The Ei System Sorrento 1 laptop is sold through PC World and fits into the same entry-level category as its Advent brand.
While its limited power and specification fall behind its rivals, the low price is ideal for those on a budget.
The plain design immediately shows this machine's budget roots and puts function firmly ahead of form. The staid black and gun-metal grey chassis is resilient throughout, but the glossy lid features a dated patterned finish that won't be loved by style-conscious consumers.
Weighing 2.4kg, the chassis is light enough for semi-regular travel use, although the poor 94-minute battery life severely restricts mobility. This is well below the three-hour minimum we expect from a modern laptop.
Limited usability
Usability is equally limited. Despite featuring a large keyboard with a comfortably spacious design, the keys provide a very spongy typing action, which makes it difficult to type quickly and accurately. The board also flexes slightly.
The 15.6-inch screen is far more pleasing. Its 16:9 aspect ratio is ideal for watching movies and working across multiple windows. Images are bright and sharp, with strong colour and contrast, as well as deep black levels, providing one of the best displays at this price.
At such a low price, performance inevitably falls behind its more expensive rivals. The Intel Celeron processor and 2048MB of memory provide the most basic levels of power for word processing and simple photo editing, but don't expect enough power for regular multi-tasking.
This level of performance is continued for 3D tasks. The integrated SiS graphics card is one of the lowest-powered chips on the market. It won't suit gaming or video editing and the Acer Aspire 5738-644G50Mn provides five times the performance here.
Storage is also quite poor, but suits basic home use. The 160GB hard drive will hold thousands of songs, videos and photos, but is vastly bettered by its rivals. You can watch movies and create your own CDs and DVDs, however, using the built-in DVD rewriter.
This laptop also fails to feature an integrated camera or HDMI port, again restricting the machine to basic home use.
It does ship with Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, however, providing the latest software features.
While the Sorrento 1 falls behind its rivals in almost every way, the significantly lower price has to be taken into account. While you'll get far more for your money with the other machines here, the Ei-Systems is nevertheless still a reasonable choice for your first laptop.
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Your comments (3) Click to add a new comment
tristan91
December 5th 2010
3. I have this laptop, little did I think about researching about it before buying, I made the mistake by buying it and i have had nothing but trouble with it, I ran World of warcraft on it, it went smooth for awhile, then it started to lagg and freeze. I bought thinking I could of used programs such as windows movie maker etc, to edit my gaming clips but it just freezes when i try that.
This laptop is a bad choice in my opinion and exactly what Kevowen ^ said about the keybaord, its terrible if you can't type with both hands.
If you are like me, who likes to use basic programs with no crashing, freezing or any other problems you should maybe spend a little more money and get a laptop worth your money.
Tristan.
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atom
September 2nd 2010
2. I Bought two of these laptops about a week ago in Computer City Purley Way London.Despite locking up every so often my Sorrento is still going after 2 weeks! Not so my girlfriends model.The first one did not even let me set up her desktop on first start-up.It crashed within 5 minutes and would not restart? I brught it back the next day and recieved another new E-System Sorrento 1.The second one faired no better and crashed after a few hours of use.The backlight went too, you could hardly see the screen display? That went back the following day and she recieved a full refund.I would not recommend this model of laptop.I'm just waiting for my own model to pop its clogs so I can get a refund too.I'm ot too happy with it locking up every so often too.The E-System sorrento 1 retails at £300,to be honest you would be better off
going to Curry's and buying the better spec £330 Laptop they are flogging.
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kevowen
May 6th 2010
1. The keyboard on the Sorrento 1 is just dreadfull. If you can type using more than one finger don't touch the Sorrento 1.
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