Sony VAIO VGN-FS550

Sony VAIO VGN-FS550 Review

Overview

As Sony's newest member of the VAIO notebook line, the FS Series continues the VAIO tradition as having one of the best aesthetic designs in the industry. Leaving behind the conventional VAIO two-tone grey and black, the FS Series adds style and elegance by mixing matte-black and an off-white finish to its new color scheme. The FS Series incorporates the same stunning 15.4-inch wide-screen display with XBRITE found in the VAIO A Series while offering the portability of the VAIO S Series. Utilizing the next generation of Centrino Mobile Technology (code-namedSonoma'), the FS Series is powered by an enhanced Pentium M processor with 533MHz front side bus and runs on the Intel 915GM chipset. Other notable features include an on-board double-layer DVD'RW drive, 80GB hard drive, and 512MB DDR RAM to satisfy the casual multimedia user. As feature packed as it may seem the FS Series notebook does not take advantage of the rich features offered by the Intel Sonoma' platform such as DDR2, PCI-Express, and High-Definition Audio. Instead, the FS Series is targeted towards the mainstream consumer, thus making it an affordable general purpose notebook. The integrated Intel Graphics Media Adapter 900 brings DirectX 9 support and is twice as fast as the previous generation Intel graphics solution, but still is significantly slower than the discrete graphics cards made by ATI and Nvidia. Battery life is less than admirable, lasting around 2.5 hours.

Three configured versions of the FS Series are currently available. The base model FS550 features an Intel Pentium M 730 Processor (1.6 GHz), 512MB PC2700 DDR RAM, and 80GB Hard Drive priced at $1599.99. The FS540P is identical but comes with Windows XP Professional instead and sells for $1,699.99. The FS570, priced at $1,899.99 offers a faster Intel Pentium M 740 (1.73GHz) with 1GB DDR RAM, and 100GB hard drive. All three models use the integrated Intel Graphics Media Adapter 900 with 128MB dynamically shared video memory. To satisfy the power users, Sony offers a customizable model with choices that include the new Nvidia GeForce Go 6200 128MB Turbo Cache graphics card and Pentium M processor with speeds up to 2.13GHz.

Design

Portability
No longer do you have to sacrifice portability to have a large display or vice versa. Thanks to its slim and lightweight design, the FS550 is a well-balanced machine, ideal for mobility while offering a spacious viewing area. Weighing 6.28 pounds with the battery, it is actually a lightweight computer that could be carried simply with one hand. Measuring 14.3 inches across, 10.4 inches deep and only 1 inch thick, the computer fits easily in most mid-size carrying cases and backpacks, such as the Spire Fuse laptop backpack. I really enjoy taking this computer with me, not only because it's light to carry but because of the larger screen. The thought of being able watch a DVD movie on such a large display anywhere I go makes it more appealing to take out and about, where typically laptops with a screen of this caliber are made to be used on the desk and nowhere else.

Case and Design
Just like other VAIO notebooks, the FS Series has its own distinctive style. The color scheme here begins with an elegant off-white finish, an almost light grey that covers the palm rest area while dripping down to the sides and on the top lid. Black highlights wrap around the screen, making its way down the two latches covering across the speakers and then filling the entire bottom side. The inverted color scheme works well; it looks clean and is visually pleasing. The system is all curves, including the corners on the top lid and bottom side. The front section of the laptop is an inch thick, and then it slopes down to an inch and a half thick where the ports and optical drive reside.

The overall chassis is solid and robust, made from magnesium alloy. The top lid (back of the display) is built strong, offering protection for the display when lugging the machine around. Adding pressure to the back side of the display does not cause any screen ripples. Two stiff hinges hold the display, located near each corner of the display. The screen has dual latches that close it securely. When shut, the screen hovers slightly over the keyboard and palm rest area reinforced by eight rubber pads to prevent the screen from touching the keyboard and palm rest area. The plastic and magnesium alloy surrounding the LCD panel, known as the bezel, is actually relatively thin, compared to the rather large frame found on the VAIO VGN-A250.

Thin bezel that surrounds the beautiful screen.

Located in front, you will find a set of indicator lights which provide a quick glance at the system's status: power, battery, hard disk, Memory Stick and Wireless LAN. The indicator lights have a subtle lime green and orange glow when they activate. They are all built on a small strip of plastic, which feels a bit loose and could possibly fall off during transit. There is also a switch to turn on or off the unit's Wi-Fi radio.

