Sony VAIO VPC-F237FX/B

Do you want to quibble? OK, let's quibble: Considering its $1,399 street price, it would be nice if the Sony VAIO VPC-F237FX/B laptop came with 8GB instead of 6GB of RAM. Also, its Nvidia graphics adapter is a midrange model, not the high-end component that would permit blazing gameplay at full-screen resolution. Otherwise, we're having trouble finding serious fault with the 16.4-inch Sony, which straddles the desktop replacement and media center laptop categories with style and speed.

The VPC-F237FX/B is the 2D cousin of the 3D Sony VAIO VPC-F215FX/BI ($1,799, 4 stars). While both systems' screens have the same full 1080p (1,920-by-1,080) resolution, the Sony VPC-F215FX/BI's 3D display measures a slightly smaller 16 inches, as well as coming with a pair of active-shutter glasses not included with the 2D model. (Both come with Nvidia's 3D Vision video and photo viewers, which may confuse some 2D buyers.)

Design
In an age of aluminum laptops like the Dell XPS 15z ($999, 4 stars) and Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (late 2011) ($1,799, 4 stars), the VPC-F237FX/B is unabashedly plastic; the screen flexes when pressed in the middle or grasped by the corners, but doesn't feel flimsy or show LCD artifacts when you press or knock the lid. Finished in somewhat fingerprint-prone basic black, the system measures 10.7 by 15.7 by 1.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 6.6 pounds. It has a handsome angular design, with a jutting front edge or lower lip when the case is closed.

The keyboard has a bright backlight, with a distracting halo of light around each key. The island-style keys offer a soft, comfortable typing feel and dedicated numeric keypad, with half-sized Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys above the latter. Comfortable is also a good word for the subtly textured touchpad; I prefer separate left and right buttons, but the unified button bar clicks softly and unobtrusively.

One exceptional thing about the VPC-F237X/B is its display. The 16.4-inch LCD is sunny and bright, with colors that pop and text that's clear?since the 1080p resolution is so fine, Sony's out-of-the-box setting is to show Windows text and icons at 125 percent size to make them easier to read, but my bifocal'd eyes had no trouble with the smaller type at 100 percent. Blu-ray movies looked terrific?and sounded great, too, thanks to what Sony calls S-Force Front Surround 3D, as well as Dolby Home Theater audio technology.

Features
The VPC-F237FX/B has a plethora of ports, including two USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0; HDMI and an oddly protruding VGA port; headphone and microphone jacks; Gigabit Ethernet; 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi; and Bluetooth. At the front edge are a memory-card slot (SD/Memory Stick Pro) and a FireWire 400 (what Sony calls i.Link) port for digital video buffs, though external storage addicts will look in vain for an eSATA port. An HD (default 1,280-by-720 resolution, max 1,280-by-1,024) webcam boasts special technology for low-light performance, though its video still looked grainy to me.

The 7,200-rpm Toshiba hard drive offers a generous 640GB of storage. The Pioneer BD-RW drive can burn BD-R and BD-RE discs as well as playing Blu-ray titles and reading and writing CDs and DVDs. A warm breeze comes from a cooling vent on the left side.

Along with a scanty 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security, Sony bundles a variety of house-brand software utilities such as VAIO Gate, a Mac Dock-like program launcher that floats at the top of the screen, and Remote Keyboard, which lets users make a wireless connection to a PlayStation3 console or Bravia HDTV to input text from the laptop's keyboard (not tested here). The plums of the software assortment for multimedia fans are the Vegas Movie Studio video editing and Acid and Sound Forge music and audio editing programs, which are less friendly than Apple's iMovie and GarageBand but provide plenty of flexibility and special effects.

Performance
We can grouse about 6GB rather than 8GB of RAM, but let's give credit where credit is due: The VPC-F237FX/B has Intel's "Sandy Bridge" Core i7-2670QM, a quad-core, eight-thread processor that runs at 2.2GHz with Turbo Mode up to 3.1GHz. With the help of the Nvidia GeForce GT 540M graphics adapter with a full 1GB of memory allows the system to go through complex applications and multimedia operations like Cookie Monster with a bag of Milanos.

In benchmark test after benchmark test, the VPC-F237FX/B outran even its recently tested relation the Sony VPC-F215FX/BI (the latter perhaps slowed slightly by its 3D overhead). The VPC-F237FX/B ran roughshod over our Photoshop CS5 image processing test in 3 minutes 46 seconds and our Handbrake video encoding test in 1:32. The Photoshop time edged even that of the speedy Acer Aspire AS8950G-9839 (3:52), as did the Sony's score of 5.34 points in our Cinebench 11.5 rendering test (the Acer AS8950G-9839 scored 4.96).

The VPC-F237FX/B also impressed in our gaming tests at 1,024 by 768 resolution with medium detail settings. It scored 58.6 frames per second (fps) in Crysis and 40.7 fps in Lost Planet 2. Cranked up to its full 1,920 by 1,080 glory with top image-quality options enabled, however, the VPC-F237FX/B began to huff and puff, dropping to an unplayable 6.9 and 13.2 fps, respectively. It did break the 10,000 barrier in 3DMark06 (10,169 at XGA resolution).

Performance-wise, the VPC-F237FX/B more or less battled to a tie with our brand-new Editors' Choice for media center laptops, the HP Pavilion dv7-6163cl ($949.99, 4 stars), which uses the same Core i7-2670QM processor. The HP was fractionally faster in Handbrake and Photoshop, but the VPC-F237FX/B won in PCMark 7 (2,556 to 2,438). The VPC-F237FX/B 's relatively small 54Wh battery, however, conked out after 4 hours 9 minutes in MobileMark 2007, while the HP dv7-6163cl 's 100Wh battery lasted for 8:24.

The HP Pavilion dv7-6163cl retains our Editors' Choice because it's such an impressive value at under $1,000?though, to be sure, it lacks two key features, a Blu-ray drive and a true 1080p display, that make the Sony VAIO VPC-F237FX/B a temptation even at $450 more. Not only will Blu-ray movie watchers gravitate toward the VPC-F237FX/B; so will shoppers seeking much of the elegance of an Apple MacBook Pro in a Windows 7 laptop, albeit a plastic- instead of aluminum-cased one.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Sony VAIO VPC-F237FX/B with several other laptops side by side.

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