Sony Vaio FW31Z/J

Sony's Vaio laptops are well known for their styling, so it was a slight surprise to find that the FW31Z/J doesn't look particularly special from the outside.

It's not particularly curvy and in truth it looks more like one of Sony's cheaper sub-£500 models. Look closer, though, and it's a different matter.

The case is very thin for such a large computer and inside there are curves to the sides of the keyboard and a couple of nice cylindrical sections at the back (the power supply plugs into one and the power button is on the other).

The screen on the FW31 is a little wider than you might expect. It's a 16.4in display but it has the same aspect ratio as a widescreen television, which means that if you were to watch a film on it, you'd see it in the same shape as on a widescreen television (normal computer screens, even widescreen ones, either cut bits off the picture or show small black bars to compensate).

It's an impressive screen, with deep, dark colours and clear text reproduction. Although there is no anti-glare coating it's not particularly troubled by reflected bright lights, which was impressive, and something few manufacturers manage to pull off.

In fact, movie viewing is pretty much what this computer is designed for. The laptop comes with a Blu-ray disc drive that can read and record the new format discs (including the latest movie discs) along with all CDs and DVDs.

The pre-installed Vista Home Premium operating system includes the Media Center program that's very good for enjoying music and video (one disappointment, though, is that the computer doesn't include a TV tuner). The built-in speakers were better than we expected, although not up to the quality of dedicated speakers or headphones.

The processor is a fairly fast Intel Core 2 Duo T9550, and there's an impressive 4GB of memory along with a 500GB hard disk for storage. That's a formidable combination, allowing the laptop to easily handle any standard home task such as video editing, as well as offering plenty of space to store the files you create.

The ATI Radeon HD3650 graphics card allows it to handle standard and high-definition video without any problems, but it's not so hot on games performance. We were able to run recent games by turning down the quality settings, but this is more of a movie computer rather than a gaming one.

The keyboard and trackpad were very impressive, with good deep keys that allowed us to type for a while without any discomfort. There are three USB ports on the same side as the disc drive, plus on the other a Firewire socket for connecting a camcorder, a VGA socket for connecting a monitor and an HDMI socket for attaching the computer to a flat-panel television, should you find the built-in screen, not up to scratch for watching films. The latter can also be used to hook it up to monitors that have DVI connections, using an adapter.

Coming with a memory card reader, wireless network and Bluetooth access, along with Sony media software, the FW31Z/J is a good performer for movie fans who want a powerful all-round computer.