Welcome to our full review on the Sony VAIO FW-270j. This multimedia powerhouse sports a glossy and HD-ready 16.4” display, complete with 16:9 aspect ratio. It very easily handles HD input/output via the standard Blu-ray player and HDMI port. It also features an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26GHz to accompany an ample 4GB RAM and 320GB HDD. Though a small heavy and short on battery life, the FW-270j is reasonably priced for its capabilities and will meet most (it not exclusively) your multimedia needs with style.
Sony enjoys putting a little emphasis on style, and also the FW-270j is no exception. The minimalist design features a sleek silver chassis. The webcam peers out at you from its reflective gray housing, but that's virtually the only thing marring the fluid silver. Below the display on either side there are big hinges, the rightmost hinge sporting a glowing green band which lights up when the personal computer is on. In between the hinges lies the large speaker bay and some little media control buttons, colored silver obviously. The keyboard is given a generous border, and aside from a small VAIO logo and several unsightly stickers you'll find nothing but a well camouflaged trackpad on the large palmrest. 1 stylistic option that disagreed with us however was the lid. It’s black with a large silver VAIO logo in the centre, which is fine, but we can’t realize why Sony chose to abandon the sleek look by giving it a grainy matte finish which was uncomfortable to the touch.
For a 16.4” laptop the Fw-270j is actually fairly compact, measuring just 1.1” thick at the tip and 1.5” at the hinge. The overall dimensions of 15.1 x 10.3 x 1.1-1.5” are reasonable for the form factor. The weight is 6.4lbs, which is respectable for a laptop of that size. Nevertheless, while it wasn’t overly cumbersome in the end, we still thought twice about carrying the laptop with us when we first decided to carry it outside the house. We imagine this can be a laptop you won’t mind moving when you wish to, but that you won’t bother moving very far when you don’t.
After typing on the keyboard for an extended time frame, we would rate it as excellent on looks and decent on performance. The black pebble design reminds us of Macs, and is certainly a stylistic plus that fits in well with the minimalist decor. The keyboard lacked a numeric pad despite ample real estate, but compensated slightly by spacing out the keys so much. The stroke of 2mm isn’t bad, but it falls short of a number of the nicer keyboards we’ve tested lately like those about the ThinkPad series. The keys were quiet under our fingers. We also liked the trackpad, with a smooth touch that remained comfortable during continued usage.
Despite feeling slightly miffed by the “Full HD 1080p” sticker on the front, the glossy 1600x900 LCD was bright and clear. Just to clarify, 1600x900 is HD-friendly but it’s only 720p (Sony explains that it’s only 1080p “when connected to a compatible HDTV”, which basically means you need to use it as a Blu-ray player). The back lighting was very bright on maximum settings, which helped fight off the glare of the glossy screen. The large display has excellent horizontal viewing angles, making it possible for multiple people to easily watch a video concurrently. The vertical angles aren’t quite as good, but are still decent.
The FW270j isn’t overloaded with ports, but it’ll do everything most laptops do and thanks to an HDMI port, a few things most can’t. As for connectivity options, nothing like a WWAN here but 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth make connecting a breeze.
The back of the laptop is empty of ports, as it’s reserved for the display sliding back on its hinge.
The left side contains the power jack and an exhaust fan, followed by the Ethernet and modem ports. Next comes your high end connectivity, with VGA followed by HDMI followed by i.LINK S400 (aka mini FireWire). Lat but not least, there’s an ExpressCard/34 slot.
Author Resource:
Asli Mana is the creator of this Sony content. To discover helpful articles about Vaio click the webpages.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")