HardwareCentral - Sony Vaio VA10G Review

Sony Vaio VA10G Review

The Missing Letter: H

December 23, 2005
By Eric Grevstad

Featuring Sony's XBrite glossy-black, high-contrast technology, the Vaio's 20-inch LCD proved wonderfully sharp and bright for text and graphics applications and virtually perfect for widescreen DVD movies. Our test unit was free of bad or blacked-out pixels.

The 36-pound, 23 by 18 by 10-inch PC has no monitor height, pivot, or swivel adjustment. At first, we thought the LCD didn't even offer tilt adjustment, but it does -- you just have to grasp the top part of the panel and pull or push it forcefully.

The display's 1,366 by 768 resolution is high enough for HDTV (at least in the 720p as opposed to 1080i format), but -- to explain our line about a home run turning into a triple -- the VA10G, while an admirable TV set today, is not HDTV-ready for tomorrow.

Besides featuring a standard NTSC instead of digital TV tuner, the Vaio has neither component (YPbPr) nor HDMI video inputs to connect an HDTV cable or satellite set-top box, although it comes with two IR blasters or dongles to link its external USB receiver to a pair of set-top boxes.

Instead, the TV tuner card offers only coaxial, S-Video, and composite (RCA video and left and right audio) inputs, without even the FM radio antenna input of some rival Media Centers.

Nearby you'll find Ethernet, modem, and line-out ports, as well as three USB 2.0 ports; microphone and headphone jacks; a Type II PC Card slot; and the on/off button for the 802.11b/g WiFi radio. Another USB port and an IEEE 1394 (FireWire to you, i.Link to Sony) port join the main power button on the system's right side.

Up front, in addition to the Matsushita DVD burner (8X DVD+R, 4X DVD+RW or DVD-R, 2.4X double-layer DVD+R), are Smart Media, Secure Digital, CompactFlash, xD, and Memory Stick flash-card slots, plus a monitor on/off switch for when you're just listening to music.

As you'd expect from a closed-box, all-in-one system, the Vaio isn't very expandable: You can remove a top panel and a few screws to access the DDR-2/533 memory sockets (each holding a 512MB module), and with some fairly major surgery can install a second hard disk alongside the 250GB Western Digital unit (a 7,200-rpm SATA drive with 8MB buffer).

Entertainment at Your Fingertips

The Sony's lightweight keyboard, like its mouse and Media Center remote control, uses two AA batteries (there are six in the box to get you started); a small LCD at the top edge provides a battery-life gauge.

Designed for use in your lap, it has a comfortable typing feel and extra buttons for launching your Web browser, e-mail, and a third program as well as controlling audio volume or putting the VA10G into sleep mode. Like many laptop keyboards, however, it uses a Fn key and the cursor arrows in lieu of dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys, though there is a numeric keypad with those functions at its corners (if you turn Num Lock off).

The optical mouse has a stylish egg or teardrop shape. Its convex instead of straight sides leave you holding the mouse by its edges, but that ergonomic oddity is offset by an extra-smooth scroll wheel. Like the keyboard, the mouse has an on/off button to save battery power when you're using the system as a TV -- relying, as we said, on its infrared remote. The latter is cleanly designed and not crammed with too many buttons.

Sony preloads the VA10G with its usual, ample software library, including its beginner-friendly Click To DVD authoring program, SonicStage jukebox and audio mastering applications, Vaio Media for sharing content over a home network, and an image converter to move photos or videos to a PlayStation Portable. Even the default screen saver is a multimedia showoff called LifeFlow, which combines a slide show, MP3 playlist, world clock, and RSS news feed.

Other software includes Intuit's Quicken, Symantec's Norton Internet Security (the 90-day version), InterVideo's WinDVD, the Roxio CD/DVD burner, and Microsoft Works plus a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office.

We know Windows XP Media Center Edition hasn't grown to accommodate cable or satellite HDTV yet (the feature will arrive, buried under an avalanche of DRM and copy-protection code, in 2006). But we still wish the Vaio could be hooked up to a set-top box for enjoying HDTV programs on its superb 16:9-aspect-ratio screen, as well as enjoying its regular-definition tuner and personal video recorder.

Otherwise, it's genuinely hard to find fault with the VA10G. It's the slickest, most stylish TV/PC to date -- and at home in any room of the house.