Sony Vaio VGN-FE31H review

One answer is to buy docking station model VGP-PRFE1 for your office, which duplicates these ports and also offers composite video output, DVI-D and optical audio, but it will cost you about £160. The inclusion of both PC Card and ExpressCard slots means that you're covered in terms of expansion, however the FE31H doesn't have Bluetooth, so you're likely to use one of the ports or slots to connect an adaptor.

The Nvidia GeForce 7400 Go graphics adaptor uses up to 256MB of system memory and produce a 3DMark 2006 score that is fairly pathetic, however we were able to play Far Cry without any problems at the laptop's native 1,280x800-pixel resolution. If you don't get too ambitious with your gaming you'll find that the graphics are perfectly acceptable, while the widescreen X-black screen is both sharp and clear. This budget model only uses a single lamp in the backlight compared to two lights in the more expensive models, but we were very happy with its performance.

Using the Nvidia graphics adaptor, rather than an integrated Intel chip, means that the FE31H can support the Aero interface of Windows Vista Premium and Sony includes a free upgrade to the new version of Windows in the price. Of course, you'll have to wait until Vista is released to the public before you can get the upgrade.

Sony includes a stack of software but much of it is trial stuff that has a limited life, including products from Symantec and Microsoft Office 2003. You get full versions of Microsoft Works 8.5, WinDVD 5, Adobe Photoshop Elements 4, Premiere Elements 2 and Acrobat 7.0 Elements, which will cover the basic tasks between them.

Performance
We've seen so many Centrino laptops that it's fairly easy to predict their performance and the Vaio VGN-FE31H gave us no real surprises, barring a slightly above-average PCMark 2005 score. Its 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 1GB of DDR2 RAM helped it clock up a very solid 3,349, which makes it slightly quicker than the 20-inch Acer Aspire 9802WKMi.

The standard 4800mAh battery lasted for 2 hours 32 minutes with constant use, which is quite acceptable. You'd probably get 4 hours of life from the optional extended VGP-BPL2C 7800mAh battery, but as it costs £279 we doubt there will be many takers.

In most respects the Nvidia graphics showed little advantage over the Intel GMA950 graphics adaptor that you typically find in a Centrino laptop, except that this Sony is fully ready for Windows Vista Premium. It scored 801 in 3DMark 2006.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Kate Macefield