The Sony VAIO FZ is a 15.4 screen notebook that includes the new Intel Santa Rosa platform. The VAIO FZ is an update to the popular VAIO FE notebook that will be phased out in the face of the FZ. The VAIO FZ can be purchased at a base price of close to $1,250 with the VAIO FZ140 offering, or it can be decked out with Blu-Ray, a fast 2.20GHz processor and NVidia 8400M GT graphics card for over $2,000.

System as Reviewed

I purchased the Sony VAIO FZ140 configuration. Its the base configuration that can be found for around $1,300. Theres no dedicated graphics card and it comes with the slowest 1.80GHz Intel T7100 Core 2 Duo Santa Rosa processor thats available, but slow is a relative term as in my opinion the T7100 processor is just great, especially for my needs.

Here are the specs of the VAIO FZ140E/B:

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7100
• Memory: 2GB of DDR2 667MHz (expandable to 4GB)
• OS: Windows Vista Premium
• Hard Drive: 200GB ToshibaMK2035GSS (4200RPM)
• Optical Drive: DVD and CD Burner
• Wireless: 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Ports: 3 USB 2.0, FireWire, ExpressCard slot, S-Video out, VGA monitor out, SD card slot, MemoryStick card slot, Modem, Ethernet, headphone jack, microphone jack
• Dimensions: 14.0 inches x 10.2 inches x 1.4 inches (Width x Depth x Height)
• Weight: 5.62 lbs
• Warranty: 1-year

I should mention that with the VAIO FZ140 you dont get an HDMI port, while with any FZ notebook that has the Nvidia 8400M card you do get an HDMI out port. This is especially handy if you configure a Blu-Ray drive with your FZ and want to output high-quality digital video to a larger screen. I already have a Sony Playstation III with Blu-Ray and so didnt need this option. I also dont do any hard core gaming on my notebook, so the dedicated graphics card was not a concern.

Places to buy

The VAIO FZ can be purchased in stores such as Circuit City, where I purchased mine, online via SonyStyle.com, or at just about any online electronics retailer. Do your homework to find the best price. SonyStyle.com offers the VAIO FZ190 configurable notebook (CTO) in which you can select your processor, amount of RAM, hard drive, optical drive and even the keyboard color option of black or white.

Weigh-In

Weighing the Sony VAIO FZ with battery in

One thing I like to always do with any new gadget I get is take it to the scales and see if the weight matches what the manufacturer quotes. Light weight is important with a laptop, the easier it is to carry around the better. According to Sony the weight of the VAIO FZ140 is 5.75 lbs. Usually manufacturers under quote weight, but when I put the FZ140 on the scales I found it to be only 5.62lbs. If you add the power brick and cord in, otherwise known as the travel weight, the total comes to 6.41 lbs. This isnt bad for a 15.4 screen notebook by any means, its lighter than average. Below is a comparison table of 15.4 screen notebooks similar to the VAIO FZ and what their weights are with a standard sized battery:

Weighing the Sony VAIO FZ with power cord and battery

Size-Up

Another interesting metric I like to look at is the dimensions of the notebook compared to similar notebooks. The approximate volume (or space the laptop occupies) is calculated by taking the Width x Height x Depth. When the notebook slopes the average height is taken (max height + min height / 2) as the multiplier. Just for fun I also calculate the density, to show how much weight is packed into each cubic inch.

As you can see, the VAIO FZ is fairly light and compact for the class of notebooks it competes with. The higher the density the more the notebook packs into a small space. Higher density isnt always a good thing as sometimes it can mean the manufacturer has crammed too much stuff into a small space, thereby resulting in overheating issues.

Looks

The VAIO FZ is a very clean looking and pretty notebook. Its not flashy, but rather has a nice understated tone to it. This is typical of most Sony VAIO laptops. I especially like the media button layout, the buttons look nice and are also functional.

The coloring of the VAIO FZ is mostly a matte silver. The keyboard area on mine is black, but you can actually configure the FZ190 with a white keyboard if you like.

At worst you could call the VAIO FZ a bit plain Jane, but if you’re a minimalist you’ll appreciate the design.

Construction

The VAIO FZ seems to be mostly made of a rigid plastic material for the case, with some magnesium in the lid for extra protection. If you push the lid from behind you wont get ripples in the screen, which means that the protection there is adequate. The case overall is sturdy, though by no means rugged.