The wireless switch is a convenient option.

With so much available space around the area above the keyboard, I was hoping there would be more shortcut keys. The only available shortcut keys are the S1 and S2 programmable buttons, positioned above the keyboard. These shortcut keys allow for instant activation of your favorite applications that are pre-selected via the S Button software (more on this in the software section).

You can see the S1 & S2 buttons here, as well as all of the extra room
for even more functional buttons than the 2 included.

In the rear, the battery brick and the dual hinges are exposed.

Design Continued

Keyboard
The white, full-sized 86-key keyboard contains all the essential keys, particularly the Windows and Ctrl keys at the bottom left of the keyboard, where normally some laptops contain only the Fn key. The PgDn, PgUp, Home and End cursor keys are also present, which eliminates the need to press the Fn key to use these keys if they were assigned as secondary function keys. All of the 19mm keys are large in comparison to my desktop keyboard. The Caps Lock, Shift, Alt, Tab, Backspace, and Enter keys are extra large so you can't miss them. In addition, there are function keys to adjust the volume, screen brightness, put the system to sleep, and for switching to an external monitor when connected. Identical to other VAIO notebooks, when adjusting the brightness it will activate an on-screen brightness bar and makes a beeping sound. This helps you identify exactly which brightness or volume settings you want to select.

With respect to usage, the keyboard offers plenty of room and feels good to type with. I can type quickly, accurately, and comfortably. There is a good amount of room around the palm rest area to ensure a comfortable typing experience on your wrists. The keys are soft and feel light when depressing them, which allows it to be quite responsive. They depress at a comfortable 2.5mm of depth, but not as deep as the 3mm found on the A250. The spacebar feels substantially lighter to depress than the rest of the keys. This does feel a bit awkward and may take some time getting use to. For more comfortable ergonomics, the keys and palm rest area are also slightly raised. However, since the keys are raised, it increases the possibly of breaking a key off. The keys found on the Sony A250 are lighter to type with and overall feel slightly better than the FS550. Nevertheless, the FS550 has a solid keyboard.

Touch pad
The white touchpad is a good size and works well. The flush surface is clean and smooth, accurately sensitive to touch and responds well to movement. It also allows for tapping to execute an action if you prefer not to use the click button. Although Sony didn't include a scroll button, the touchpad has a function to scroll vertically and horizontally with applications such as Internet Explorer when sliding the finger in the appropriate direction. As a nice touch, the left and right click buttons are brushed aluminum.

All the ports are located on the left, right, and front sides of the computer. This may cause overcrowding of cables since connections are all on the sides and none are on the back. Sony offers a total of three USB 2.0 ports instead of the common two USB ports found in most laptops. As with most other VAIO notebooks, a DVI connection is not available. S-Video out is also missing from the list of ports.

Ports

On the left-side: network (Ethernet) port, modem jack and optical drive.

Left

On the right-side: PC Card slot, i.LINK (FireWire) S400 port, Memory Stick media slot, three USB 2.0 port, VGA port, and DC IN port. Sony labels the FireWire port as iLINK S400, which is a six-pin port that provides power to your device, unlike the more popular FireWire with four-pin type. This allows you to connect a Sony camcorder and certain other Firewire devices without requiring an AC adapter or battery.

Right

On the front, the brushed aluminum latch button has a nice grip to help you slide it open. To the right, the headphone jack and microphone jack are conveniently located in addition to the indicator lights.

Front

On the back: air vent and battery. As mentioned earlier, the backside including the battery protrudes, thus extending its dimensions by almost half an inch.

Back

Heat and Noise
For such a thin casing, the FS550 operates incredibly quiet and very cool. The system is well ventilated and heat is dispersed through air vents located on the rear, with three air vents located on the bottom side. During general use such as web browsing, word processing, and playing music, the system fan rarely activates. If it does, it's barely audible. After long periods of using the computer (even during gameplay), the internal fan activates more noticeably but lasting only for a short period and does not exhibit that much noise. The heat build up is minimal and makes the Sony comfortable to use on your lap. When it becomes warm, the bottom and the right palm rest are the only areas that heat is noticeable.

