Saturday 21 January 2012

Sony VAIO VPC-F1190X

Sony has given up on its 18.4-inch media center—the AW series—as demand for it has weakened and customers are having a tough time find room such a colossal laptop. But a successor has already been chosen: the Sony VAIO VPC-F1190X ($1,645 direct). This laptop isn't nearly as large as its predecessor, but it's just as powerful, if not more. Indeed, the sum of all its parts—a quad-core Core i7 processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory (upgradeable to 8GB), and discrete Nvidia graphics—is more powerful than any current or past Sony laptop. It even features a new wireless technology developed by Sony, called TransferJet.



Design
Sony hasn't done much trail blazing with laptop designs beyond ultraportables, like the Sony VAIO VPC-Z1160GSX ($1,800 direct, ). The F1190X is thick and uninspired, which can be attributed to powerful parts that have clunky fans attached to them. The Acer Aspire AS8940-6865($1,399 street, ), for the same reason, isn't much to look at either. Other quad-core laptops like the HP Pavilion dv7-3180us ($1,449 list, ) and the Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q850 ($1,899, ) have lids that sport decorative patterns and vibrant colors. With the Sony F1190X, the plastic top comes in either black or gray. It's the most portable one out of the group, even if it is tipping the scales at 6.5 pounds. Considering this fact: It also has one of the smallest screens.
Features
The 16.4-inch widescreen is about two screen sizes smaller than that of its predecessor and 18.4-inch systems like the Acer AS8940 and Toshiba X505-Q850. Screen size is a tradeoff, but the 1,920 by 1,080 resolution is as high as those found among its 18.4-inch rivals. It's an outstanding typing experience, enhanced further by the backlit function (for dimly-lit rooms) and an adjacent numeric keypad. Laptop keyboards on rivals like the Toshiba X505 and HP dv7-3180us are more comfortable. The F1190X's touchpad is responsive, and the mouse clicking experience is the least resistant in this group. Overall, you won't be disappointed with the user experience.
The F1190X is the first laptop to debut with Transfer Jet, a short-range wireless technology developed by Sony and works in tandem with Sony devices such as digital cameras. So far, this technology is limited to the CyberShot TX7 and the HX5 digital cameras; a USB solution will also be available and plugs into supported Sony HDTVs. So what does Transfer Jet have to do with the F1190X? Well, on the left palm rest makes up the other half of TransferJet, where you can place a compatible camera and instantly transfer all your content to your laptop and visa versa, wirelessly. Sony just started shipping the TX7 and HX5 cameras, so I don't have an actual camera to test the laptop with. However, the technology was demoed at CES 2010 and my colleague, PJ Jacobowitz, spent some quality time with it. For now, Transfer Jet is limited to Sony products and you'll have to spend at least an extra $400 on cameras that can take advantage of this technology.
A Blu-ray reader and a fast 500GB hard drive (7,200rpm) are two other stand-out features. The Acer AS8940 and HP dv7-3080us have Blu-ray drives as well, but they have slower spinning hard drives. The laptop has all of the latest connectivity ports, including HDMI, FireWire, and E-SATA, which doubles as a USB port. The Acer AS8940 uses DisplayPort, along with its HDMI and VGA-out ports, but it doesn't have FireWire. Overall, the F1190X feature set should be future-proof for years to come.

Performance
Performance trumps all else, since the F1190X was built around speedy parts. Like its peers, it runs a mobile quad core processor—in this case, an Intel Core i7-820QM (1.73GHz). It's the second most powerful mobile processor in Intel's lineup, second only to the Core i7-920XM. Even though 4GB of memory is more than enough for the average user, Sony will let you configure the F1190X with up to 8GB, for an extra $300—an upgrade also easily performed with your own RAM). On top of that, the GeForce GT 330M is one of the latest mobile graphics cards and a good one from Nvidia, so gamers and performance enthusiasts can run almost anything on this machine—at least according to my performance benchmarks.
Since it runs a higher-clocking variant of the Core i7, the F1190X eased past the HP dv7-3180us, Acer AS8940, and Toshiba X505 in tests that measure processor speed (the latter three have 1.6GHz processors). It got top scores in video encoding at 45 seconds and scored 10,475 in Cinebench R10 tests. The F1190X trailed the HP dv7-3180us by 2 seconds in Photoshop CS4 tests, because the HP laptop loads more memory (6GB) and Photoshop is a memory-intensive test. Although you wouldn't notice a single lost frame, the F1190X fell behind its rivals in gaming tests like Crysis and World in Conflict. Its 3DMark06 scores (8,038, 10-by-7) were middle of the road, but didn't trail the Acer AS8940 and Toshiba X505 by much.
Battery life is always a struggle with quad-core laptops, the parts are too demanding for current Lithium Ion batteries. The best case scenario is that of the HP dv7-3180us, which scored over 4 hours in MobileMark 2007, while the worst case belongs to the Acer AS8940 (1 hour 11 minutes). The F1190X scored 2 hours 37 minutes with a 54WH (6-cell) battery, placing it in between the HP and Acer AS8940. It'll give you some quality time off the AC adapter, though I wouldn't recommend leaving the house without it.
Plain looks aside, the VAIO VPC-F1190X is Sony's most powerful laptop, and it will stay that way since it has no plans to renew the AW series. A quad-core processor and a terrific supporting cast of components are meant to stomp over any number of tasks thrown at it. If you happen to own one of Sony's latest Cybershot cameras you can take advantage of Sony's Transfer Jet technology. It doesn't come cheap, though. For this reason alone, the $1,400 Acer Aspire AS8940-6865 and $1,450 HP Pavilion dv7-3081us have similar parts and are easier on your pockets.
BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
Check out the test scores for the Sony VAIO VPC-F1190X



Specification Data
Type: Gaming, Media
Processor Name: Intel Core i7-820QM
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Processor Speed: 1.73 GHz
RAM: 4 GB
Weight: 6.5 lb
Screen Size: 16.4 inches
Screen Size: Type Widescreen
Graphics Card: nVidia GeForce GT 330M
Graphics Memory: 1024
Storage Capacity (as Tested): 500 GB
Rotation Speed: 7200 rpm
Networking Options: 802.11n
Primary Optical Drive: DVD+/-RW DL with Blu-Ray
Battery Type: 54 Whr (Watt hours)
Tech Support: 1 year parts and warranty
MobileMark 2007 – Standard Battery Productivity Load (hrs:min) 2:37
MobileMark 2007- Performance score 141
PCMark Vantage: 6785
3-D BENCHMARK TESTS - 3DMark06 - Native – 0X/4X: 4889
PRICE:$1,645

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