Ports

The port selection of the VAIO FZ is pretty standard for a 15.4 mainstream multimedia notebook. Again Ill compare it to what other notebooks have so you get an idea of where it stands relative to competition

Following are some pictures giving a tour around the notebook so you can see where the ports are located.

Left side: S-Video port, Monitor out port, USB D-Sub port, FireWire, ExpressCard 34 slot

Front: Memory Stick and SD Card reader slot

Right Side: Headphone port, Microphone port, 2 USB ports, Optical drive, power jack

Back side: Modem and Ethernet Port

The ports are fairly well arranged, though the USB ports are a bit close. I like the front placement of the media card reader slots, but wonder why Sony cant just put an 8-in-1 media card reader in instead of using two different slots for the MemoryStick and then SD card.

Keyboard

I’m a keyboard snob, and the VAIO FZ keyboard is a disappointment to me. Though the keys are laid out quite well and a nice size, the feel of the keys is pretty awful. The travel is shallow, the keys feel like they might pop off if you get a fingernail caught under them, and it overall just feels cheap to type on. If you’re not a keyboard snob you wont care, but if you place a high-value on how a keyboard feels youll probably feel the same as I do.

Touchpad

The touchpad feels nice and works well, its got a widescreen aspect ratio to match the screen which is good. Id like the touchpad to be a little bigger, its not as big as a MacBook touchpad. Theres also no way to turn the touchpad off with the push of a button.

The mouse buttons are awful, they’re made of cheap plastic, have no travel, and give an awful clickety-clunk when you push them.

Buttons

You get a nice array of buttons on the VAIO FZ. Theres an AV button that takes you to an instant on mode where you can listen to music, watch videos or view images. This is really a fast loading stripped down Linux OS mode. See the Sony online guide for more about this mode. You can control media using the circular arranged media buttons in the Instant On mode, or you can use these same buttons within Windows Media player when booted to the Vista OS.

Theres also an S button that you can configure to quick launch an application of your choosing. By default it opens Internet Explorer when pushed.

Screen

Sony is well known for having beautiful XBrite screens, with the FZ140 you get the XBrite-Eco display. Sony claims the XBrite-Eco offers better power efficiency than the regular XBrite screen, but really all it means is that its a slightly dimmer backlight. This isnt bad though, for my needs the XBrite-Eco display is plenty bright enough, and it looks quite lovely. The glossy screen really makes the colors pop out. The glossy screen wont work well in a brightly lit environment because youll get a lot of reflection off of the screen, so if youre using this under a strong office lighting setting you wont be happy. If youre watching a DVD on this screen in a darkened room it will be wonderful though.

Bold colors on the glossy VAIO FZ screen, but beware of reflection from strong lights

In some literature Sony boasts about the Blu-Ray abilities and its 1080p quality video, but be aware that the WXGA resolution screen wont give high-def video justice, WXGA is the lowest resolution offered on notebooks of this size. Its a little disappointing there’s no option for a higher resolution screen.

Sound

The speakers are located at the top of the keyboard area on the FZ. They’re typical underpowered laptop speakers. The FZ has an Intel High Definition Audio sound card, but with only a regular headphone jack the best youll get is 2.1 audio output. As long as you’re not an audiophile a good set of headphones or external speakers will suffice just fine for better listening experiences with music or movies.

Performance

The power of the VAIO FZ140 is the lowest end in the series, but it doesn’t feel underpowered. Once Id removed a slew of free software Sony provided, performance was quite good. The 2GB of provided RAM is adequate for running Windows Vista, for basic users you wont need more. The T7100 processor is a good performer, it doesn’t have the 4MB of cache that the higher-end Intel Santa Rosa processors use, but again for basic use such as Office tasks, email and web browsing I cant possibly think why you’d need more. If you’re gaming, yes, definitely you’d want to get one of the faster Intel processors offered with the FZ140.

The graphics card that comes with the FZ140 is the integrated Intel X3100. This will work for some gaming, such as Sims 2 and even Half Life 2, but not for more demanding games such as Oblivion. If you want to do some gaming or you want to use your FZ to output high-def video then definitely go for the Nvidia 8400M graphics. Remember, you only get the HDMI port with an FZ series laptop configured with dedicated graphics.

