Alike the predecessor model, also the Vaio VGN-FZ31Z has one dominating colour: silver. Due to its tapered front edge, this notebook, which is actually 35.5 cm x 25.4 cm x 3.5 cm big and weighs 2.8 kg, appears to be smaller and lighter. Nevertheless, the Sony Vaio VGN-FZ31Z does not belong to the heaviest 15.4 inch notebooks. It's rather a compact multimedia notebook with 15.4 inch display.

The square-edged lid is supported by self-locking hinges. This locking system works flawless. However, the opening angles is limited to 140° - this is a disadvantage if you want to work with a notebook stand. Overall, the lid of the reviewed notebook appeared to be rather solid. The workmanship is also good. Only the silver finish seems to be rather sensitive.

Otherwise, the case of the Sony Vaio VGN-FZ31Z is very flexural rigid and creaks only a little bit if you pick the notebook up. The workmanship is good and precise. Alike in the reviews of predecessor notebooks the haptics of the case is again good and strikes the high-quality impression. Unfortunately the battery is rather loose and, therefore, clatters, which is a rather frequent problem.

The interface equipment of the Sony Vaio VGN-FZ31Z is as we are used to. It is out of all reason that a fast Gigabit-LAN interface is still missing. However, a really fast wireless LAN is available: Because it supports Draft-n standard transfer rates of up to 300 MBit/s are possible. Fast Bluetooth v2.0 EDR also belongs to the standard equipment. The HDMI port and the blu ray drive allow watching HD films. Furthermore, there are three USB ports, FireWire, VGA, S-Video, the usual audio ports, a memory stick reader, and an SD card reader built-in.

Directly compared to our high-quality reference screen, a 20 inch MVA-LCD Viewsonic VP2030b, by looking at reference pictures, we were not pleased that the tint changed with the brightness level. At maximum brightness we felt that the picture is too red. When we turned the brightness level down, the picture appeared to have a green tint. So, skin colour in demanding portraits is neither realistic nor reproducible. The X-black panel of the Vaio VGN-FZ31Z is therefore not ideal for demanding photo editing, but, can be recommended for watching films, multimedia applications and games. Here it is less obvious that there is a tint and we liked the vivid and brilliant colours.

As already mentioned above the Sony Vaio VGN-FZ31Z is equipped with a big 300 GB SATA hard disk by Fujitsu. The MHX2300BT comes with 8MB Cache, which is typical for this category, but, its revolution speed is only 4200 rpm, which is rather slow. Therefore, also the average transfer rate, measured with HDTune, of 32.5 MB/s is rather low for a current 2.5 inch notebook hard disk. So, the MHX2300BT is too slow and therewith unfortunately not an ideal choice for multimedia, games, and videos. According to Sony the built-in Blu-ray drive, a Matshita BD-MLT UJ-200S should be able to burn single-layer BD-Rs and BD-REs with double speed and dual-layer media with single speed.

The GeForce 8600M GS by nVidia is only limited fit for current demanding PC games. But, older games like, e.g., Battlefield 2, Doom 3, and F.E.A.R are up to the native resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and high picture quality no problem for the GeForce 8600M GS. New games, like Crysis, and World in Conflict (WiC) run only smoothly with low details.

In the Futuremark 3DMark06 this notebook achieves an average of 2830 points with the nVidia ForceWare 101.28 (7.15.11.0128) driver. So, the Sony Vaio VGN-FZ31Z is only appropriate for those who only play sporadically. Due to the GeForce 8600M GS the video performance is sufficient for multimedia and video applications. The same is true for demanding HD media. However, also here the slow hard disk is a disadvantage.

System Noise

Alike the Sony Vaio FZ21E also the Vaio FZ31Z is considering the noise level only a rather quiet notebook. Neither with office load nor under load the fan gets especially loud. In idle mode we measure low 32.5 db(A) and with average load clearly audible, but, regarding noise level not yet annoying 34.8 dB(A).

But, there's still a disadvantage: The rotation speed of the fan varies frequently. The raising and falling noise is not that obvious in idle mode, but, sensitive ears can already be annoyed by this fan behaviour if the load is only average (34.8 dB(A)). Under full load this notebook looses points, because the noise level is 42.5 dB(A) which are accompanied by a high-frequency noise. A 15.4 inch multimedia notebook should be more user-friendly in this aspect.

Temperature

Compared to its predecessors, the Sony Vaio VGN-FZ31Z also gets clearly warmer. At the top side and at the bottom side we measure up to 39° Celsius a little bit below the vent holes. Nevertheless, the average temperature is below 34° Celsius at the bottom side and at the top side, which is absolutely alright.

Many thanks to Easynotebooks.de, who kindly provided us with the reviewed notebook. You can configure and buy this notebook here.