Upgrading and Expansion
On the underside of the FS550 is the memory module cover housing the RAM. There are two RAM modules pre-installed in the computer. Each RAM module is a CL 2.5 256MB stick of DDR manufactured by Hynix, totaling 512MB running at 333MHz (PC2700). There is no open slot to upgrade, but you can still expand more memory up to 1GB if you decide to swap each module for a larger capacity one. Upgrading the memory simply requires removing one screw, removing the memory module cover, and inserting the new RAM. Replacing the hard drive is also simple, unscrew the hard drive cover and remove the screws attached to the hard drive bay.

Sony offers an optional Port Replicator for $200 to expand connectivity options which include two USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, VGA output, and a parallelprinter port. It's unfortunate that this expansion doesn't include DVI out or audio and video output options.

Features

Processor
Based on the next generation Pentium M processor, the FS550 is powered by the new but relatively low-end Pentium M 730 processor clocked at 1.6 GHz and utilizes the Intel 915GM chipset (code-named Alviso). Compared to the previous generation Dothan models, the new CPU's front side bus, which controls the speed of data flow between memory and CPU, jumps from 400 MHz to 533 MHz, a 33% increase. This also raises the peak bandwidth of the CPU. To run at its full bandwidth potential, faster main memory that enables higher peak bandwidth such as offered by DDR2 should be used. Since Sony opted in using DDR instead of DDR2, the CPU has to wait on main memory to deliver data, thus slowing down overall performance. The choice to use DDR was likely due to cost, since DDR2 is more expensive. Another difference is the new processor's thermal design power (TDP), rated at 27W, whereas the previous Dothan rates in at 21W. This means the new processors have the capacity to use more power, thus affecting battery life. The CPU itself is identical to those used in the previous generation Centrino platform, i.e. Dothan Pentium M's. As with the previous platform and even the first generation Centrino package, the Sonoma platform supports Enhanced Intel Speedstep where the CPU adjusts its speed dynamically based on system usage. However, unlike the previous generation processors that clock down to 600 MHz, the Dothan processors used in the Sonoma motherboards clock down to 800 MHz due to the higher front side bus speed. Even with the processor clocked down to 800 MHz, it is still fast enough to watch DVDs or do general-purpose computing (Web browsing, Word processing) with respectable performance.

CPU-Z reports it has a Pentium M 725 however as you can see the FSB speed shows 133 MHz.

GPU
As part of the Intel 915GM chipset package, the integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 900 (GMA 900) powers the video of the FS550. According to Intel, the GMA 900 provides an increase of 2X in graphics performance over the previous generation Intel graphics solution (Extreme Graphics 2). Key features include DirectX 9 hardware acceleration support, Pixel Shader 2.0, 133-320MHz core clock, 4 pixels pipes and 128MB dynamically shared memory (8MB minimum, 128 maximum). The Intel GMA 900 utilizes shared memory architecture, meaning the system memory (RAM) is shared with the graphics card. Since shared memory is dynamic, it will be allocated for graphics usage based on application demand. Once the application is closed, the memory that was allocated for graphics usage is then released and made available for system use. During general use, the graphics memory uses 10MB of system memory and can use up to 128MB during graphic intensive usage. As a result, the system may slow down when heavy graphics from an application are in demand. The engine clock and memory clock are both rated at 200MHz. In the FS Series customizable configuration, Sony offers the faster Nvidia GeForce Go 6200 128MB with Turbo Cache. This graphics card also shares the system RAM, and is essentially a 32MB card that shares 96MB of the system RAM.

Doom3 running at 800x600

To test the new Intel GPU, I loaded one of the more graphically intensive games available, Half Life 2. In the advanced video settings within the game, the reported hardware DirectX level was version 8.1 whereas software Direct X support reports version 9.0. With the resolution set to 800x600, with low settings, frame rates varied between 15-35 frames per second according to the in-game FPS display and was rather playable. During graphically intense parts of the game, frame rates dropped substantially to the point where the game would intermittently freeze. When setting the resolution up a notch to 1024x768, the game was still playable but ran sluggish and short pauses occurred more frequently. Half Life 2 ran much smoother with the ATI Radeon 9200 found in the A250. Loading up another graphic intensive game, Doom 3 running at 800x600 on medium image quality is barely playable and varied between 5-20 frames rates per second. The game ran choppy for the most part, especially during scenes with heavy action. Both Half Life 2 and Doom 3 do a great job of scaling graphics to the capabilities of the graphics card, but ultimately the GMA 900 is not intended for heavy gaming. The more advanced game players might want to opt for the more powerful Nvidia GeForce 6200 available in custom configuration models, if not another notebook altogether with a higher-end graphics card. [Note: CPU speed was set to run full performance during game testing.] More on the gaming performance in our benchmark section.

