get a wriggle on. The Acer Aspire 5920G-302G25Mi may not have the Vaio uber-stylish genes but it tops its rival on processor and hard drive stakes, packing a Intel Core 2 Duo 2Ghz chip and an extra 50GB portion of storage.

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