Sony Vaio RT2SY all-in-one PC

Sony’s Vaio RT2SY is part of its all-in-one range, based around a flat-panel screen. It looks better than most all-in-one PCs and outperforms them too, but at a hefty price.

The RT2SY’s appearance is brutal rather than aesthetic, with sharp edges and a matte-black finish.
Housed behind the giant monitor is a PC based around an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 processor running at 2.66GHz, with 4GB of PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2 memory. Windows Vista Ultimate Edition 64-bit ensures all this memory can be used.

This specification is superior to the average all-in-one PC, which often use low-powered Intel Atom processors, as evidenced by its excellent PCmark Vantage score of 5,214.

The 25.5in WSXGA+ X-Black screen is built to a high standard and has a native resolution of 1,920x1,080 pixels, supporting 1080p video and is ideal for watching movies from its Blu-ray drive.

With an Nvidia Geforce 9600M graphics chip, the RT2SY can run games too. It might struggle with the most demanding titles, such as Crysis, but will produce respectable frame rates with older games.

The RT2SY also includes a Windows Media Center remote control, a small wireless keyboard and a mouse. There is also an Avermedia A311 DVB-T TV tuner for recording digital television. To store recorded video, a Seagate 1TB 7,200rpm hard disk is built in. The optical drive will play Blu-ray discs and record to DVDs, so you can burn your content to disc to keep the hard disk from filling up too quickly or transfer stored video quickly to an external device via the eSata port.

The Vaio RT2SY has an excellent screen and is very powerful, but the price is so high you could buy a faster computer and an even bigger widescreen television, for the same money.