I was going to wait a bit longer before writing this review of the new Sony FW-373J/H 16.4" 1080P Hi Definition Notebook computer, but it's so impressive, with outstanding performance, utility, standard features, software, and has hardware packaging that is 2nd to none in this price range of c.$1250+/notebooks, that I couldn't wait to put it in perspective, compared to other "media center" notebooks.
I bought this Sony for my wife, but it's such a gem, has incredible performance characteristics and utility features like the Blu-Ray ROM (Sony Optiarc BC5500S v1.75 firmware-Oct, 2008) optical drive, a very efficient, speedy 2.4Ghz C2Duo Intel SCR(P)-8600 CPU w/3MB L2 Cache, running a 1066Mhz FSB (front side system bus, the pathway between the 4GB of PC-6400 800Mhz SDRAM and the hard drive, ie faster is better(!)--and this is as fast as it gets-FSB's in notebooks), that I've been using it too. A LOT!
Don't forget the 7200-RPM SATA II 2.5" HD, which is easily reached via a 2-screw trap door on the bottom of the case (as is the SDRAM, but that's only 1 screw!), which has plenty of room for most people's work, media collection, photos, applications for business and pleasure, et al. I can't imagine "upgrading/updating" this particular HD setup, as 320GB is as big as a 7200RPM HD gets right now...maybe IF Hitachi, Western Digital, or Samsung comes up with a 500GB 7200RPM notebook HD there will be a reason to upgrade, but not now!
Tonight we watched "Transporter 3" using the Sony notebook as the player, the Jason Statham action-sequel in Blu-Ray ROM format, on our Samsung 52" HDTV, the TOC (Touch of Class) Series 8000x model w/50,000 Contrast Ratio, 120Mhz Video Codec Switching, 4ms response time, etc, arguably the best LCD available today, and it was just astonishing & fantastic! We hooked everything up via a simple 10-feet-long-HDMI-Cable using the Sony FW-373J/H as the "player" with the standard Blu-Ray on-board player built into the Windows Vista 64-bit Home Premium OS by Sony engineers, called "InterVideo® WinDVD® BD for VAIO" (quite a mouthful, yah? They could have just called it "Sony BluRay Player" but no, go figure!).
All you do is hook up your HDTV to one end of the HDMI cable after "sourcing it", attach the other end to the Sony notebook, insert the Blu-Ray movie into the optical drive, (with preferences enabled this happens...) and BAM! The video starts playing on the TV instantly, with full on-screen controls available for menus, setup, etc for the movie. Crazy-Bitchin-Good!
That was the deal-sealer, seeing that Blu-Ray movie via the Sony notebook tonight!! It WAS CLEAR, CLEAN, PERFECT, EVERYTHING YOU WANTED in clarity, depth of field, all that Blu-Ray HDTV goodness rolled up into a great action-movie experience like "Transporter 3"... and to see the new notebook's player and optical drive doing the duty, putting the film up onscreen with such a quick one-two-three "Play!" sequence, well, it was just great! The sound was fantastic, everything synched-up correctly with our Marantz-6800-powered audio system, enabled by a JBL Studio Sound Speaker System in all its 16-inch bass-reflex glory, and I am telling you it played purrrfectly through the Sony notebook's optical drive. No Hill For a Climber!
Now that experience is out of the way, and fully described, because it IS a fantastic feature to be able to play Blu-Ray media through the notebook, but let's talk about the CPU, the memory, the OS, the unbelievably full-featured, and strong ATI Mobile RADEON® HD PCI-Express Video Card w/512MB of discrete, dedicated DDR2 VRAM, with get this, 2280MB of "burst VRAM" available via shared memory from the SDRAM/HD system! Holy Smokes! That's quite a package!!
Some desktops don't have a better video card system than the Sony does, and this thing just SMOKES in performing its rituals, whether it's working magic with the 16.4" 1920 x 1080P NATIVE HD widescreen back-lit LCD display on photos in Corel's PC photo program, displaying 2 side-by-side web pages with Flash-Player enabled, or just simply going about the business of mundane things like working behind-the-scenes to enable crisp, clean, precise rendering of any normal project you can think of: Word Processing, film editing in Sony Vegas 5 Pro, or just plain 'being beautiful'...it's a stunning display of video power all-around!! I can't say enough about how the ATI Mobile HD Video Card w/512MB of DDR2 VRAM/SDRAM performs, because it's the best notebook display I've seen in a long, long time...bar none, including all Mac Pro displays, right up to the 17" Apple widescreen in their top-of-the-line $2700 notebook.
