Posted:2006-06-09 By notebook review Number of View:278706
SONY VGN-FJ1SR REVIEW NOTEBOOK
PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK
By :notebook review
Posted:2006-06-09
xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source
It may seem strange, but it is indeed a very
rare occasion to find a notebook that it’s impossible to find fault
with. And when you do get one, it is a real pleasure to describe it in
a review. Users’ pleas for a perfect notebook have been heard to by at
least one manufacturer. The Sony VGN-FJ1SR is an example of a thing
perfectly made.
The low-key classic design of this notebook with a mirror-like VIVO
logotype is among the best in this class. The slim, light and robust
case is equipped with a metal lid that keeps the screen safe against
physical damage. The overall quality of manufacture is superb, butit’s
expectable since Sony takes great care about quality assurance. And
users appreciate this, even if they have to pay somewhat more than for
competitors’ products. The VGN-FJ1SR costs about the same money as the
other participating notebooks, but has a humbler configuration. It
lacks a Bluetooth adapter
and a discrete graphics core. The latter isn’t a serious drawback
because an integrated graphics core is quite enough for a computer of
this class whereas a Bluetooth adapter would have been appropriate,
especially as it wouldn’t have made the notebook much more expensive.
There
are not many connectors here, just an optimum selection for a business
notebook. The front panel seems to be empty except for the card-reader:
But this is just at first sight. Besides Sony’s traditional MS/MS Pro
card reader, there’s a row of system status indicators on the left, and
a Wi-Fi switch.
The indicators are designed in such a way that they are only visible
when shining. If the notebook is turned off, they merge into the front
panel.
Not a single connector on the notebook’s back:
And this is quite right. There’s a docking station if you use the
notebook as a desktop computer while in “traveling” mode it is just
inconvenient to use back-panel connectors. The rest is on the
notebook’s sides. Modem and LAN ports, a FireWire connector, connector
for an external monitor, one of the USB ports, and PCMCIA slot are on
the left panel:
On the right side of the notebook there are headphones and microphone
connectors, TV output, two USB ports, DVD-burner, Kensington lock and a
power adapter connector.
Sony’s exclusive TV output is implemented as an ordinary jack connector.
The company doesn’t include an appropriate adapter, making you take
your soldering iron in your hands – it’s going to be cheaper and faster
than purchasing a ready-made adapter from Sony. The soldering scheme
can be found on the Web, but frankly speaking, few people ever use the
video output of such notebooks.
The keyboard is very ordinary:
But after you’ve tried it, you won’t easily turn back to keyboards of
other notebooks included in this review: the pressure force and key
activation thresholds are so precisely set up that you have a minimum
of mistypes and faulty presses. The single disadvantage of this
keyboard is its not separated block of arrow keys.
This is due to the overall design of the notebook.
If you take a look at its case from a side, you can see that the
keyboard lies in a small depression. This easily solves the problem of
scratched displays: MSI recommends putting soft cloth in between
whereas Sony just sunk the keyboard a little deeper into the case.
Simple and effective.
The touchpad follows the classic design:
The surrounding curb prevents your finger from slipping off the
sensitive area. The keys are easily recognizable by touch and go down
softly. The touchpad lacks any additional functionality, yet it is so
agreeable to use that you almost forget you’re using it.
There are two additional buttons here:
They are marked as S1 and S2 and it’s up to you to assign them their
functions. The photo doesn’t show it but the marking is made in a
curious way – it’s visible only at a certain viewing angle. The
keyboard status indicators are to the left.
Besides everything
else, the notebook is equipped with an integrated web-camera and
microphone which are going to be useful for video conferencing:
And surely the best thing about this notebook is its display
manufactured by X-black technology. Its every parameter – color
reproduction, brightness adjustment range, viewing angles, matrix
response time – is superb. I have no doubt this is the best screen in
this device category and one of the best notebook displays at all.