The FZ140 comes with a 200GB hard drive. This is great for storing a ton of content such as music and videos. What its not great for is performance, its a very slow 4200RPM spinning drive, so you can really feel the slowness when booting into Vista which is a painful experience. Go for a smaller faster hard drive if you want performance, but if you’re a storage fiend then just accept the slower performance and go for a large sized hard drive.

Bottom line, the FZ140 performs well for most normal tasks, and if you want better performance just step up the specs.

I ran PCMark05 on the VAIO FZ140 to get an overall system performance score, you can see that the FZ140 performs quite well with its 3,274 score. This result was gained using out of the box configuration settings and before any of the bloatware was removed from the system.

Camera

The VAIO FZ offers a built-in 0.30 MP web camera, a feature thats almost a standard offering in laptops of this size now. The resolution of 0.30MP isnt very good, but it makes sense to have for video chat, any higher and it would require too much bandwidth to transfer the video. It could work for a quick YouTube video upload as well.

Bloatware

Holy cow! Sony is the new king of installing completely useless and unwanted software on notebooks. The list is just too long for the number of apps you’ll want to take off and that continually are prompting you to register, I found over 20GB of crap on the hard drive. I really hate the fact all image files are by default associated to a Corel image application, and the first time you go to open an image you’re prompted to purchase this application.

The number of AOL applications and links installed is just sick, and thanks a lot Sony for making AOL my default homepage out of the box. There’s even this really dumb widget on the right side for Travelocity with that stupid gnome giving random quotes. All this crap slows down the VAIO FZ and is a major annoyance to the consumer. Unfortunately a new buyer will have to spend 30 mins to an hour going into the Control Panel > Programs area and uninstalling all the useless software youll get. I don’t recommend doing anything like a clean OS install, its a major pain to get all the right drivers from Sony and they wont support you if you do this.

Noise

Ive heard a lot of complaints from people owning the VAIO FZ saying it makes a high-pitched noise. I must be either too old to hear such high-pitch noises anymore or my notebook is one of the lucky ones unaffected by this. The VAIO FZ140 is really quiet in my usage, the fan hasn’t come on much except when I was running some benchmarks, and the hard drive is quiet without any annoying clicks.

I think having the Nvidia 8400M card could really make a huge difference in terms of amount of noise the laptop generates. With the 8400M the laptop will run hotter, and thereby more noisy as the fan will have to work extra. That all amounts to less battery life too.

Heat

The heat of a notebook can correlate a lot with the noise. This is because the hotter it is the more the fan has to run. Im happy to report for the VAIO FZ140 the machine remains cool pretty much all over. With the integrated graphics and 1.80GHz processor there just wasnt much heat build-up. Again, this could be very different if you have the dedicated Nvidia 8400m graphics card and a faster processor.

Battery

I set the VAIO FZ to the lowest screen brightness, put it in power saving mode using Vista and let it mostly just idle with wireless on and the battery ran down to 5% left at 3 hours and 10 minutes. This is pretty good, but if you are actually using the laptop expect something more like 2.25 hours at the most. If you have a faster processor and dedicated graphics expect 2 hours or less on battery.

Conclusion

The VAIO FZ is a pretty solid notebook for the price. Lets face it, the Sony brand is cooler than Dell or HP, so you still pay a little bit for that. The look of the VAIO FZ is nice, its very configurable so you can get a model that suits your needs and its one of the thinnest and lightest 15.4 screen notebooks out there among the major brands. The keyboard and amount of bloatware are my biggest complaints. The excellent screen, quality build and light weight are my favorite features.

Cheers

• Excellent screen, very good for movie watching
• Light weight for a 15.4 notebook, one of the thinnest in its class
• Nice Instant On feature with a touch of the button
• Plenty of storage at 200GB
• Very configurable to fit your needs via SonyStyle.com
• Fast Intel Santa Rosa processor
• Minimalist and pleasing design

Jeers

• Awful feeling keyboard and mouse buttons
• Hard drive is slow at only 4200RPM
• Record amount of bloatware, nearly 20GB
• Only 3 USB ports, most other laptops of this size have 4
• Speakers are quite poor, too quiet