Our LCD screen, apparently a Samsung device as best as I could tell (they are the No.1 producer of LCD technology devices worldwide), has NO DEAD PIXELS, not a one to be found! It's clear, clean, crisp, responsive and fast in any and all circumstances, has no big "footprint" like the 18.4" widescreen notebook LCD's do, and yet there you go, there's native 1080P display power all day, all night! It's truly a fantastic, feature-laden display, one I can't say enough about.
The C2Duo 2.4Ghz CPU is F A S T, don't think it isn't! You know it's good when you see the Windows Performance scores of 5.4 to 5.9 on everything but "Gaming graphics" where the notebook scores "5.0", oh well, it's built by humans, yes? It does have a small weakness there, but that's about it! The 4GB of 800Mhz PC-6400 SDRAM does a nice job with almost any assignment, ie it's enough for virtually all Windows Vista tasks, throw in 4 to 5 open programs, some background FM music via FireFM in FireFox 3.0.7 (ditch Windows Explorer as your browser first chance you get!), and there's still 1GB of SDRAM availble for "burst" assignments.
You can order up twin 4GB DIMMs to make 8GB of SDRAM in the machine, but at this time it's prohibitively expensive @ c.$400 a DIMM, so equipping the notebook with 8GB of SDRAM is stupid right now...wait until summer, or later, when Samsung's chip supply dries up (they cornered the market on the 4GB DIMMs apparently), and you can buy a pair of 4GB DIMMs for $400 or less for both, and then it'll be a good thing to do...but not right now.
As for the network adapter, which is an Intel PCI-Express WLAN card, with A, B, G, and "Spec N"-qualified high-speed abilities, it's so seamless in its operation that I almost forgot to mention it! It just works fantastic. You should have seen my eyes when I installed iTunes 8.1 for PC the other day, and hit the "shared" Library key in iTunes, and voila! Up popped my 2TB Apple TV/iTunes Library from my G5 "SuperSystem," across my studio over in the "serious computer territory", yes, right there on the PC's desktop there was an unlimited supply of iTunes goodness, some 200GB of music, and more than 1.4TB of AppleTV movies ready for sharing on the PC! My Lordie, that was a fantastic surprise!! So I didn't have to install a bunch of music for my wife's edification...she could simply "share" my rather substantial Apple iTunes music system from across the room, a coup'de'etat if I've ever made one happen...PC and Macs living in harmony, together, functioning perfectly fine using the same music. Now that's KUHL!
What else is nice, and stands out? Well, the touch-pad works 110% to my liking, if you're not using a Mini-BlueTooth Mouse like my LogiTech V470, which only costs $38 here at Amazon.com, so there you go! Another strong point, the notebook's "A2DP" BlueTooth (stereo BlueTooth for headphones, earphones, and v2.1.x BlueTooth for external devices like a mouse) is another wonderful standard feature, so you can utilize the USB ports (3 of them, located on the right, front side of the case) for what they were meant to be used for: peripherals like a printer, scanner, etc. There's also a FireWire port, for those of you who still own FireWire movie cameras, or have external HD's with FireWire 800/400 connections, (with Oxford 924 or 912 bridge boards...these are good things), they are all GOOD TO GO with this notebook, with the conveniently placed port on the left side of the case.
You know, I should say something about how this notebook LOOKS! It's just great! It has spacey curves over to the heavy-duty magnesium-alloy body's end, which is at a set of HD hinges that will never, ever creak, groan, lack support for the display, and it looks T H I N, and subtle, and even though it weighs some 6.7 lbs w/standard battery, it doesn't look heavy and overblown, like so many of the "big generation" of PC notebooks do these days. The brushed magnesium finsh is really groovy! Clean looking! The media controls over the back-right edge of the chassis, up by the screen are appropriately placed, and work well for home-base media movies onscreen, or playing music with the optical drive, whatever!
I am glad I held out for the grey case vs. the black case, aren't all of you in this group? It just looks G R E A T with the alloy body, the two compliment each other, sort of "flow into each other" and work with the Sony Style form to make up a stunning notebook masterpiece. As a practical exercise, the Sony wins, to me anyway it does...it's just so "handsome and practically sexy-looking"... In so many notebooks there's nothing but plastic and buttons, and this machine rocks the house with heavy-duty doses of class, style, and grace of design. The key placement is a bit unusual unless you're a previous Sony owner, with the keys placed/vertically surfaced OUT of the top of the case, but with a scant 2mm of travel per key, they feel right-on, and correct for the application.
I bought an Antec® notebook cooler, the twin-fan design alloy and plastic device, for the notebook with the order, so I can't comment on its ability to cool itself without a notebook cooler, all I can say is you have to be a little crazy to NOT have an Antec (or other fine brand) cooler if you are constantly using your notebook...it's just simply the way to go. HEAT KILLS NOTEBOOKs, and the only sure way to avoid that problem is to invest in a mere $28 shipped notebook cooler like the Antec, which runs off one of the USB ports with a "pass-through" connector so you don't lose the port, and BAM! Instant Coolness! All the time.
