Sony VAIO F13 review

It's that time of year when Sony's VAIO laptops queue up for a specification bump, and Sony's F Series has now reached its third generation. You'd be hard-pressed to tell from looking at it, though. From the outside, Sony's 16.4in desktop replacement hasn't changed a bit.

It isn't that it's in dire need of a ground-up redesign. It's no match for Apple's MacBook Pro in the looks department, but it's still a fine-looking laptop, and the F Series has an air of quality that many would do well to emulate. Its chassis feels stout and flex-free, and is worth paying the weight penalty for - this 3kg laptop is unlikely to be a welcome travelling partner on all but the shortest of journeys.

That sturdy build is matched with superb ergonomics. The Scrabble-tile keyboard is simply superb, with a spacious layout, great feel and, unlike Asus' similarly sized N53JN, not even the slightest hint of undue squish. Spreadsheet fans will be mighty glad of the numeric keypad alongside.

Despite appearances, Sony has made a few tweaks here and there, the most interesting of which is the introduction of USB 3 on the F Series. The two ports on the laptop's left-hand side now reach up to USB 3's nippy transfer speeds, which is a welcome sight for a desktop replacement. Now, at least, backing up the 500GB hard disk won't be a painfully slow process.

The processor and graphics chipset have been upgraded too. The processor in question remains one of the older 45nm Core i7s, namely the 1.73GHz i7-740QM. It's quick, but despite having four cores to the two of the newer Core i5 and Core i7 models, it lags a little behind the newer generation. Still, a result of 1.54 in our benchmarks is still pretty fast by any standard, and few are likely to find themselves limited by the amount of power on tap.