Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Good for light gamming, Blu-ray drive, inexpensive.

Thumbs Down:

The media playback buttons do not have backlighting.

Inside the Trunk:

Power cables and softwares.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Sony Vaio FW560F/T has a 16.4 inch TFT LCD active matrix display, the maximum resolution it gives is 1600X900. The processor is Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 / 2.13 GHz with data bus speed of 1066 MHz. The cache memory is L2 with 3 MB each. The lithim ion battery powers the notebook for about two and half hours.

The notebook has 6 GB DDR II SDRAM which is further expandable to 8 GB. Hard disk used is 500 GB of SATA interface. The graphic card of the computer is ATI Mobility RADEON HD 4650 of 512 MB. Connectivity slots are 3 x USB 2.0 – USB 2.0, 1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire), 1 x Ethernet – RJ-45, 1 x HDMI. There is also a Blu-ray drive.

Sony Vaio FW560F/T comes bundled with Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium. Software provided is VAIO Multimedia Suite, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Drivers & Utilities and Microsoft Works SE 9.0

Razzle Dazzle:

Sony Vaio FW560F/T is a bit thin than your usual notebook which is what makes it sexy looking. The inside of the computer is all matte black while the out side of the computer is a chocolate brown colored. The outside construction is all plastic but it doesn’t look like cheap plastic, in fact it gives a high end feel to the notebook.

Inside Dope:

Sony Vaio series of notebooks are mainly aimed at multimedia users, they usually don’t make a basic entry level notebooks. So we are naturally excited every time a Sony Vaio notebook lands in our test centers.

This one too doesn’t disappoint you on our features it has Blu-ray drive which makes us wish the display was full HD. But maybe we are getting too greedy.

This laptop is good for light gamming but it is certainly not for high end full fledged gamming. If you push games to its highest limits and play in all its glory, it will bring this laptop to its heels. We tried a few games with the special effects all closed and we had decent game play.

Sony Vaio FW560F/T is not your portable laptop, it is made as a desktop replacement for people who don’t need much clutter on the desk and want some basic mobility. But at weight of about 7.3 pounds with the adapter it won’t be easy to carry this laptop on your back.

The TFT active matrix of the screen is 16.4 inches big and has a resolution of about 1600X900. With a Blu-ray drive built in on this computer a full HD resolution would have been great for watching videos and playing some games too. The resolution is not full HD, which is what keeping the costs a bit low, but watching movies was a good experience on this screen.

The keyboard has keys that are sufficiently raised above the surface of the board for easy typing. Typing is comfortable and there is a lot of space left empty there. Sony could have done with an extra keypad too. The track pad is a bit small but it is easy to use and clicking on those buttons isn’t too hard.

Above the keyboard are the a few buttons to control the media playback. We were surprised to see these keys weren’t touch sensitive and they didn’t have backlighting either. Using these keys will be quite a struggle in the dark.

The speakers of the notebook are placed between the screen and keyboard of the device. We appreciate the placement of these speakers. Speakers are good but lot loud enough for watching a movie. We would rather use a set of headphones for better volume. The sound quality was good when we tested it for music.

On the hinges which hold the two halves of the notebook together, there is a power port for plugging your AC adapter and there is a LED ring which changes its color depending when the battery is charging or when the battery is done charging. It pulses when the notebook is put in sleep mode.

The notebook has a lot of softwares that we are sure you will not need but it is forced upon you by Sony. When you first purchase the laptop you will have to spend some time deleting what you do not need. But we found the Vaio Multimedia suite of software quite useful for photo management and movie editing.

The Sony Vaio FW560F/T comes preinstalled with Windows 7 Home Premium.

The computer has a 500 GB hard disk drive which better than the 400 GB that we got on FW480J/T, it has 6 GB of RAM and though we are satisfied with the quantity we wanted DDR3 RAM instead of DDR2. The maximum this device can take is 8 GB RAM.

There are a couple of ports on the sides of the notebook like HDMI and mini-Firewire. There are three ports for your USB devices, we wanted one more, and there is a dual slot multi media card reader, one for Sony’s proprietary cards and one for regular microSD cards.

The computer comes with a battery which has juice to power up the device for about two and half hours. We know that this is too small but then this is not a mobile notebook but a desktop replacement. And with all the hard ware you get to play mid-range games. There is a tradeoff between low battery life for better hardware. Games will run good on this computer as long as you don’t turn on all the eye candy features.

Nitty Gritty:

Sony Vaio FW560F/T with fast processor, good graphics card, a big screen and Blu-ray drive make a good light gamming laptop.

Popularity: 23% [?]