That about wraps up my take on the new Sony FW-series notebook that we have had for a scant 2.5 weeks now, but this thing leaves an impression on you, trust me, it does! As to its so-called weaknesses? I honestly can't think of a one. Its price is more than competitive with anything in its class; the feature-set is the best there is right now; the Blu-Ray and BlueTooth features are especially pleasant, and functional, something you can use all the time; that fast 7200RPM 320GB SATA II (Hitachi, in my case! ...Hitachi is The Best!!) HD really cranks out the jams; yes, it all works great together!
There you go, a thorough dissection of this notebook and how it performs in the real world. My wife loves it, and I think it's prety KUHL! I give the Sony Five Stars ***** across the board, and highly recommend it for the best price, features, and performance in the current crop of "media center" notebooks. This one adds some class to the class, and gets my vote for best performer for c.$1250 shipped... out of everything else available right now.
Wavey Davey 3-14-2009
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This laptop is really nice for the price I paid. However, I was somewhat disappointed by the wrong technical description listed by Amazon. The blu-ray drive is definitely NOT read/write capable. It is a ROM (Read Only)!! I contacted Sony to verify it. Thought about returning it but decided it is still a good buy even without that feature. By the way, I still prefer Windows XP over Vista. This laptop did not change my opinion about it.
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I bought this Vaio VGN-FW373J black about 2 weeks ago from Amazon. My overall impression is that this computer is a good value laptop.
1. Spec.
It has 2.4GHz C2D P8600 processor, which is fast enough for most tasks you can have today, even for some scientific computations (I use matlab to do simulations). Memory is ample, 4GB. Although with 64bit Vista, the system will start up with about 1.3GB memory used, you still have enough left. Hard disk is 7200rpm 320GB, fast, VERY quiet and large. The best part of this computer is the blu-ray rom and FULL HD 1080p LCD! I like that. The blu-ray rom have two laser diodes, one for blu-ray reading, one for normal DVD/CD reading and writing. The full HD 1920x1080 LCD is amazing! Everything is crisp clear! For small font, you can easily change the DPI setting to make it large and clear without running in lower resolutions. I think the LCD is a little bit TOO bright, I have to run at 50% brightness to make my eyes comfortable. The graphics card is ATI 3650 with 512MB graphics memory. I can run Battlefield 2 with Project Reality mode in medium settings without problem. 3 USB ports are enough however they are all crowded on the right side of the laptop, which is very odd. Bluetooth and wireless works very well. HDMI connection is also quite convenient: you only need one cable to send both video and audio to your HDTV. I use a Samsung 46" 1080p LCD TV, and the movie experience is fantastic! It has a build in SD card reader and sony memory stick slot. Overall, the spec is very good, I will give it 5/5.
2. Building quality
Well, at this price, you should not expect every details are built perfectly. Actually I found the plastic used in this laptop is quite cheap-feeling (all the outer shell of the computer is plastic except the small cover over the speakers which is metal). The black outer cover is rough and feels easy to crack. Not as good as my thinkpad's rubbery shell (Dell also have the similar rubbery shell in the XPS laptop line). As many people have said, the hinge connecting the display to the main body doesn't look very tough. The keyboard feels just fair. Not as good as a thinkpad, again, this is a value notebook, not a business class. The keyboard of my laptop has right side lower than the left side. Not a problem for use but you can see the building quality here. The touch pad's buttons are really hard to use. It is a little bit recessed into the main body. I think it is designed so as users won't accidentally click on it. But it is really hard to find it when are looking at the screen. And the buttons are hard to push: feels like 2lb push. Overall, the computer is not built as good as thinkpad, I will give it 3/5.
3. Software
It comes with Vista Home Premium 64bit. It takes a lot of memory to run this OS. There are also a lot of trial software which are useless (to me at least). So the first thing I got this computer is to remove all those useless software. Sony has some "computer tune up" software which will clean the disk and registry to keep your computer fast. I haven't use it a lot but I think this is quite useful. It is true that you can download this kind of things over the internet, but this one comes from sony, which makes me feel safer to let it modify and clean windows registry. WinDVD for Blu-ray movie is pretty good. Comparing the PowerDVD, the UI of WinDVD is a little bit too simple. But WinDVD can play HD movie with less CPU usage. That means, less consumption of power, which is good when you run on battery to watch HD movie. So overall, software is pretty good, I give it 4/5.
