Sony VAIO F Series

Sony barreled into CES earlier this year flaunting a 3D monster laptop boasting a 16-inch 1080p display, a built-in 3D transmitter and a fancy button that promised to instantly add an extra dimension to your boring "regular" 2D movies. It was the latest in the outfit's VAIO F Series, and it was ready to snatch $2,000 straight out of your wallet -- but not all of us can throw down that kind of scratch. Still lookingfor a suitably powerful desktop-replacement that won't decimate your bank account? That same 2011 VAIO F Series rig just might be your ticket, sans 3D trickery -- and knocked down to a base price of $980.

Although it doesn't invoke the Camaro-like aggression you see in some of Alienware's rigs, the VAIO F Series is a touch edgier than than Sony's more diminutive VAIO laptops. As a desktop-replacement, it can afford to be a bit wider, bulkier and thicker than the other kids on the block. Its matte black lid closes with a slight underbite, leaving a handful of status LEDs exposed. The wedge shape design is accented with an inwardly angled screen, and a rising palm rest and concave speaker grill. The design is different enough to be eye-catching, yet subtle enough that it won't draw unwanted attention your way. It's a clean, comfortable design with a hint of elegance. Professionally suitable with a touch of cool. We like it.

The VAIO's 16:9, 1080p digital window fades to black if you look at it from too far below, and bleeds a dingy yellow if you look down upon it from on high. Unless you're eye level with the keyboard or peering down from a 150-degree angle, however, you won't see anything amiss -- the display's hinge doesn't tilt far enough back to reveal its fault. These nitpicks notwithstanding, the F's LED backlit display boasts sharp, vibrant colors and excellent horizontal viewing angles. There's a slight loss of contrast at perpendicular perspectives, but if you regularly look at your monitor sideways, you've got bigger problems than an offset light / dark ratio. Web videos, Blu-ray movies, video games, documents and webpages all looked marvelous. The display is even fairly readable in direct sunlight, thanks to an anti-glare coating and a bright backlight. We can't complain.

Sony laptops have been rocking chicklet keyboards for some time now, and this backlit typewriter is no exception. The F Series' kyes puts up just a smidge or resistance, but not nearly enough to give one pause. The keys bounce back with a light spring, subconsciously encouraging you to type a bit more vigor than you might on a MacBook Pro's softer keyboard.

When a rig holds the title of "desktop replacement," you can usually assume a few things: it's probably going to pack a punch, and it's probably not going very far without an AC adapter. Our machine, running a Intel Core i7-2670QM processor clocked at 2.20GHz (3.10GHz with Turbo Boost) and rocking a NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M GPU, didn't disappoint on the former, and predictably lived up to the latter. The VAIO took about 50 seconds to boot, and when it did, we piled 56 open tabs across 5 web browser windows, each with at least one tab dedicated to streaming video content from Netflix, YouTube or SouthPark Studios alongside IRC, chat clients, word processors, a Blu-Ray movie and a fully playable session of Team Fortress 2 running in a window -- the notebook didn't stutter until we tried to throw an instance of GTA IV into the mix. The few hiccups we did hit in our daily usage were usually a result of our own jittery internet connection, or a result of our hands accidentally scraping the trackpad mid-keystroke.

If you're looking for a desktop replacement that doesn't break the bank, the Sony VAIO F Series isn't a bad choice -- it packs a satisfying punch, has a gorgeous display and can be had for under a grand. A low-end configuration isn't going to replace a hardcore gaming machine, but it'll pack enough of a wallop to keep you fragging with the current-generation games, with reasonable concessions. You aren't going to get too far with its two-hour battery life, but you can't expect too much more out of a desktop replacement. Despite a set of disappointing, average speakers and a touch button that ruins an otherwise stellar trackpad, there isn't too much to complain about in the F series -- it's a solid, affordable rig that can hold its own for multimedia enthusiasts and gamers who can't quite pony up the dough for a bleeding edge machine. Could you hate a laptop that makes you think twice about uninstallingbloatware pre-installed software? We can't.