Display
The most notable feature is the huge 15.4-inch widescreen, capable of displaying ultra-crisp and bright images up to a native resolution of 1280x800 pixels. Unfortunately Sony doesn't offer a higher resolution screen at this time. Sony's screens use XBRITE TFT technology, which offers vibrant colors, sharp contrast, and crisp detail. As a result, images displayed on this screen look absolutely stunning. The viewing angle is wide, more so horizontally than vertically. I can look at the screen from a wide angle and the image barely distorts. The response rate is fast enough to keep up with games and movies without significantghosting.' In addition, scrolling through a webpage full of text does not exhibit motion blur. Most LCD displays use a single lamp to illuminate the screen; XBRITE displays use a dual-lamp to distribute light across the screen more evenly. The screen is extremely bright, substantially brighter then other laptop screens without XBRITE. It is actually brighter than its little brother the VAIO S260, which also uses XBRITE technology. Setting the brightness setting half-way (4 out of 8) is more than sufficient for regular usage. Even setting the brightness to the lowest setting displays a fair amount of lighting. Setting it to full brightness is almost too bright! It should be noted that the LCD screen emits slight humming noise when the brightness is set to less than full; turn the brightness to full and the humming noise ends.

The screen offers a wide viewing angle.

The movie The Village played smooth as silk and color tones displayed were rich. In 2D desktop use, text is perfectly legible and viewing two Word documents side-by-side is great for utilizing that desktop real estate. Due to the screen having a glossy coating, you will notice reflections on the screen. Reflections are more apparent when light is directly shining over the screen such as from sunlight or a lamp. I used the computer outdoors and did notice heavy reflection, but increasing the brightness helped minimize the glare. Some users may be distracted by the reflection on the display but I do not find it be a major issue.

Smart Display Sensor
Another feature not prominently mentioned is the auto resolution feature, also known as Smart Display Sensor. This feature automatically sets the correct resolution of both the notebook and the video source you have connected to, like with a projector or TV. This eliminates you having to manually adjust the resolution of the display devices or peripherals.

Sound
The on-board stereo speakers sound clear but lack bass, a common trait for laptop speakers. It would be nice if Sony used more advanced built-in speakers like JBL's or Harman Kardon's, as you can find these speakers in a number of Compaq and Toshiba notebooks. The good thing about the FS550's on-board speakers is that it can reach a high volume without becoming distorted. Dialogue in movies was clear but bass was non-existent; with the same results during MP3 playback. Overall, I would recommend using a pair of quality headphones as the sound quality is substantially better.

Features Continued

Wireless
As a part of the Centrino package, the Sony FS550 has an integrated Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG (802.11b/g) card with dual antennas built into each side of the display lid for optimal reception. The Sonoma Trio offers the Intel Pro Wireless 2915ABG card which can connect to 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11a wireless networks, but is not available in the FS Series model. As mentioned earlier, the FS550 includes the now common wireless switch to turn on or off the Wireless LAN Card, which helps conserve battery when Wi-Fi is not needed. Connecting wirelessly with this machine is incredibly simple, thanks to the bundled VAIO Wireless Utility, which takes you step-by-step through the connection process and even provides a diagnostics utility and instructions guide to help you even further.

In regards to wireless performance, reception was excellent overall and I never experienced a signal drop. My tests mainly consisted of connecting to a home wireless network and Hot Spots located at a local university, with no difficulty to speak of. Signal strength was reported betweenvery good' toexcellent' while using it in my home network, even when being about 30 feet away from the wireless base station. Like most laptops with an integrated Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG adapter I've used, wireless strength and speed is excellent overall.

