Sony VAIO VGN-FW198U/H is one of the latest high-end laptops featuring a Blu-ray drive made by Sony.
Intro:
Sony VAIO VGN-FW198U/H features a large 16.4 inch widescreen with 16:9 aspect ratio, Centrino 2 technology, excellent battery life and quite extraordinary design. Thanks to the unusual screen size it is lighter that the standard 17″ screen laptops but is still big enough for comfortable watching Blu-ray movies. The laptop‘s most important pros and cons are as follows:
Sony VAIO FW198U/H pros:
+ interesting design
+ large 16.4 inch screen with 16:9 aspect ratio
+ only 6.47 lbs (2,9 kg)
+ good battery life
+ Blu-ray drive
+ up to 400 GB hard disc
+ 2.53-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 processor
+ 4 GB RAM
+ Good image quality
+ All possible ports
Sony VAIO FW198U/H cons:
- slightly disappointing speakers
- average 3D performance
- Too much pre-installed software
- Not-the-best built-in camera
The design:
Sony VAIO FW198U/H measures 15.1” (W) x 1.46” – 1.3” (H) x 10.3” (D) [38.1 cm (W) x 3,7 cm-3,3 cm (H) x 26.1 cm (D)] and weights 6.47 lbs or 2,9 kg with standard battery. The laptop is made of good quality materials and makes good impression. It does not make any rattling sounds and feels solid. The trackpad is quite big which makes it comfortable, but the buttons are sort of too loud and may be annoying after some time. Sony VAIO FW198U/H has plenty of ports including FireWire, 3xUSB, Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, as well as memory card reader.
Performance:
Sony VAIO FW198U/H is an excellent desktop substitute as long as you do not play the latest 3D games with all the effects and details on. If you plan to use a computer for browsing the net or watching movies this should be a laptop for you. As it features a Blu-ray drive and Sony’s Xbrite-HiColor technology which improves the colors it is indeed perfect for film-lovers. The laptop has up to 1600 x 900 resolution with very good motion reproduction, natural colors, good details in shadow areas and wide viewing angle.
Usage / software:
Sony VAIO FW198U/H comes with a few useful programmes for burning Blu-ray discs, editing videos, or making home movies. Unfortunately, it also has a few applications which the majority of users will probably instantly delete. The operating system is Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (with SP1) so you can easily downgrade it to XP if you wish.
Although the built-in webcam could be a bit better I liked the motion detector feature which automatically starts recording videos and may send them to an ftp server.
The laptop does not warm up too quickly and when it does the fans hum pleasantly.
So if you do not play too many games and prefer watching Blu-ray films Sony VAIO FW198U/H with its excellent display and good battery life is a laptop for you.
Selected Sony VAIO FW198U/H specifications:
Performance:
2.26Ghz (P8400) – 2.80Ghz (T9600) Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor
Available Intel® Centrino® 2 processor technology
1066Mhz Front Side Bus Speed
Up to 6MB L2 Cache
Memory / Storage:
Up to 400GB hard drive, Serial ATA
Up to 4GB DDR2 SDRAM
Power:
Estimated Battery Life: Up to 6 hours (standard capacity battery)
Up to 8 hours (large capacity battery)
Power Requirements: 100W + 10%
Expansion slots:
Memory Stick Duo™ media slot with MagicGate® functionality
ExpressCard® 3/4 slot
SD™ memory card slot
Hardware:
QWERTY keyboard, 86 keys with 2.0mm stroke and 19.05mm pitch
Built-in 1.3 megapixel MOTION EYE® camera and microphone
Electro-Static touch pad
Communication:
Fast Ethernet (RJ-45) Protocol
10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T
Integrated V.92/V.90 Modem (RJ-11)
Wireless LAN: Intel® WiFi Link 5100AGN (802.11a/b/g/n)
Integrated Stereo A2DP Bluetooth® technology