Sony VAIO VGN-FE31H Pc Laptop Review
| Design |
| Sony is without a doubt the market leader when it comes to design and quality, and they have not let us down with the new Sony Vaio VGN-FE31H. This great looking notebook laptop comes in a very cool metallic grey with black keyboard and it looks as stylish as the top models. Sony has managed to create an affordable piece of technology without having to compromise in design. The first thing worth mentioning is the superb 15.4” WXGA Widescreen X-Black LDC screen with a resolution of 1280 x 800 and an aspect ratio of 16:10 that will make watching movies a very pleasurable experience. The screen has a glossy coating, typical of the new Sony Vaio range of multimedia laptops. The Sony Vaio VGN-FE31H comes with a full keyboard that will make other laptops jealous. The large palmrests and bigger than normal touchpad and buttons will make typing a very enjoyable experience and will keep you typing for hours without a single complaint. A noticeable difference with other Sony Vaio laptops is the manual screen catch system instead of the usual spring-loaded hinge. You will have to manually slide a catch to lock and release the TFT display, but you soon get used to it. When we first looked at the dimensions of the VGN-FE31H (35 x 366 x 275mm) we thought it must weigt a ton, but we were pleasantly surprised when we found out that it only weighs 2.8Kg, which makes this multimedia laptop a truly portable device. |
| Setup/Installation |
| The Sony VAIO VGN-FE31H comes ready to use and the only thing you will have to do is to fully charge the battery before you use it for the first time. It comes with Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 (English version), and several applications already pre-loaded: Adobe® Premiere® Elements 2.0, DVgate Plus 2.2, VAIO Edit Components 6.0, WinDVD 5.0 for VAIO, Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 4.0, Roxio DigitalMedia SE 7, Click to DVD® 2.5, Microsoft® Works 8.5, Norton Internet Security 2006 (with 90 days free virus update). Please note that no discs are supplied. |
| Features |
We have to thank the guys at Sony for their choice of processor for the VGN-FE31H. We can assure you that this stylish laptop will not come last on the race of fast processors. It features a very powerful Intel® 1.66GHz Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5500, a Mobile Intel® 945GM Express Chipset and a generous 1GB DDR2 SDRAM (2x512MB), which will be more than enough to cope with your work and leisure needs, although you can always increase the RAM memory to a maximum of 2GB. It has 120GB of hard drive space, which is plenty, unless you plan to edit massive amounts of video. |
| Performance |
| The new Sony VAIO VGN-FE31H performed very well under tests and it is very fast indeed. We had no problems running different applications at the same time and the laptop seems to cope very well with processor-intensive tasks such as encoding MP3 files and multi-tasking. The 15.4” WXGA Widescreen X-Black LDC screen is superbly bright and sharp and the colours are excellent. The viewing angles are quite wide and the reflections on the screen are not distracting, despite the glossy coating. All in all, a very good performer with a good specification and plenty of power. |
| Overall Opinion |
| If you are looking for a powerful laptop capable of not only everyday tasks, but more powerful ones such as gaming, and also something that you can carry around with you easily, this is the one for you. We like the design and, of course, the price. |
By Nacho Galvez |
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Pros + Intel® 1.66GHz Core™ 2 Duo Processor + Dual-layer DVD writer + Long battery life + MotionEye™ integrated camera |
Cons |
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Overall Rating 
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28/11/2006 at 3:35:58pm
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