An entertainment hub, great for watching television and a fast computer too.

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Great screen, wall mountable, touch screen interface, faster processor, plenty of RAM, TV tuner card, Blu-ray player.

Thumbs Down:

Expensive than iMac 27 inch, bad sound quality.

Inside the Trunk:

24 inch LCD screen, wireless mouse and keyboard.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400S / 2.66 GHz, L2 cache, 4 MB, Chipset type Intel P43 Express, RAM 6GB (Expandable to 12 GB) 800 MHZ, DDR2 SD RAM, 1 TB SATA Hard disk drive, Blu-Ray drive, 24 inch TFT LCD Display Resolution 1920X1080, Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M – 1 GB / 3807 MB (max), HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet. 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth

Expansion Interface : 1 x Audio – Line-in – Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm , 1 x Network – Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T – RJ-45 , 1 x Display / video – HDMI input – 19 pin HDMI Type A , 1 x Headphones – Output – Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm , 1 x Microphone – Input – Mini-phone 3.5 mm , 1 x Audio – SPDIF output , 5 x Hi-Speed USB – 4 pin USB Type A , 1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire) – 4 pin FireWire

Softwares VAIO Care, VAIO Media Plus, VAIO Movie Story, VAIO Media Gallery, Microsoft Works 9 SE, VAIO Help and Support, Norton Internet Security 2009 (30 days subscription) , Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition (60 days trial)

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition.

Razzle Dazzle:

Sony Vaio L117FX is an all black system. Hard work has been put in for it to look good and it does show off. The screen is balanced by the stand in the front and back. What you get is a LCD TV like feel. Along with it are equally elegant keyboard and mouse.

Inside Dope:

Sony Vaio L117FX is made to compete with Apple iMac 27 inch (which we had reviewed earlier) but there are loads of differences between the two models.

You can mount the monitor of the Sony Vaio L117FX on the wall, the screen is touch screen interface (multi touch) so you don’t need much of keyboard and mouse to use it. We were happy with the display of the monitor it had full HD resolution of 1920X1080. Playing games on this screen is pure joy. Also you can watch HD movies on this screen, thanks to the built in Blu-ray player. This is something that this computer has an edge over Apple iMac 27 inch. Apple’s product had a huge 27 inch screen but it didn’t have a Blu-ray burner. Sony Vaio L117FX is smaller in size but the 1920X1080 resolution exploits the capabilities to HD content to the fullest. You won’t have much of space problems storing your movies on this computer due to the huge 1 terabyte hard disk on board.

There is a picture in picture feature in Sony Vaio L117FX which means you can have two screens at the same time. What this means is that you have HDMI connectivity on the computer where by you can connect an external source of video like XBOX 360 and you can watch TV and play on XBOX 360 at the same time or you can switch between the two screens seamlessly. But cannot record content from HDMI

We put the notebook to test for gaming and we weren’t quite pleased. Sony Vaio L117FX is media center PC and isn’t made for high end gaming. Games such as Sims3 and World of Warcraft worked fine. But high end, power hungry games will bring the GeForce GT 240M chip down to its heel. Don’t expect this computer to play games in all its glory with all settings to the fullest.

Sony Vaio L117FX has a built in TV tuner card so you can watch TV. TV experience was good thanks to the fast processor, good graphics card and plenty of RAM. The picture in picture feature lets you watch what you want on TV and work on the computer at the same time. You can’t record from HDMI external video source but you can record TV through TV tuner card.

The huge screen gives you great display but the speaker is disappointing on the computer. We, at test center, see good display marred by bad sound quality all the time. We are not saying that Sony Vaio L117FX sound is awful, but it could have been better.

There are host of ports on the sides of the screen as well as on the back of it, so we recommend you to use a movable arm, instead of fixed mount, if you are making it wall mountable. There is a HDMI port and three USB ports behind the screen. On the sides there are 2 USB ports and jacks for micro phone and speakers. Also there is slot for card reader. Supported card formats are Memory Stick, SD Memory Card, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro. On the other side there is “menu” button, the volume adjustment buttons and OK button.

Among the soft wares included there is Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition. You will be able to create a home network and share all your photos, music, videos etc. Windows 7 simple to use as compared to Windows Vista. There is Norton Internet Security 2009 and Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition which is available for 30 day and 60 day trial basis respectively. And Sony has bundled in soft wares like VAIO Care, VAIO Media Plus, VAIO Movie Story, VAIO Media Gallery, Microsoft Works 9 SE, VAIO Help and Support.

Nitty Gritty:

As we said earlier, Sony Vaio L117FX is put in the market as a competition to the Apple iMac 27 inch. Between the two we would prefer Sony Vaio L117FX. Blu-ray player, faster processor, wall mountable screen, touch screen interface are the reasons for our choice. But all this makes Sony Vaio L117FX more expensive than the Apple iMac 27 inch. If you can afford to spend the extra buck, get this computer.

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