Sony is known for making some cool notebooks with really good configuration and this time it comes with the F range notebooks. F.Y.I ‘F’ means full-featured. Yes their naming conventions have always been funny but we don’t care as far as we are getting some good quality product in our hands to operate on.
Looking at the Sony VAIO F VPCF234FX/B configuration we can identify it has a 16-inch screen, a screen size which is well played for the desktop users as well as the notebook users, sharp angles and a raised wrist rest. Looks definitely attracts you towards the notebook. However if we look at the recent launch of many notebooks then there is one notebook that comes close to the Sony vaio F series, it is the HP's 15-inch Envy 15. However considering the fact that both are being offered at the same price, it would be well worth to go with the Sony vaio F series rather than the HP one.
Now this was just a brief description of the notebook. Now its time to have a close look at the notebook. Lets begin with the design first
Design
The body of the notebook is black matte plastic lid which is kept quite simple the only thing that is looking designed in the vaio sign and nothing else. The lid of the notebook falls a half-inch shorter than the bottom deck, which gives a prominent bottom lip, that consists of indicator lights for battery, wireless, and the SD card reader.
Talking about the interiors of the notebook, even the interiors do not flaunt a sparking look even that is covered by a black matte plastic with few finishes here and there. As I have already mentioned above the raised palm wrist is an interesting feature in the notebook which looks quite attractive and also it has a large backlit keyboard which suites the notebook. Some other controls like the Touch-sensitive media controls as well as buttons for VAIO Assist, the web browser, VAIO Media Gallery, and power are located directly above the keyboard.
It measures 15.7 x 10.7 x 1.3-1.7 inches and weighs around 6.6 pounds.
Specification and Features
Since we have taken the Sony VAIO F VPCF234FX/B into consideration while doing the review work so we will provide the specifications as seen in this notebook.
- Sony VAIO F VPCF234FX/B is powered by a 2-GHz Intel Core i7-2670QM processor.
- 6GB RAM, 640GB, 7,200-rpm hard drive
- Nvidia GeForce GT 540M GPU with 1GB of VRAM.
- 16.4 inch screen supporting 1920 x 1080p resolution.
- 1.3-megapixel webcam
The config will change as the model changes. Now you will be pleased to know that sony is also offering a 3D display version of sony vaio f series which is priced at $1,799.
Now time to move on and look at the different features of the notebook.
We decided to check the keyboard of the notebook and it did look good to us and very comfy while typing. Synaptics touchpad which is integrated with the palm rest is a great pleasure to have it in the notebook and makes the scrolling through the pages very much easy. The mulititouch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom, two-finger flick, and rotation were very responsive. VAIO F's 16.4-inch matte 1920 x 1080p LED backlit display gave us crisp detail with vibrant color, is a pleasure to watch. Even it has a very clear audio output. With the help of the Dolby Home Theater control panel we were able to switch between different audio modes such as movie, music, and gaming presets.
Sony packs in some great softwares which are a real gem for the notebook. One of the best example is the bloatware king many such software’s can be easily found out in the Vaio Gate shortcut bar that floats along the top edge of the screen. There are bundles of programs available there from video editing software’s to games. You will love it.
The right side of the notebook has a tray-loading Blu-ray player, a USB 2.0 port, a headphone jack, and a microphone jack. You will also get a Firewire 400 port, 4-in-1 card reader exactly on the front side of the notebook. Other than that 2 USB 3.0 ports, Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, and the power jack are placed on the left side of the notebook. There is a 1.3 megapixel camera which shoots some great pictures.
The Sony VAIO F comes with a one-year limited warranty with onsite/in-home service and phone support
Performance
Coming to the performance, the 2.2-GHz Intel Core i7-2670QM processor and 6GB RAM gives out some real brutal power and it beats up many notebooks that comes in that range. It hardly takes a minute for the Sony VAIO F VPCF234FX/B to boot up the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium. The Nvidia GeForce 540M is a impressive GPU, and the system ran our Street Fighter IV test at full 1,920 x 1,080 resolution at an impressive 44.7 fps. We also conducted a multimedia multitasking test and it fisnihed the test with a impressive score of 406 seconds. The same was the case with the Adobe Photoshop CS5 image-processing test is emerged as a runner up after Dell xps 15. Frankly speaking we were very much impressed with the performance it has outclassed in majority of the tests that we performed on it.
Talking about the battery life, the notebook lasted 3 hours and 48 minutes. Which I think is a good rate considering today’s notebook and the amount of performance it has given.
The notebooks that were used for the testing along with Sony VAIO F VPCF234FX/B was Dell xps 15 and Gigabyte P2532.
Conclusion
Priced at $1,399 Sony Vaio has 16.4-inch 1080p display, good processor, 6GB ram and various multimedia software's inbuilt in it. It has not disappointed us with the performance, very snappy but only thing that would be a concern is the price. Dell XPS 15 is also offering the same hardware config at a price of $1,099. However you must have read the whole review. Till that time you might have made up your mind with which you would like to go ahead.
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