With the VAIO F Series, Sony plays to its multimedia and entertainment strengths, delivering a 16.4-inch-screened notebook with plenty of power and features for serious media creation and consumption. It's a good value, too: Sony throws in a terrific software bundle and enough power for casual gaming, all without saddling the machine with an untenable price tag. In fact, at $999 for the base model and $1,149 for the Best Buy-specific VPCF233FX/B configuration we tested, the VAIO F Series is among the best-performing multimedia laptops for the money that we've seen in 2011.
The 16.4-inch screen on this machine positions this laptop at the high end of what we call a "mainstream notebook," a kind of laptop that usually comes with a 15.4- or 15.6-inch screen. The extra inch here makes a big difference not just in screen real estate but also in performance, in an indirect way. With a larger screen, you get a larger chassis, which allows for more airflow and therefore the inclusion of faster, hotter-running components. And since this machine is not quite a 17.3-inch behemoth (what we'd call a true "desktop replacement" machine), you get a little more portability, as well.
Our Best Buy configuration is fixed, meaning you can't configure it the way you want. It comes with the same processor that you'd get in the $999 base model F Series directly from Sony, which is a nonetheless-impressive 2.2GHz Core i7 quad-core chip, capable of auto-speedup via Intel's TurboBoost technology. If you have your sights set a little higher, though, you can opt for one of Sony's configure-to-order (CTO) F Series models. You can spend $90 more (beyond the $999 base price) to bump up the processor speed to 2.4GHz, or $290 more for a 2.5GHz Core i7 CPU.
The Best Buy model we tested does come with the better of the F Series' two possible graphics options, however. Our system included an Nvidia GeForce GT 540M with 1GB of dedicated memory. You can save yourself $50 and go with the GeForce GT 520M and 512MB with a CTO model, but we'd recommend this splurge in whatever model you get. Variations in hard drive size and the amount of RAM are also available on Sony's site. Whether you go with the fixed Best Buy model or you configure your own, however, all the F Series notebooks come with impressive audio, a gorgeous screen, and excellent viewing angles for both work and play.
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