Sony Vaio AW Series Review
When Sony released the AR series in 2006, it came out to raving reviews and was viewed by many as the best desktop replacement PC available. Sony has followed up the success of that system with its new AW series which replaces the previously named.
Design
The AW series is a monster both in performance, specs and size. The 18.4-inch widescreen display gets a full 1920 x 1080 HD LED display that also comes with Adobe Color Correction technology. The system is a desktop replacement and so it does carry a little weight weighing in at 8.8 pounds.
When the AR series was released back in 2006 it was the world’s first notebook computer with Blu-ray. Sony has followed up in that legacy with the AW series supporting not only Blu-ray playback but also recording capabilities. Take into account that the system comes with an HDMI and VGA out port and you should be glad that you won’t have a problem transferring those hi-def pictures from your laptop screen to an external one.
Sony has marketed this system not only as a desktop replacement but also a computer perfect for professional photographers and entertainment junkies. So they have included an Intel High Definition Audio with Dolby Digital Live Built-in stereo speakers + 2W subwoofer.
Sony has also built in full support for RAID technology. The HDD can go up to 1TB (500GB x2) or if you want a pricier option you can get a 628GB SSD drive. On the RAM side of things you get expansion up to 8GB of DDR2 SDRAM.
Intel Core 2 Duo Processors are standard coming with either 2.8GHz or 2.26GHz and a 1066MHz Front Side Bus Speed with 3MB – 6MB of L2 Cache.
Other features include a WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.0 with integrated stereo A2DP support, Memory Stick PRO (standard/Duo, ExpressCard ¾ slot, SD memory card slot and Compact Flash card slot.
On the graphics end Sony has made use of NVIDIA’s GeForce 9600M GT GPU which comes with 512MB of dedicated video RAM as well as the Intel Mobile PM45 Express Chipset.
Performance
The performance on the VAIO AW series is grand. Thanks to the systems good processor and graphic card chips it is a breeze and pleasure to do all your multimedia tasks on the system.
The system is well suited for gaming and performs well at it. Crysis played wonderfully on the system and even when transferred to an external monitor we noticed very few hiccups.
On the other hand battery life is not anything to rave about at the least. Standard battery life is rated at 3 hours by Sony, but on our tests we got round about 1 hour and 40 minutes which is nearly an hour lower than the average for notebooks in this category. This should not be a problem though as carrying around this piece of led is out of the question for most people.
Wi-Fi signal is strong and even at 50 feet from the router you can still get 19.3Mbps.
Conclusion
Yes we love the AW series and while it does have a few shortfalls it is a solid system. We’re just not sure if it warrants spending in excess of $3,000 to max out the systems performance seeing that you can spend $1800+ and get something similar from the HP HDX 18. In the end though, it all depends on your taste and the size of your wallet.