Though Sony’s Vaio notebooks are often more expensive than other brands, they have always had the most beautiful screens, best keyboards, best battery life, and the most features. Their FE series laptops, however, were a bit of a disappointment. In 2006, the 15.4” screened Vaio FE series was the first to contain the new Core Duo processors, in which the user was supposed to get as much total work done, but at a much faster rate per battery charge than the older computers. The screen was bright, crisp, and beautiful. However, the stereo speakers were hardly listenable and the unit weighed too much. Things improved a little bit for the Vaio FE series when the Intel Core 2 Duo processors the original Core Duo, but not enough to cause excitement.
In the past month, Sony has replaced their 15.4” FE series with the new 15.4” FZ series notebooks, which have screens that are even crisper, much better battery life, better sound, and feel lighter than most notebooks which have 14 inch screens. Every new FZ notebook carries Intel’s new Santa Rosa processor. The major change between Santa Rosa's processor and its predecessors is the acceleration of the frontside bus (FSB) from 667MHz to 800MHz , together with the ability to slow it down during light loads. This technology, called Super Low Frequency Mode, knocks the bus speed down to 400MHz, the CPU's clock speed to 600MHz and reduces the core voltage. I am currently testing the higher-end FZ180E model, which has a Blue-Ray recordable drive built in. This is the first sub $2000 notebook with this type of drive. In addition, this unit showcases a speedy 2.3 GH Santa Rosa Processor, 2 GB RAM, a 200 GB hard drive, and a NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT graphics card which is excellent for playing video and higher end video games.
The most noticeable aspect of the FZ180E Vaio laptop is the screen, which is the most beautiful I’ve seen on any notebook to date (and trust me, I’ve seen a lot). I remember, about ten years ago, reading a story about someone claiming to go to Heaven and looking at a garden. She described the colors of the garden as being so beautiful that they radiated from inside rather than being reflected on. That seems to be an accurate description on how the Sony FZ180E screen looks. I just wish the resolution was higher than 1280 by 800 pixels, especially since this computer has a Blu-ray player that plays discs at a much higher resolution. It’s not that the resolution is bad; it’s just not the high-def resolution it should be, unless you connect the computer to a HD monitor or HD television set.
Article comments
1 - Jon
Nice review. Sony has had a true HD notebook out for some time already, the AR series. With what is probably the best portable screen ever.
2 - daryl d
Yes, I've tried this one out before. Not only was it over $3,000 (that was a couple months ago though), but the version running Windows Vista had a lot of faults (perhaps they updated this with new drivers?). Also, I don't consider 17" to be portable. But that's just my opinion. Usually, I don't consider 15.4" to be portable either, but this Sony really is portable. You have to hold the unit to see what I mean.
3 - er
i have one of these amazing sets ,fz180e.im very satisfy with this . pretty fast , it loading up a windows vista just as soon as loading a windows 3.1 on a p4 3.2ghz , u belive that? after passing a 20 hours research on 15.4" screens i reach usefull infos. actully a full hd 1080p means 1920*1080 pixels but this resolution wont be able on 15.4 " screens . even in ar series they claim that its 1920*1080 but practically there is no diffrence b/w these 2 sets at all.by the way fz180e is enough small to called portable and enough high definition to called full hd thanks to new tech xbright-true color .
4 - er
sorry its carring xbright-hi color .