Photo: Sony

The Sony Vaio F Series of laptops is Sony’s flagship range. These are commendably well engineered, exceptionally powerful and eye-wateringly expensive. Are they good enough to justify the usually painful sticker price? Let’s find out.

The price of beauty

Starting at $999 (about £650), the Sony Vaio F Series scales all the way up to a mind-boggling $2299 (£1,430). Ouch. But the core guts are undeniable.

All the F Series laptop configurations ship with a 16.4-inch full HD LCD screen. Minimum RAM out of the box is 4GB, scalable up to 8GB and the hard drive capacity starts at 500GB. All of the Sony Vaio F Series laptops ship with Intel Core i7 chipsets (740Q and 840QM variations) which means from a processing perspective, you won’t be left wanting and the graphics are provided by the very capable nVidia GeForce GT330M. An added bonus is that for media lovers, especially those who still carry physical discs, all the Vaio F Series laptops ship with a Blu-ray player/writer for high def viewing.

In short, work-wise, this laptop puts in the hours and the legs. What about how it looks?

Aesthetics

Photo: Sony

What’s odd about the Sony Vaio F Series – and all of Sony’s recent Vaio laptops, to be honest – is it lacks the design flair (or is that eccentricity?) Sony once had when it came to their laptops. The clean lines make for an aesthetically attractive laptop, but it doesn’t stand out the way Sony laptops from yesteryear did. The lid is matte – which is an awesome change from the gloss we’ve become accustomed to – with a bold Vaio logo on it. The fact that they ship in almost militaristic all-black further cements the seriousness with which Sony treats this range, and not being a fan of the two-tone designs in contemporary laptops, I appreciate that.

Verdict

In short, the same conundrum that’s always existed with Sony’s laptops exists now. They look great – even if not as out there as they used to – and they work hard, but they’re not cheap. If price is not a concern, jump in.

Photo: Sony

In what must go down as the umpteenth engineering mistake by a major corporation in the last 12 months, Sony has recalled over 530,000 Vaios due to a defect that may cause them to overheat.

This could burn

Not only can Sony ill afford another misstep that will burn an even deeper hole in their already depleted pocket, the Vaios concerned may overheat so badly that they burn their users. Sony announced the laptops concerned are the Sony Vaio F series and Sony Vaio C series of laptops (released in January 2010), which have what they believe to be a defective heat monitoring chip. This defection would then cause the laptops to not only overheat, but to actually physically warp! Yep, this is not good.

Like it too much to give it back?

This was brought to Sony’s attention after around 40 user complaints, sparking a recall by simply returning the computer to the retailer purchased from. If that solution is too extreme for you, or if you’re too fond of your Sony Vaio F and Sony Vaio C series of laptops, you’ll be glad to know a software update will be released to fix this problem.

Dell should learn

Photo: Sony

In Sony’s defense, recalling the laptops is far more admirable than hoping the problem goes away, as Dell did between 2003 and 2005. Unfortunately for Dell, it seems they may recently have been found out.

Sony’s growing pains

Sony has had a rough few years, with this Sony Vaio F series and Sony Vaio C series mishap disrupting the company’s financial recovery. Prior to this year and the latter parts of 2009, the bulk of Sony’s woes were attributable to its Playstation 3 console, which wasn’t performing as well as the company thought it would, thanks in no small part to the recession. Hopefully this problem doesn’t affect the bottom line (or, more importantly, innovation) at the company.