VGN-FZ190 CTO Review

Hi,
I am thinking of buying sony- VGN-FZ190 CTO but am little suspicious after I read couple of posts relating to sony laptops on this forum,
can any one who is actually using FZ190 CTO laptop let me kno what they think of it.

Do you consider it a good product, what are the problems that you might have had with the note book, and finally would you recommend it.

thankx,
Gute_zeit

 

pros:

-great screen
-fast
-sleek
-pretty thin/light for 15.4 inch
-i like the touch pad
-media buttons are cool/useful
- 3 USB ports is fine for me, but if u need 4, this could be a con, since it only has 3.
- express card 34mm. again, if you need 54mm, this is a con, it only has 34 mm.

cons:

-could be louder..volume level at max is kinda low for me (but i have bad hearing lol)
- keyboard is typical sony flat keys, BUT, the problem is the unevenness of the keys...on one side in a certain area the keys seemed a bit raised.. I have the white keyboard and I can say it looks more noticable on white, and less on black keyboard.
- left click mouse feels weird... it goes clicks too far in..
- heat...but with any lappy with a vid card it will heat up. my old dell 1520 did this too, since it had a 8600 gt
- fan noise... it sounds cycles constantly... but to be honest... i didnt notice it recently. either i got used to it, or it was superfetch just learning how to use the fan, as mentioned in other topics.

overall: nice laptop. it has its flaws, but compared to other's out there, it is the best in quality/price. dells are nice, but they look bulky, have headphone noise issues, screen issues, ect... its a mess with Dell right now IMO, as i returned my 1520 for this fz190.

would recommend.

 

thankx,
also how hard is it to replace the HDD, I have a vgn s360 in which the hard drive is located underneath the keyboard some where and can not be replaced unless the laptop is opened completly.what i was thinking that if changing the hdd is easy then i would upgrade the hdd to 7200 rpm one.

gutezeit

 

i heard its pretty simple.

 

Heh, I returned Dell 1520 and got FZ as well. I mostly agree with your conclusions as well, although I didn't notice any left clock or speaker problems. Here are some other pro/con I can think of.

Con: Its bloatware is terrible. Also, its keyboard has some flex over the area where optical drive is located (however, I found the keyboard itself pretty easy to type on).

Pro: While it gets hot outside, it stays relatively cool inside. Even with overclock and intensive gaming, my GPU never gets above 80C, which I think is very good. Also, it must have the best headphone jack I've ever used for non-HiFi product. Its better than my creative soundblaster USB.

Also, changing HDD/RAM must be pretty easy - these are accessible from under laptop.

 

thankx all for your replies.

 

you know, i was about to buy a usb soundblaster. thanks for letting me know the sony is better. i wuda been dissapointed and out 50 bucks.