SONY VAIO FIT 14 REVIEW

PROS:

Nice styling. Comes with multimedia creation software like ArtRage, ACID, and Sound Forge. Sharp 1,600-by-900 resolution screen. Elegant and attractive chassis; Solid performance and graphics; Robust software bundle

CONS:

Uncomfortable keyboard. Only four hours battery life. Sealed battery.

BOTTOM LINE:

The Sony VAIO Fit 14 is a mainstream laptop that comes as close as you can without being an official ultrabook, but it went over specification. It's nice to look at and somewhat powerful, but a couple of issues keeping it from scoring higher.

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Design and Features:

The VAIO Fit 14 has the hallmarks of a Sony VAIO design, with its black-brushed metal lid, embossed VAIO logo (now with chrome outline), matching palm rest, and one piece trackpad. The system measures 0.87 by 13.5 by 9.25 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.26 pounds. These are quite respectable stats for a 14-inch laptop, though the system is thicker than touch ultrabooks.

The center of attention on the VAIO Fit 14 is the 14-inch screen with its 1,600 by 900 resolution. This is a much higher resolution than the 1,366 by 768 resolution screen we see on run of the mill laptops in this segment like the Samsung Series 5 UltraTouch NP540U3C-A01UB ($849). While not true 1080p HD, the VAIO Fit 14's screen is sharp, clear, and bright, which is everything we expect from Sony. The 10-point touch screen is responsive, and is protected by a seamless piece of glass. The black border around the screen is necessary to give your finger an off-screen starting point for Windows 8 gestures, and on the whole the system has a pleasing aesthetic. The multi-touch trackpad is also compatible with Windows 8 gestures, so you can use either to get around in Windows and on the Internet.

The backlit keyboard has an intelligent layout, with reduced sized keys for the F1-F12 keys and the arrow keys. The only other buttons on the top of the system are the power button and the VAIO Assist button, which opens a help utility. The chiclet-style keyboard could use some help: the keys are very stiff, which let you type quickly, but the flat key tops and very shallow key travel means that the keyboard feels uncomfortable to use. While you'd be able to easily type at 60 words per minute or more, the keyboard feels uncomfortable during use, and your fingers and wrists may tire quickly. It is similar to the touch keyboard cover on the Microsoft Surface Windows 8 Pro: you can use the keyboard part time quite successfully, but it will start to become uncomfortable after about ten to fifteen minutes of use. Since the built-in keyboard is one of the main reasons to buy a laptop over a slate Windows 8 tablet, we see the uncomfortable keyboard as a glaring flaw. The Sony VAIO Fit 14 comes with a utilitarian, yet unremarkable set of I/O ports. The VAIO Fit 14 has two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, SD card reader, Ethernet, and a headset jack.

The system comes with a 750GB hard drive for storage with a 8GB cache SSD. Sony calls this setup a Hybrid Hard Drive, but essentially it's like the cache SSD plus spinning hard drive configuration common to entry level ultrabooks like the Editors' Choice Acer Aspire M5-481PT-6644. The cache drive helps these systems on day-to-day tasks (as seen by the PCMark7 scores below), as well as helping these systems wake from sleep quicker than systems that have a hard drive-only configuration. The VAIO Fit 14 took less than three seconds to wake from sleep mode, which is as fast as SSD-only systems like the Toshiba Satellite U845t-S4165. The VAIO Fit 14 comes with an optical DVD burner, which will come in handy if you want to watch programs from your DVD library or want to install older programs that came on CD or DVD.

The VAIO Fit 14 has a very good selection of multimedia content creation apps, like ArtRage Studio (a painting program that leverages the touch screen), Sony's ACID Music Studio, DVD Architect Studio, Movie Studio Platinum, and Sound Forge Audio Studio. If you don't already have these programs, they can help turn your den or dorm room into a music/video/podcasting studio. Other preloaded programs include music and photo library programs by Sony, Sociallife (a social networking aggregator), Skype, Solitaire, Minesweeper, Slacker Radio, iHeartRadio, Music Maker Jam, PlayMemories Home, VAIO Movie Creator, Intel AppUp, Hulu Plus, and Skype. It's a lot of programs that you have no say in receiving, but most of them can be useful to the creative hobbyist. The VAIO Fit 14 comes with a one-year warranty.

Performance:

The VAIO Fit 14 comes with an Intel Core i5-3337U processor, 8GB of memory, and that 750GB hard drive with 8GB cache SSD. The combination of components garners the VAIO Fit 14 a very good score on the day-to-day PCMark7 benchmark test. It's not quite as fast as the SSD-powered Toshiba U845t-S4165, but it's close. Likewise, the VAIO Fit 14 comes in with very close scores with the Toshiba U845t-S4165 on the multimedia benchmark tests (Handbrake and Photoshop CS6). Taken together, this means that the VAIO Fit 14 will be a good companion to the multimedia maven, provided she can get over the uncomfortable keyboard. The 3D numbers from the VAIO Fit 14 were good, thanks to the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 in the Core i5 processor. You won't be able to play high-end 3D games, but you should be able to play light 3D games and browser-based games fine.