4. Blu-ray playback experience
The major reason I bought this computer is for the blu-ray movie playback capability. Besides the blu-ray rom, this machine has a full HD 1920x1080 display itself and it has HDMI to easily connect to HDTVs. So you have a mobile blu-ray player at home, almost! I said almost because the sound is not HD quality, which is a not too small drawback. The sound chip of the computer is Realtek HD audio, which is supposed to have the capability to support 5.1 speakers. But because of the OS is Vista (again it's vista's fault), there is no Realtek driver for windows vista to support 5.1 speakers. The only option you have is stereo two speakers. If you use the TV's two small speakers to play the sound, it is ok but if you connect the signal to 5.1 speakers, only the front left and right speakers have sound. The middle one (which should be the major one) and all rear surround speakers are muted. Sounds like a huge disappointment. However I think this is only the driver issue. Maybe (only maybe) in the near future, there will be some Realtek HD driver for vista to support 5.1 speakers. And then this issue will be gone. So for HD playback I give it 3/5.
So overall, you can't expect this machine to be perfect to every detail. But you know the spec is good enough for the price.
Honest reviews on Sony VAIO VGN-FW373J/B 16.4-Inch Laptop - Black
I researched laptops last year and put purchasing one off once again because I couldn't decided on a PC or Mac. In 2009 I decided to make the plunge. I looked at LED screens, Macs, solid state drives,....this video card that video card, shiny vs. none shiny, small vs. sorta small, and the list goes on and on. I knew I wanted something that looked intelligent, was designed well, had the latest or close to the latest technology, and performed well with graphic apps. I, like most, could not justify the cost of a Mac. For what I could get with this Sony I could not even come close with Mac.
So after many back and forths reading PC vs. Mac articles and listening to friends justifications....I went with the Sony. It's design is very clean and well thought out. The keyboard is fantastic! The HD is amazing and the speed of the machine is perfect. It runs large Photoshop and Illustrator files with ease although a 100 mb sketch-up model for work seem to drag a bit. Not sure why at this point. Programs open instantly and boot up is fast...very fast. It will even tell you current boot time.
The Sony preinstalled software is ok...similar to the PS3. I don't use it since I have iTunes and all my images sorted by my Canon Software. I do like Sony's System utility software...nice. Windows Vista has never been an issue for me, even on my older machine. Confirmations are annoying but I got used to it.
Battery life was a big research topic for me and this will eat the life right out of them. I keep it on battery saver when unplugged. Movies will suck the juice so I am looking to get a second battery for trips. Otherwise I can manage and have not found this not to be a negative at all. This size is great...not too big and not too small. The weight may not be good for those traveling a lot. For trips to the local coffee house its does just fine. I did get the neoprene case....nice for tossing in my cycling bag.
Overall its great. No crashes...no complaints. Just a workhorse and fun computer. Recommend to those searching and considering all the things I did. I am a perfectionist when it comes to making choices and I am satisfied with this one.
One more thing....I do wish it had a backlit keyboard but its not 100% necessary... But it would be nice.
Hope this helps or eases the process of getting a new machine. Happy shopping!
Cheers!
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:OVERALL:
Major props to Sony on this one. This is absolutely THE best laptop you can find for the price. I spent just over $1000 on this and I'm loving it. Honestly, where can you find a powerful computer with 1080p resolution, a dedicated ATI video card, 16.4 inch screen, Blu-Ray player, and 4GB of ram for that little? A Mac with similar specs would cost you $2800! Save yourself the $1800 and buy a Plasma 50 inch TV, or for the down payment on a car, or a week in Hawaii the list goes on and on.
:PROS:
(1) Quick computing. I run serious MATLAB and Mathematica modeling programs on this bad boy, and it handles them just fine for a laptop.
(2) Runs cool. I've had some previous issues with powerful laptops overheating. This runs VERY quiet and cool.
(3) Blu-Ray is gorgeous.
(4) Overall Windows Experience Index Number is 5.1 on my machine.
(5) Keyboard is wonderfully ergonomic and fits perfectly to my hands. The keys have a great click to them, and don't feel cheap.
(6) The touchpad is great. I would rank it higher than any windows based machine I've ever felt and only slightly inferior to Apple's trackpad.
(7) Is very sleek and sexy. I think it's the best looking laptop I've ever owned, Macbooks included. Additionally, it is SURPRISINGLY LIGHT.
(8) Packaged/included software isn't too obtrusive.
(9) Speakers don't suck.
(10) Decent battery life, though I don't use this in such a way that it would matter either way.
(11) Very respectable boot up time.
(12) PRICE! You won't find a similar quality laptop for this price.
:CONS:
(1) Doesn't include packaged discs with drivers and the OS. You have to create them yourself. Not too difficult.
(2) Had to go online and update drivers manually for the Blu-Ray player.
IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A QUALITY, POWERFUL LAPTOP WITHOUT SHELLING OUT A COUPLE G's, LOOK NO FURTHER!!
