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 Sony VAIO A290Maximum entertainment for the deep-pocketed. Price:
$2,899
Sony's new VAIO A290 laptop is a full-fledged entertainment center and a desktop replacement notebook rolled into one of the sexiest designs we've seen. It features a dazzling 17-inch widescreen display, an external AV dock with an integrated TV tuner/recorder, and an excellent set of external speakers. At $2,899, this system is expensive, but with all of the components that it can replace-TiVo, TV, stereo-this portable powerhouse is more than worth the premium.
Measuring 16 inches wide and weighing 8.6 pounds, the A290 isn't for frequent flyers, but this extreme width allows the system to incorporate a huge 17-inch screen. This is a widescreen display that offers WUXGA resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. Whether you're watching DVDs, editing digital photos, or working with a large spreadsheet, you'll love having that many pixels at your disposal. After you see the terrific screen, you'll notice the VAIO A290 is one of the few laptops on the market that actually looks better with its lid open. While its housing is the typical metallic gray, it features a cool inset area colored in black on each side of its base. The left-side inset holds several ports, while the right inset contains a DVD burner. The base also slopes down at the sides to add to the system's cool look. At the heart of the system is a 1.7-GHz Intel Pentium M 735 processor, coupled with a full gigabyte of DDR memory. Although this is a power-conserving chip that helped the VAIO A290 last for 2.5 hours in our MobileMark battery life test, it didn't have any trouble with the tasks we threw its way. Encoding MP3s, editing photos, and rendering digital video were no problem for the A290. When faced with productivity applications like Outlook, Word, Excel, and Photoshop, the system never hesitated, making quick work of all of them. The MobileMark tests supported our real-world performance assessment, giving the system a solid score of 195. We were also able to run these applications simul-taneously without causing the CPU to bog down. We were really hoping the system's graphics processor would be a good match for the A290's fantastic display, and we weren't disappointed. We loaded Unreal Tournament onto it and were very happy with the detail and the fluidity of the gameplay rendered by the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 GPU. Running full speed with our machine gun firing full-bore, we didn't see any hiccups between frames. The system was easily able to crack the 10000 mark in 3DMark2001. While gaming on the A290, we realized that not only is the system's screen truly excellent, but its integrated speakers are also much better than average for a laptop. To make the sound even better, Sony includes a port replicator called the AV Entertainment Dock that features a built-in amplifier and comes with a pair of large, high-quality external Sony speakers. In addition to its audio capabilities, this dock features VGA, DVI, Ethernet, parallel, and four USB 2.0 ports to let you connect all your desk-bound peripherals to the A290 simply by placing the system in the dock. Our favorite feature of the AV Entertainment Dock is its built-in TV tuner. Coupled with its included remote control and the system's large screen, we could sit back and watch TV programs very comfortably. Thanks to the time-shifting capabilities of the included Sony Giga Pocket Personal Video Recorder software, you can watch, record, pause, rewind, and fast-forward live TV. With the system's big 100GB hard drive, you can store dozens of hours of recorded shows on the system. The downside to this drive, however, is its slow 4,200-rpm rotational speed, which slows disk throughput a bit. You can also use Sony Click to DVD and DVGate Plus to copy any video or other data on the A290 onto a recordable DVD. Unlike other laptops, the VAIO A290 doesn't settle for ordinary 4.7GB DVD-Rs and DVD+Rs. Instead, it also supports 8.5GB double-layer DVD+R (DVD+R DL) discs, although the burn speed is a bit slow, at just 2.4X (3.2 Mbps). For typical DVD-R and DVD+R burning, the recording speed comes in at a zippy 8X (10.8 Mbps). CD burning is similarly speedy, hitting 24X (3.6 Mbps) for both CD-Rs and CD-RWs. Although we're less than thrilled with the mere 1-year warranty, there's really nothing else to dislike about the system. The Sony VAIO A290 is a great PC and a top-notch piece of consumer electronics. Compare Prices | Sony VAIO A290 Specifications
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