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We’ve often rated Sony’s E-series Vaio laptops for offering minimalist style at a good price, and the EH2C0E/L continues that tradition. The EH2C0E/L trades performance and hard disk space to come in at £400.
The EH2C0E/L uses a budget Intel Pentium B950 chip, rather than a Core i3 processor. This is a dual-core processor running at 2.1GHz that’s similar to the Core i3-2310M, but has 2MB rather than 3MB of Level 3 cache. Unsurprisingly, it lags behind Core i3-equipped laptops, scoring 33 Overall, although its image-editing score of 56 means that it’s fast enough when running a single application. The smaller cache seems to have a dramatic effect on multi-tasking, with the EH2C0E/L falling behind quite dramatically, only scoring 25.
The Pentium’s graphics chip didn’t do well either, even compared to the integrated chips on the Core i3s. In our Dirt3 benchmark it only managed 13fps. Even with graphical settings turned right down, you’ll struggle to get playable frame rates in most modern 3D games, although older games, or more sedate genres such as adventure or strategy games, should still be playable.
The integrated chip can also handle HD content, and the EH2C0E/L’s 15.6in screen, with its 1,366×768 resolution, can show 720p HD content in all its glory. There was a slight blue cast to the image, but otherwise, we found the display was bright and colourful, and had an even backlight. The glossy finish can reflect light sources behind or above you, and vertical viewing angles are tight too, so you’ll have to adjust the screen’s tilt carefully to get the best image, but once you do you’ll find good contrast and strong colours.
As expected, its construction is top class. The case is made from a dark blue plastic that has an attractive faceted texture, while the keyboard uses black plastic for its keys and the recess in which they sit. Sony has used the entire width of the case, so the keys are quite large and well spaced out, and the layout is standard, with the Control key being present in the bottom left corner.
Each key has a light, crisp action which provides good feedback, although there’s a bit of wobble and the keys’ flat, smooth surface meant that our fingertips sometimes slipped off them. The left Shift key is far too narrow, and we found ourselves hitting the neighbouring Backslash key. The touchpad’s a bit small too, but we got used to its textured surface quickly, finding it quite responsive.
Being a Sony, you get two memory card slots: one for Sony’s own Memory Stick format and one for the more common SD card. There are also four USB ports, although none uses the faster USB3 standard. As usual, there’s a hardware wireless switch that toggles both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which is handy.
If you’re not going to do any serious number-crunching or multimedia editing, the EH2C0E/L has adequate performance, and its bright, clear screen and comfortable keyboard make it a pleasure to use. The Samsung RV520, however, has a faster processor and a larger hard disk, but only costs £20 more.