Optical Drive
It's uncommon for companies to offer an integrated Dual-Layer DVD burner in notebooks. Dual-Layer DVD burners are commonly available in desktops, but Sony steps up a notch by integrating a Matshita Dual-Layer DVD'RW drive in the FS550, capable of burning a double-layer 8.5GB disc in addition to the other DVD formats. The Matshita Dual-Layer drive is capable of burning DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, CD-R/RW and reading DVD-ROM's. The drive loads incredibly fast, as soon as I insert a disc, the movie or application loads almost instantly. You can hear the disc spinning, but it's actually not as loud as the optical drive found in the Apple iBook or Sony VGN-S260. I was also able to burn DVDs and CDs without a single problem using the included Sonic Record Now software.

The supported disc formats and maximum burning capabilities are as follow:

• Double Layer +R: 2.4X
• DVD-R Write: 8X; DVD-RW: 4X
• DVD+R Write: 8X; DVD+RW: 4X
• CD-R Write: 24X; CD-RW Write 10X

Hard Drive
The factory installed hard drive in the FS550 is a Hitachi DK23FA-80 80GB hard drive with 8MB data buffer and a comparatively slow 4,200 rotational speed. Thanks to the fluid dynamic bearing motor, the drive does operate whisper quiet. When the drive seeks, it exhibits only a slight crunching noise that is just barely audible. Although the drive provides 80GB of storage space, it is not contiguous. The total size of the drive is 69.5GB since the hidden partition uses some of the remaining space. Sony places a hidden restore partition so that users can burn their own recovery discs (more on this in the software section). Sony offers up to 100GB storage capacity in the customized model however all hard drive options are only 4,200 rpm. Hard drives with faster rotational speeds will perform faster, especially with multimedia intensive applications such as Adobe Photoshop. Luckily, the hard drive is easily replaceable if you decide for a faster alternative.

Battery
A lithium-ion rechargeable battery powers the Sony notebook. The rated capacity and voltage is 4,400 mAh and 11.1V, respectively. During general use, like web browsing, word processing, and MP3 playback, the battery lasted approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes. This correlates with the results from the BatteryMark test (more in the performance section). With the brightness setting set to the middle and power scheme set toPortable/Laptop', the DVD movie The Village made it through the entire duration with about 20% battery life remaining. Being supplied with a low capacity battery combined with the high power-drain LCD screen contributes to the laptop's short battery life. Even at the lowest (darkest) brightness setting, the screen is still relatively very bright, thus draining battery more than non-XBRITE models. An additional standard battery is recommended if you plan on using the FS550 for a extended length of time.

AC Adapter
The AC Adapter is a commonly overlooked part of a notebook's features, even though it is the most important part! The included Sony AC adapter measures 5.5' long, 2.4' wide, and 1.2' thick. It is fairly light and can easily slip in a carrying case or backpack pocket. Unfortunately, it is missing a strap or some form of cable management around the adapter to organize the lengthy power cables.

Software
As mentioned in the preceding pages, the FS550 is equipped with two S buttons, labeled as S1 and S2. Using the S Button settings software, you can assign these two buttons to quickly access your favorite application, increase the brightness, or put the computer to sleep.

Sony included a useful multimedia bundle including SonicStage 2.0 for music, DVgate Plus for digital video editing from a camcorder, Click to DVD for DVD editing, and PictureGear Studio for digital photo editing. You can also find Sonic RecordNow! 7 for burning CDs and DVDs, InterVideo WinDVD for DVD playback, and a 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security. Sony also included the requisite Microsoft Works 7, Microsoft Office 2003 60-day trial, Google toolbar in the browser, and AOL. There is a new media player called VAIO Zone that allows you to toggle through your collection of videos, music, digital pictures, audio CDs, and DVDs stored on the hard drive.

VAIO Zone

It should be mentioned Sony did not include any recovery discs. Instead they supply the VAIO Recovery Wizard application for you to create your own recovery discs by burning them onto a recordable DVD or CD. The system-restore data is hidden on a hard drive partition, allowing you the option of restoring your computer directly from the hard drive. However, it is highly recommended that you burn a copy of the recovery discs, as you may not always be able to boot into Windows to access the restore data.

