Sony VAIO VGC-V2S Tyldesley

Not all PC manufacturers aspire to £499-plus-free-printer-scanner-kitchen-sink ignominy. The awesome Voodoo PC Rage F5 is proof that some companies are intent on building PCs as an art form. It should not come as any surprise that Sony also considers itself above the vast swathe of beige PC builders. In John Nathan's biography of the company, former CEO Norio Ohga talks about its approach. 'Sony must always be extraordinary,' Ohga says. 'I always asked myself what was essential to the company. I find myself thinking about the Chinese character san, which means to shine dazzlingly like the sun. It's not simply a matter of brightness. San means an extraordinary radiance.' It was Ohga's successor, Nobuyuki Idei, who spearheaded the VAIO programme within Sony, and the new VAIO media PC, the VGC-V2S, certainly has something of Ohga's 'san' quality about it. It's an exceptionally beautiful computer. The 20in widescreen X-black TFT that dominates it is tastefully framed by a grey and black bezel, while it seems to float on its circular silver base.

The VGC-V2S isn't just beautiful, either; it's also very well engineered because, despite looking like a TV, it contains a reasonably powerful PC. All the components are mounted behind the screen. Inside is a custom Asus motherboard, which uses Intel's last-generation 865PE chipset, with a 3.2GHz Pentium 4e and 512MB of PC3200 RAM. There are two models in the VGC line, and the V2S is the higher-spec unit, so it has 802.11g wireless LAN and a 250GB Maxtor hard drive. This isn't the usual DiamondMax Plus 9 or 10 usually seen in PCs; instead it's from the MaXLine Plus II range, so it's apparently more reliable than DiamondMax drives. Squeezing all this into such a small space necessitates using laptop parts in places, so the DVD burner, although dual-layer, is a tardy 8x slimline model, while the graphics are supplied by the less than radiant Nvidia GeForce FX Go 5700 GPU. The PSU hides in the thick, but fully ventilated base that connects the main chassis to the swivel base.

Two 80mm fans on the back draw in cool air, which is then expelled through a vent that runs the entire length of the top of the screen. It's a very effective and quiet cooling system. Such a sleek piece of engineering does have its price, though, as it's almost impossible to get inside the VGC-V2S. Also, because a lot of the components have laptop origins, they aren't upgradable. Sony makes a small concession to this by including a Type II PC Card slot and a few USB 2 ports, but in terms of core components, you're stuck with what the VGC-V2S comes with. Despite the fact that it's an AV appliance, inputs and outputs are relatively stingy. There are no video output connections, and only S-Video and composite video inputs.

Although the technical specifications might not be that impressive, these constraints are worth it in terms of form factor. While there has been much discussion about media centre PCs, the VGC-V2S is one of the best attempts yet at putting the idea into practice. Thanks to its TV shape and fully integrated design, it offers an excellent experience from the moment you start tapping away on the wireless keyboard and mouse. The keyboard has very a neat jointed cover with an embedded trackpad. Leave it folded over the keyboard and it discreetly shields your living room from the QWERTY layout, while still giving you control over the desktop. Flip the cover back and the trackpad comes to rest in the traditional laptop position beneath the spacebar, allowing you full control over the PC.

When you first boot the VGC-V2S, it goes into Windows, with the screen running at a native resolution of 1,280 x 768. While this is a low resolution for a PC monitor, it means that from a distance, such as when you're sitting on the sofa, the desktop remains legible. Press a button on the remote, and it goes straight into the media functions.

The VGC-V2S runs Windows XP Home, not Media Center Edition 2005, so all the media functions are provided by the VAIO software, which offers similar features to MCE 2005: TV, the ability to pause live TV, DVD burning, and the recording and playback of DirectShow-compatible videos, pictures and music. Whereas MCE 2005 still feels like a computer program written in a really big font, Sony's software feels like an extension of a super-sophisticated telly. It certainly benefits from the same colour scheme as the VGC-V2S and a remote similar to those that ship with Sony TVs, so it's more natural to use than MCE 2005's cluttered controller. The VAIO software interface is easy to navigate and generally smooth. When you go down a menu level, the old level shifts to the left of the screen to accommodate the new one, so it's easy to know where you are in the programme. It's much more natural than MCE 2005's nauseous forward and backward motions.

There are, however, problems with the software and the biggest is the lack of an electronic programme guide. Although Sony partially atones for this by including the installer for TVTV's web-based guide, enabling all its functions requires paying a subscription, which is a far cry from MCE 2005's slick schedule. As a media device, the VGC-V2S provides an excellent experience. From the sofa, the hardware design appears flawless. It's whisper-quiet and, as with standalone Sony LCDs, the X-black screen delivers a gorgeous picture that's very sharp and bright, and the integrated 5W stereo speakers are as good as those of a typical TV.

However, for every moment that the VGC-V2S shines like the sun, there's another when a little cloud makes it seem far more like inconsistent spring weather than a brilliant summer. It's pretty stingy of Sony to only include an analogue TV tuner in a £1,600 PC - would a Freeview capability really have added so much to the cost? Annoyingly, there's only one tuner, so you can't change the channel while recording, although you can watch videos and DVDs. The Sony software reveals its only inconsistency when it comes to recording: you can leave the VGC-V2S on standby, but it sometimes springs into life, either to the desktop or to the TV, when it starts recording. If you've set it to record some late-night Kung Fu movie, it can be quite disturbing to wake up at 3am to the sounds of crashes, screams and threats coming from your lounge.

PERFORMANCE

If you're interested in the benchmark results then I can confidently say that this isn't the PC for you. The 3.2GHz Pentium 4e is great at video encoding, but having only 512MB of RAM and a laptop optical drive hindered the VGC-V2S when it came to the image editing and video encoding tests. If you want to play games on it, think about connecting a PlayStation 2, or getting another PC, as the GeForce FX 5700 Go is severely underpowered.

CONCLUSION

Whereas Microsoft has approached the media centre issue from a PC angle, Sony takes its cue from its experience in building consumer electronics devices. As a result, the VGC-V2S is brilliant as a TV. It's gorgeous, has decent functions and an excellent interface. As a PC, it's less successful: stingily specified, not upgradable and it costs an absolute fortune. As an experiment, it's illuminating. Whether or not it's bright enough to dazzle you out of £1,561 is another matter.

Author: Alex Watson

Sony VAIO VGC-V2S