Battery life is important to laptop usage, and unfortunately the VAIO Fit 14's score of 4 hours 8 minutes on our battery rundown test is another of the system's disappointments. Systems like the Toshiba U845t-S4165 (6:17) and Acer M5-481PT-6644 (6:04) go past six hours, which means that they will be able to last most if not all of your afternoon's schedule. The VAIO Fit 14 might last the afternoon, if you lay off the social networking and let the system sleep while you're not taking notes. The battery is sealed in the chassis, so you won't have the option of carrying spare charged batteries to extend your day.

The Sony VAIO Fit 14 is a mainstream laptop that's almost an ultrabook with a few glaring drawbacks that keep it in the middle of the pack. If you're interested in the system and its higher resolution screen, give the system a tryout in your local big box store. If you can tolerate the keyboard and if you won't mind carrying the AC adapter with you, the system is a good find. However, for most users, systems like our Editors' Choice for entry-level touch ultrabooks Acer Aspire M5-481PT-6644 are a better choice overall.

Display:

To help the VAIO Fit stand out, Sony equips this notebook with a 1600 x 900-pixel display, which is higher than your typical 1366 x 768 panel. Text was sharp and colors vivid. The 10-point touch screen was also responsive, allowing us to smoothly perform Windows 8 gestures and pinch-to-zoom.

Catherine Zeta-Jones' burgundy hat consistently drew our eye during the 1080p trailer of "Red 2." The display accentuated her flawless skin and deep brown eyes as she sauntered across the screen. However, there was a lot of visual noise throughout the trailer and the viewing angles were fairly shallow. The glossy display was also a distraction as we could see our reflections during darker scenes.

Registering 191 lux on our light meter, the Fit 14 falls short of the 209 lux category average for display brightness. However, this screen is still brighter than the Toshiba U845T-S4165 (174 lux) and the HP Envy TouchSmart 4 (114 lux).

Audio:

Sony placed the Fit 14's speakers along the rear ridge of the keyboard deck, allowing the sound to fill our small test room. However, the sound quality was tinny.

Janelle Monae's vocal on "Q.U.E.E.N." fell flat against the bass guitar and the synthesizers. The VAIO Audio Utility, which allowed us to tweak the equalizer settings for headphones and speakers for music or video, barely helped on this track. Enabling the ClearAudio+ Music setting was also a bust. We heard better results on U2's "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me." Bono's slinking vocal resonated over the crisp guitar and stirring violin.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

The Fit 14's island-style keyboard has large, flat keys with nice spacing, and the backlighting is bright enough to type in dim conditions. However, the keyboard delivered shallow feedback, so much so that one of our colleagues likened the experience to "typing on a brick." We also noticed a fair amount of flex. On the Ten Thumbs Typing Test, we scored 50 wpm with a 2 percent error rate. That's lower than our usual 55 wpm rate.

The 4.1 x 2.5-inch Synaptics touchpad was spacious and delivered a fluid experience in terms of navigation and multitouch gestures (two-finger swipe, three-finger flick and pinch-zoom). However, we had to be more deliberate than we'd prefer when performing two-finger rotate.

The corners of the touchpad provided a nice amount of snap when clicking and accurately performed right- and left-click functions. The Fit's touchpad also performed Windows 8 gestures smoothly, such as swiping in from the right to activate the Charms menu.

Heat:

After watching 15 minutes of a video on Hulu, the VAIO Fit 14's touchpad measured 81 degrees. The space between the G and H keys and the bottom of the notebook were 94 degrees. That's slightly below our 95 degree comfort threshold. The back of the notebook's bottom measured a hotter 97 degrees.

Graphics:

The Sony VAIO Fit 14's Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU can play high-def videos and most casual games. The notebook scored 652 on the 3DMark11 benchmark, missing the 709 thin-and-light average. The Toshiba Satellite U845T-S4165 (673) and HP Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 (570) didn't fare quite as well with their integrated GPUs.

During the "World of Warcraft" benchmark, the Fit 14 delivered 36 fps on Good at 1366 x 768. That's below the 51 fps category average, but above our 30 fps playability threshold. When we switched to native resolution (1600 x 900), the frame rate jumped to 39 fps. The U845T-S4165 and the Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 gave us 33 and 28 fps on 768p.

After we switched to maximum, the Fit 14's frame rate dropped to 19 fps at 768p, below the 25 fps average.

Battery Test:

During the Laptop Battery Test (Web surfing via Wi-Fi on 40 percent brightness), the Sony VAIO Fit 14 lasted 4 hours and 46 minutes, well behind the 6:20 thin-and-light notebook average. The HP Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 clocked in at 5:36 while the Toshiba Satellite U845T-S4165 lasted a whopping 7:39.

Specification:

CPU	1.8-GHz Intel Core i5-3337U
Operating System	Windows 8
RAM	8GB
RAM Upgradable to	12GB
Hard Drive Size	750GB + 8GB Hybrid
Hard Drive Speed	5,400rpm
Hard Drive Type	Serial ATA Hybrid
Display Size	14
Native Resolution	1600x900
Optical Drive	CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
Optical Drive Speed	8X
Graphics Card	Intel Graphics HD 4000
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.0+HS
Touchpad Size	4.1 x 2.5 inches
Ports (excluding USB)	Ethernet; HDMI; Headphone/Mic; security lock slot; USB 3.0
USB Ports	2
Warranty/Support	1-year limited warranty
Size	13.3 x 9.28 x 0.87 inches
Weight	4.2 pounds