Welcome to a laptop battery specialist of the Sony laptop battery
Sony barreled into CES earlier this year flaunting a 3D monster laptop boasting a 16-inch 1080p display, a built-in 3D transmitter and a fancy button that promised to instantly add an extra dimension to your boring "regular" 2D movies. It was the latest in the outfit's VAIO F Series, and it was ready to snatch $2,000 straight out of your wallet -- but not all of us can throw down that kind of scratch. Still looking for a suitably powerful desktop-replacement that won't decimate your bank account? That same 2011 VAIO F Series rig just might be your ticket, sans 3D trickery -- and knocked down to a base price of $980. Does this somewhat more budget-friendly variant still pack enough punch to knockout your hefty desktop PC? Let's find out.
Although it doesn't invoke the Camaro-like aggression you see in some of Alienware's rigs, the VAIO F Series is a touch edgier than than Sony's more diminutive VAIO laptops with battery like Sony PCGA-BP1N battery
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. As a desktop-replacement, it can afford to be a bit wider, bulkier and thicker than the other kids on the block. Its matte black lid closes with a slight underbite, leaving a handful of status LEDs exposed. The wedge shape design is accented with an inwardly angled screen, and a rising palm rest and concave speaker grill. The design is different enough to be eye-catching, yet subtle enough that it won't draw unwanted attention your way. It's a clean, comfortable design with a hint of elegance. Professionally suitable with a touch of cool. We like it.
Opening the rig's jaw reveals exactly what you'd expect: a touchpad, keyboard and a row of media controls to headlining whole shebang. The power button hangs over the right edge of the machine, leading the way to the optical drive, a standard USB port and a pair of analog audio jacks. The opposing side holds a VGA port, HDMI-out, an Ethernet jack and two USB 3.0 ports. An IEEE 1394 Firewire port, a WiFi toggle switch and a MemoryStick Pro / SD card reader line the front edge of the machine. Measuring 15.69 x 10.68 x 1.70 inches and weighing in at 7.85 pounds, the VAIO F is a pretty hefty laptop. It tapers toward the rig's front lip (1.31 inches at its thinnest), but this restricts sideline ports to lining up single-file. It would be nice to have room for a fourth USB plug on the right edge, but the existing trio is hardly anything to scoff at. The Ethernet port runs quite a bit farther up the laptop's left side than we expected, and is only a few inches from the machine's front edge -- an odd place for this kind of connectivity port when there's a full inch of unused space hiding behind the machine's optical drive.
The VAIO's 16:9, 1080p digital window fades to black if you look at it from too far below, and bleeds a dingy yellow if you look down upon it from on high. Unless you're eye level with the keyboard or peering down from a 150-degree angle, however, you won't see anything amiss -- the display's hinge doesn't tilt far enough back to reveal its fault. These nitpicks notwithstanding, the F's LED backlit display boasts sharp, vibrant colors and excellent horizontal viewing angles. There's a slight loss of contrast at perpendicular perspectives, but if you regularly look at your monitor sideways, you've got bigger problems than an offset light / dark ratio. Web videos, Blu-ray movies, video games, documents and webpages all looked marvelous. The display is even fairly readable in direct sunlight, thanks to an anti-glare coating and a bright backlight. We can't complain.
Nestled in a recessed groove just south of the display is the rig's discrete speaker / sound bar -- an asthetically pleasing, if ultimately tinny, noisemaker. It's not to say that the VAIO's speakers are bad; they're just unimpressive. When using the rig's default settings, higher pitched sounds can be painfully piercing, and bass feels notably shallow. Filtering the audio through Dolby Home Theatre takes the edge off the high end and strips down the canny tinge, but even this only brings the F Series' speakers up to average. Again, the VAIO doesn't sound awful, but we expected more from a rig with a product page that promised to blow us away with simulated five-channel surround sound and bass boosting speakers; we just didn't hear it. To its credit, the rig exhibits fantastic volume control, with loudness levels varying from door-mouse quiet, to inconsiderate-roommate loud. Still, serious gamers and discerning audiophiles will definitely want to invest in a pair of quality headphones.
Aspiring vloggers won't want to rely on the Series F's webcam for capturing their greatest YouTube hits -- at least not unless they're doing a series on white noise. The webcam's microphone picks up loud hazy background noise in quiet spaces, and its high resolution doesn't make up for its grainy picture. We played around with a few different lighting scenarios and wound up with dark, grainy and dimly colored pictures every time.