Sony Vaio VGN-FZ21Z Laptop (Sony Vaio FZ21Z)

Member Name: tomTRR

Product:	Sony Vaio FZ21Z
Date:	04/08/09 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks, battery life, raw power, multi-tasking capabilities.

Disadvantages: Heavy at 2.8kg.

This is a brilliant laptop! I've had a range of laptops over the years, none have lasted me over a year, until now. I've had this Sony Vaio for almost 2 years with no problems.

Nice sleek style, very good feel and high quality finish. The panel above the keyboard is brushed aluminium.

This is definitely a multi-media laptop, it 15.4" TFT HD screen is brilliant for viewing HD videos and has the power to edit HD videos and pictures. The screen utilises Sony's X-Black LCD technology allowing the screen to reproduce vivid colours, 90% true colour.

It comes with a Blu-ray disc player, which, coupled with its HDMI output means it can be linked up to your full HD 1080p tv. The built in speakers are very good, I usually dislike laptop speakers but these are very good.

The only downside to this is the weight, 2.8kg. It is a little on the heavy side to be advertised as compact and portable. That is down to the user deciding what they are happy to carry around.

With it's powerful 2.2GHz processor, 2Gb of ram and the NVIDIA GeForce 8600m GS video card it puts some desktop computers to shame. It can handle some heavy CPU use programs with ease, e.g. photoshop, media players. It has no problem doing several things at once.

If you wish you can get 2Gb ram more for this laptop for a very little price. Be aware that if you are running Windows Vista 32-bit it will only recognise 3Gb of ram.

I would say this is a desktop replacement laptop. The battery life is surprisingly good for such a high spec machine, you could happily use it for just under 2 hours listening to music and doing some simple word processing. There is also a larger battery that can be bought to give even better battery life.

Just to give an idea of the level of games this machine will play, I tried to run Lost Planet and it ran quite slowly, so anything under the required specs would run perfectly on this laptop.

Summary: Very powerful desk-top replacement laptop with HD capabilities

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