Setup Method

The Sony VAIO VGN-FS550 was set to run at full performance by setting the power scheme set to 'Home/Office Desk', meaning that the CPU will not underclock while running the tests. For the battery performance test, the power scheme was set to 'Portable/Laptop'. This activates SpeedStep technology, which lowers CPU speed when not needed, thus increasing battery life. Screen brightness and audio were both set to 50% and Wi-Fi was turned on. Each test was repeated 3 times to ensure accuracy. Before each test was run, the laptop was rebooted and its hard drive defragmented. Also note that the Intel GMA 900 uses 10MB of system RAM during general use (can use up to 128MB during heavy 3D tasks), which essentially leaves the total system memory with 502 MB.

Business Winstone 2004 runs business related applications through a series of scripted activities and uses the time a PC takes to complete those activities to produce its performance scores. Each application runs 5 tests through a series of demos and activities. Business Winstone 2004 FAQ. Business applications include:

• Microsoft Access 2002
• Microsoft Excel 2002
• Microsoft Frontpage 2002
• Microsoft Outlook 2002
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
• Microsoft Project 2002
• Microsoft Word 2002
• Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition 2003
• Winzip 8.1

Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 is a single large test that runs multimedia applications through a series of scripted activities and returns a single score. Applications include:

• Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1
• Adobe Premiere 6.50
• Macromedia Director MX 9.0
• Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 6.1
• Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 Version 9.00.00.2980
• NewTek's LightWave 3D 7.5b
• Steinberg WaveLab 4.0f

You can read more from: Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 FAQ.

Business Winstone 2004 Batterymark measures a laptop computer's battery life by simulating real-world usage. The program measures the time it takes to drain the battery by running applications such as Microsoft Office XP, Norton AntiVirus, and WinZip through a series of scripted activities to drain the battery in a realistic way.

3DMark 2001 SE PRO build 3.3.0 measures graphics performance by benchmarking the CPU, memory, and graphics through a series of 21 tests, including simulated games, theoretical tests, DX8 feature tests, and image quality tests. Resolution was set to 1024x768 with all default settings.

3DMark 2003 build 3.6.0 measures DX9 performance through a series of 3D game based sound, graphics, and CPU tests. Resolution was set to 1024x768 with all default settings.

PCMark 2004 build 1.3.0 uses real life application tests to generate a combined score by running specific tasks like application loading, game tests, 3D rendering, multimedia encoding, and more. Resolution was set to 1024x768 with all default settings.

Doom 3 (Version 1.1) using the built-in time-demo, initiated with the console commandtimedemo demo1 precache'.

• 800x600 resolution
• Quality Setting: Medium
• 0xAA
• VSynch Disabled
• High quality special effects enabled
• Shadows enabled
• Specular enabled
• Bump Maps enabled

Half Life 2 (Source Engine 7) timedemos Coast 05 and Canals 08 from Anandtech.com with the following tests and graphic settings:

Test1:

• 1024x768 resolution
• Medium model detail
• Medium texture detail
• Blob shadows
• No reflect
• 0xAA
• 0xAF
• Trilinear filtering

Test2:

• 1024x768 resolution
• Highest image settings
• 4xAA
• 8xAF

Configurations

System	VAIO VGN-FS550	VAIO VGN-A250	Presario V2000
OS	Windows XP Home SP2	Windows XP Home SP2	Windows XP Pro SP2
CPU	Pentium M 730 1.60 GHz	Pentium M 725 1.60 GHz	Pentium M 715 1.50 GHz
Bus	533 MHz	400 MHz	400 MHz
RAM	512MB DDR333 CL2.5	512MB DDR333 CL2.5	512MB DDR333 CL2.5
Hard Drive	Hitachi 80GB 8MB Buffer 4200RPM	Hitachi 80GB 2MB Buffer 4200RPM	Hitachi 40GB 2MB Buffer 5400RPM
Video	Intel GMA 900	ATI RADEON 9200 64MB	Intel Extreme Graphics 2
Battery	4,400 mAh	4,000 mAh	4,400 mAh

Performance

General Usage (Business Winstone 2004)

Multimedia Content Creation (Business Winstone 2004)

PCMark04

System	FS550	A250	V2000
CPU	3038	3123	3108
Memory	2852	2631	2315
Graphics	781	1279	457
HDD	2439	2471	2250

PCMark04 Overall Score

The bottleneck here is the slow performing GPU as the A250 edges the FS550.

Performance Continued

3DMark 2001 SE

The A250's RADEON 9200 clearly dominates the integrated offerings.

