Sony VAIO review: VGN-AW21XY/Q

By Mike Jennings, 23 May 2009

Rating:

Price as reviewed:£2157 ex VAT

Only an elite few machines soar above the £2,000 mark, and those that do need something special to justify the outlay. This Sony VAIO just about does it.

Performance continues the already-impressive trend, with a high-powered Intel 2.93GHz Core 2 Duo T9800 processor helping the Sony to a 2D benchmark result of 1.51 - it's among the fastest laptops we've ever tested. And with an Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics chip on board, there's gaming potential too.
With a machine like this, it’s possible to kick back and let you hair down once in a while with some high octane gaming action. The VAIO returned figures of 79fps and 24fps in our low and medium-quality ‘Crysis’ benchmarks. The scores aren't the best we've ever seen - the Asus W90 with its pair of Radeon HD 4870 chips is quicker - but there's still more potential here than with most laptops.
Elsewhere, a Blu-ray writer is a cut above the read-only drives that are in the majority of HD-equipped machines, and the dual DVB-T TV tuner is another rarity that is rarely seen in either desktops or laptops, and its able to record and view different channels at the same time.
Also worth mentioning is the innovative storage. The main disk is a 500GB Fujitsu model running at 4,200rpm, but the operating system - in this case it's Windows Vista Ultimate - is deposited on a pair of 64GB Samsung SSD drives running in RAID 0. It's far more imaginative than most laptops, and the result is consistently faster access for vital system files.
All of this luxury isn't without its downsides, however, and battery life is chief among these. The 4,800mAh power pack lasted just a mere two hours in our light use test. The VGN-AW21XY/Q is expensive, too: £2,157 exc VAT is an awful lot to spend on any laptop, even one this powerful.
But while this mix of innovation and quality isn't cheap, it's a combination that also makes this particular VAIO an unparalleled success. The dual-SSD design is both pioneering and practical, and the RGB LED screen is the best in the business. The rest of the VAIO is just as good, combining impeccable style with awesome power and almost every feature you could conceivably need. It may cost £2,157 before VAT but, if money is no object, this is one of the best desktop replacements around.