With the inundation of Ultrabooks in the tech space over the last three years, you’d wonder why old-school laptops still exist! Yes, those boxy, ugly-looking things that you now wouldn’t be caught dead with! Except, they are neither ugly nor boxy anymore. And while they are definitely not as sleek and sexy as Ultrabooks they are still powerful enough to replace that age-old PC of yours. New-age laptops might not be here to stay for long, but there’s no denying they are still here and there still exists a considerable market for it. We picked up the Sony Fit Vaio 15 series, which seems to be made for the market we just mentioned. And we see how user-friendly a device it is, despite not being an Ultrabook.
Build
One thing about the Fit 15 is that despite it having no flab really it still isn’t very portable by today’s standards (close to 2.6 kilograms). The shape and weight is such that you might end up using it only at home, maybe as a PC replacement. But, as a daily-commute laptop, it doesn’t score a lot of points. Hence, keep in mind that it is not an Ultrabook, if that’s the sort of thing you are looking for.
Almost all the ports on the Fit 15 are located on the left hand side of the body, most of the right being occupied by the optical drive. You have the power port, an Ethernet jack, HDMI-out, three USB 3.0 ports, a 3.5 mm jack, a memory card reader and a Kensington lock slot, which pretty much covers all your connectivity requirements from a regular laptop. The Fit 15 has a brushed metal lid but the black body camouflages the finish a bit. There’s a matching brushed-aluminium palm rest, laid a bit off-centre, skewed to the left of the laptop.
Layout
The keypad on the Fit 15 a full-sized one and is comfortable, if not expansive, to type on. The travel is evident but subdued. The keyboard wins some brownie points for being a backlit one, which made it easier to navigate on PDFs or web sites with the lights switched off. The trackpad is also decently responsive. It didn’t snag when we scrolled or used a two-finger pinch to zoom in to a photograph. Although the version of the Fit 15 we tested wasn’t touch-enabled (on the display), the trackpad itself supports a bunch of Windows 8-related gestures, like swiping in from the right to go to Settings or Devices. The only difficult bit about the trackpad was the fact that using the right or left click on it took a bit of effort, enough for it to feel like we’re pushing harder than we normally do on a regular trackpad. Also, initially we kept fumbling every time we wanted to use the trackpad because of the slightly skewed position of the trackpad. But it’s no biggie. Apart from the regular keyboard, the only extra buttons are the power button and the VAIO Assist key.
Multimedia
The display on the 15-inch laptop is 720p, which is a bit mediocre considering more and more laptops, including Sony’s own, are being built with high-res (1080p) displays. That, however, didn’t seem to be taking away from the Fit 15’s visual experience. A series of HD videos that we streamed from Comedy Central’s YouTube channel looked great on-screen. The audio too was pretty clear and loud enough for a couple of people to sit down and enjoy some stand-up shows. The viewing angles were on par with most other laptops available in the market.
Although the Fit 15 comes in a lot of permutations and combinations when it comes to processors, our test unit ran on an Intel Core i3 engine with an over-clocking capability of 1.9 GHz. The system had 2GB of RAM and an Intel HD Graphics 4000 to take care of the graphics on the device. The laptop had no heating issues at all during the review. The vents are placed not in the bottom of the body but quite unusually between the screen and the keyboard. Another plus for the Fit 15 Is that it has a very short boot-up time – an average of about 12 seconds. On the flipside, the battery life on the machine isn’t worth writing home about. You’d be lucky if you can manage to squeeze more than 5 hours of usage from the device.
The verdict
While it’s definitely not the most portable new kid on the block (in its defence, it doesn’t claim so either!), the Sony Vaio Fit 15 manages to accomplish all the essential tasks that you would want to execute on an at-home laptop. It’s built to handle multimedia well and the typing experience while not the very best we’ve come across, is still far from being a deal-breaker. The only problem is a rather short-lived battery life, but hey, with a laptop that heavy, how long are you going to be away from a power socket anyway!
Rs 34,990 onwards
Love – Multimedia capability, quick responses
Hate – Battery life, bulky build