3DMark 2003

Doom 3

Half Life 2
As you can see from the low average frames per second, the benchmarks run with higher image settings made Half-Life 2 practically unplayable

Level	Coast 05	Canals 08
Test 1 - AA/AF OFF	7.34 fps	4.06 fps
Test 2 - 4X/8X	7.76 fps	3.39 fps

Battery Performance

Lasting 2 hours and 27 minutes, the FS550 edges
the weak battery performing A250 and V2000.

The FS550 only lasted 2 hours and 58 minutes max in the Life Run test.

Conclusion

Pros:

• 15.4-inch WXGA LCD with XBRITE is bright and vivid
• Sleek design
• Thin-and-light
• Good keyboard
• Great built-in features: Dual-Layer DVD burner, Wi-Fi, 3 USB 2.0 ports, FireWire
• Quiet operation and runs cool
• Large storage capacity (80GB)
• Good value

Cons:

• Average performance
• Lacks DVI and audio/video out
• Doesn't utilize the full potential of Sonoma: DDR2, PCI-Express, HD Audio
• Integrated graphics is slow and shares with system memory
• Built-in speakers lack bass
• LCD emits slight humming noise when the brightness is set to less than full
• Short battery life
• Hard Drive is only 4200RPM
• Has hidden partition in the hard drive for making recovery discs with no included operating system or driver discs.

Recommendation
Sony has put together a laptop that has a strong aesthetic appeal, but really short-changed the feature set. Built around Intel's third-generation Centrino technology (Banias was first generation), Sony did not utilize all the rich features offered by Sonoma like DDR2, PCI-Express Video Card, and High-Definition Audio. Instead, Sony opted to only use the 915GM chipset and an enhanced Pentium M 730 processor with 533 MHz front side bus. The choice to use DDR instead of DDR2 was ultimately very disappointing. Faster DDR2 memory would have provided the equal amount of peak memory bandwidth to match the CPU's own increased bandwidth. Another bottleneck is the integrated Intel GMA 900. Although it improves in features from the previous generation integrated graphics card, it still can't match the performance offered by discrete graphics solutions. Accordingly, this laptop cannot be recommended for gaming. Yet another low performing feature is the use of a 4200 RPM hard drive, when 5400 and 7200 RPM drives offer much better performance.

With a screen-size typically found in bulkier desktop replacement notebooks, Sony did a great job incorporating the larger 15.4-inch widescreen in such a thin and light weight chassis, which adds to its unique appeal. The wide 15.4-inch LCD screen with XBRITE is quite impressive. Movies, pictures, and Windows in general are much richer, brighter, and sharper than non-XBRITE screens. Battery life is less than ideal, lasting around two and a half hours during general use. Certainly the FS550 offers some strong points: good keyboard, DVD+R DL drive, Wi-Fi capabilities, 80GB hard drive space, 512MB RAM, and Sony bundled multimedia software; but it could have been more multimedia centric by adding high-definition audio, S-Video, and DVI output options. Overall performance is mediocre compared to other models in this price range, but makes up for it by running incredibly quiet and cool.

Despite some performance and integrated shortfalls, this is a general-purpose notebook that is in the middle of the price range for a portable 15.4-inch model. Business, academic, and even avid multimedia users should be satisfied with what if offers. The more graphic demanding and heavy multimedia users should look for another alternative that utilizes a more powerful discrete graphics card, preferably with more Sonoma based features. At $1,599.99 for the base model, this is a good investment for users wanting a notebook with some desktop-functionality, like the large screen size and Dual-Layer DVD+R drive, but built in a slim and lightweight package. Most other manufacturers don't include a Dual-Layer DVD burner with a relatively powerful 15.4-inch model in this price range.

Availability/Warranty
The Sony VAIO VGN-FS550 is available now for a suggested retail price of $1,599.99. The VGN-FS540P comes with the same speficiations as the FS550 but includes Windows XP Professional and sells for $1,699.99. The VGN-FS570 with a faster Pentium M 740 processor 1GB RAM and larger capacity 100GB hard drive sells for $1,899.99. Sony offers an industry standard one year limited warranty and one year of technical support: free service that includes free shipping both ways and 24/7 toll-free telephone technical support. The Sony support website provides a knowledgebase and download center. Extended service plans are available.