Whence does this quality come? It’s just because Sony itself
manufactures notebook displays and, unlike other manufacturers, equips
its top-end models with appropriate matrixes. My general advice to you
if you care about the display is to check out if there are any Sony
models in the class you are interested in. Don’t expect high quality in
an inexpensive model, but Sony’s notebooks priced at $1500 and higher
are very unlikely to have a poor display – only good or very good
matrixes.
You have to remove the whole bottom panel to access the components.
Well, you may not actually need this, but the improper placement of the
vent opening is a small problem.
If you feel that the notebook’s
interface ports are not enough or if you work in your office and don’t
want to attach the cables all the time, connect a docking station to
the connector that is hidden under a movable shutter:
The battery’s parameters and size are typical enough:
Overall, this is one of the best notebooks in its class which just
cannot leave you disappointed. You get an ideally balanced computer
capable of running any office application. Add also that the
world-famous VAIO logotype has long become a kind of status indicator,
something which other brands can only hope to achieve. In a rating of
brands, Sony
stands right after IBM, but IBM notebooks are now manufactured by
another, China-based company and are inferior to Sony’s in the quality
of the display. So, if you need a notebook that would tell everyone of your high status, there’s not much choice.
Moreover,
the VGN-FJ1SR notebook is priced rather modestly for a Sony product, so
I personally have my favorite among the ten notebooks presented to you
in this review and my opinion may only change after I’ve checked them
in practical tests.
Performance
First I checked the notebooks in Business Winstone 2004 and Content Creation Winstone 2004 benchmarks
Sony VGN-FJ1SR winstone benchmark
And here are the results produced by PCMark04:
Sony VGN-FJ1SR pcmark performance
The results of the Photoshop CS are indicative of the overall performance of the CPU, platform and hard drive:
Sony VGN-FJ1SR adobe photoshop
The well-balanced LW40 is almost as fast as the two notebooks
on the new platform. Other notebooks are slower. The two slowest models
shouldn’t be used to run such applications at all – they are only
capable of performing office tasks like processing text and
spreadsheets, browsing the Web, etc.
The next test shows what you can expect from these notebooks in gaming applications:
Sony VGN-FJ1SR gaming benchmark
performed this test using the maximum display resolution of each
notebook, except for the LG T1 (I used 1280x800 with it because
1440x900 would have been too much for its integrated graphics core).
The Acer TravelMate 3222WXMi is the best and can cope with modern games
if you don’t use the highest graphics quality settings. Among other
notebooks, only models with the X600 are interesting. The Samsung X11
is second after the TravelMate 3222WXMi but I doubt it’s going to be
that fast in real games.
I also published the results of the CPU
subtest to show you that 3DMark03 favors the Centrino Core Duo
platform. This is indicated by the Samsung X11’s results. This platform
is the most promising one when it comes to games, considering that all
the leading game developers have confirmed support for dual-core
processors in their upcoming products.
And now, the results of the most important test:
I put the results the notebooks achieved in Reader’s mode and under
maximum load into one diagram because the difference between the two is
indicative of how well the manufacturer set up the power-saving
parameters. The Sony VGN-FJ1SR looks best here as it yields you its
full computing power under max load but is very economical in Reader’s
mode. Besides the Sony, there are two more leaders: LG’s T1 with a
high-capacity battery and an L series Core Duo processor which features
low power consumption, and ASUS W3H00V. The latter proved to be a bit
of a cheater, though. Even under max load with the portable/laptop
power management scheme selected this notebook never increased its CPU
frequency higher than 1.3GHz.
It’s all clear with the first two diagrams, but then there are some things I’d want to single out. The LW40 is very fast in the memory test; it’s the best Centrino-based notebook I’ve seen in this benchmark. The Acer TravelMate
3222WXMi is unrivalled in the graphics subsystem test just because it
has the fastest graphics adapter among the tested notebooks.
Nvidia’s
GeForce Go 7400 is downright disappointing. If you need fast graphics,
buy a notebook that has dedicated graphics memory. Graphics subsystems
of other kind (with such suffixes as TC, HM) are not much better than
integrated graphics and cannot ensure high performance in 3D. In the
disk subsystem test the notebooks rank up according to the spindle
rotation speed of the hard drive they use.
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