Sony VAIO F11 review

There’s a nice continuity to much of Sony’s VAIO line-up, with the same grey styling applied to ultraportables and desktop replacements alike. The VAIO F11 is ostensibly an entertainment laptop, but its 16.4in Full HD screen and Core i7 processor make it just as capable of workstation duties.

The wide chassis allows for an excellent Scrabble-tile keyboard, with light key travel and a rigid backing. There’s a useful number pad to the right; a minor complaint is that the touchpad sits skewed to the left half of the base – a design choice that’s more a matter of preference than a major flaw. Above the keyboard sit quick playback controls, and there’s a programmable function button too.

The entertainment focus is strengthened by a Blu-ray reader, and the 500GB hard disk is plenty for a video library. Should you need extra storage Sony has added a combined USB and eSATA port, along with two further USB ports, and there are HDMI and D-SUB outputs for hooking up external displays.

With a quad-core Core i7-720QM and 6GB of RAM inside this model (the VPCF11S1E/B), we expected great things from our benchmarks, but that’s one of the older 45nm processors. As a result, it proved slower than laptops we’ve seen with the newer 32nm dual-core Core i5. Nevertheless, a score of 1.52 shows its potential, and its four cores and eight threads will come into their own when editing video or rendering 3D.

The 16.4in Full HD display is vibrant enough to bring those videos to life, the backlight is even and bright, and the lid offers ample protection for slinging the F11 into a bag. The tones are a touch oversaturated for accurate colour work, but they’re perfect for Blu-ray movies or gaming.

The Nvidia GeForce GT 330M graphics drove our Crysis test at 1,280 x 1,024 and Medium settings with an average frame rate of 29fps. Whether that’s worth the trade-off depends on your usage – battery life was merely average, lasting 3hrs 39mins under light use.

The Sony isn’t cheap at £945 exc VAT, and doesn’t quite commit fully to either the role of workstation or entertainment monster. But if you want a laptop that can do a bit of both in a manageable 3.1kg chassis, the F11 is ideal.