New Sony E-Series and F-Series

Hi all,

Im in the market for a new 15"-16" laptop that will offer me a decent video card for some moderate gaming.

Ive looked at options from Dell and HP, but these 2 Sony Vaio models - the 15.4" E Series, and the 16.4" F-Series, seem to offer much better value for money at the moment.

Question for me is, which one do I go for? Both offer very similar options, especially if you go for the i5-520M chipset, which I intend to.

With 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and the aforementioned chip, best video card options, and Full Hd screen - the E-Series stacks up at about £850 at the sonystyle uk site, and the F-Series at approximately £880.

Which for me, begs the following questions:

- Is the extra screen space worth it?
- How does the HD 5650 1GB in the E-Series stack up against the GT 330M 1GB in the F-Series?
- How does the build quality of each model compare?

At the moment Im tempted to shell out a bit extra for the F-Series, but if the HD5650 works out to be significantly quicker than the GT 330m.....Ill be back at square one!

In any event, they both seem like very good laptops.

Thoughts?

 

One thing I know is HD5650 is faster than GT330M.

 

As for the screen space difference, you'll probably won't notice it really (15,5 or 16 -_-)
The 5650 is a bit faster, the GT330M scores about 6500 3dmark06 (about same for the ati 4650), but the 5650 scores about 8000 if i remember that right.
- E is more ''cheap'' feeling, a bit more ''cheap consumer class'', the F is much better build quality.

 

I just saw the E on the sony website.. I think it's the first time I see it.

It looks like a very comfortable lappy.. and we don't often see 15" with that numpad.. the keyboard takes the whole width of the laptop.

 

One thing, i havent read anyone mention but why oh why only have 0.3Megapixel built in-cam. I mean why, its one of the things that is important but not crucial. Also i can't understand why they went backwards from a 1.3 cam. Such a silly thing to do.

 

If the E-Series has switchable graphics, I'm buying it.

 

I doubt that it has it...

 

It has the chipset (HM55) so it's possible.

 

Yeah, but so far none of the other models with this chipset have this feature like the S and CW.