Sony's VGC-V2S is an unusual PC in that it looks more like a 20in widescreen TV than a conventional mid-sized tower. Clearly, the Vaio team has attempted to develop a crossover product that's as much at home in your living room as it is in your office.

The Sony is a display mounted on a pedestal housing a regular PC power supply. Take a walk around the V2S and you'll spot the speakers in the wide bezel under the screen, as well as the power point on the pedestal.

Look at the right-hand side and you'll find the slim dual-format DVD writer, the power switch, a wireless Lan switch and a Memory Stick Pro slot. Peeking under two flaps reveals a PC Card slot, two USB2, one mini Firewire and audio jacks for speakers and microphone. While that's an adequate collection of ports, it's not impressive.

Slide the rear cover upwards by a couple of inches and you'll find loads more ports neatly hidden away. Two more USB sockets, an extra mini Firewire, 10/100 Lan, S-video, a 56K modem, coaxial video and UHF TV inputs as well as optical S/PDIF output. Much better.

Inside, Sony has used an unusual mix of hardware on an Asus motherboard. The processor is a 3.2GHz Prescott Pentium 4, but the chipset is the previous generation Intel 865PE. The lack of Sata and PCI-Express is no hindrance in an integrated desktop machine, but as the 512MB of memory comes in a single module of PC3200, there's no dual-channel memory support here. Although the Soundmax audio is good quality you'll need a set of external speakers to get decent sound.

The integrated TV tuner gives you the usual five analogue channels, but although you can record programmes to the hard disk, you can't watch another channel while doing so. You can also stream media both to and from this and other compatible Sony systems using the Vaio Media Integrated Server 3.1 and Vaio Media 3.1 software.

A Sysmark 2004 score of 179 isn't too impressive for a 3.2GHz PC, and slower than the Advent T1 we looked at last month. However, the Nvidia mobile FX Go5700 graphics chip managed a 3Dmark03 score of 2,742, putting the Advent's Intel chip to shame. Games won't run anywhere near as well as on a similarly priced desktop, but the Sony has more than enough processing and graphics power for general office work.

You can use the Sony like a regular Windows XP PC with the wireless keyboard and mouse, or you can use the touchpad and mouse buttons on the keyboard wrist rest. You can also flip the hinged wrist rest forward as a keyboard cover, leaving the notebook controls exposed.

When you're using the Vaio Zone software to watch TV or to listen to music, you can switch over to the infrared remote control which is much like you'd get with any Sony TV or DVD player. Effectively, Sony has built a Media Center PC without Microsoft and it's done a neat job.

The build quality and the peripherals are beyond reproach, and in operation this PC is quiet. Then there's the wide 20in screen with its 1,280 x 768 resolution, which is big enough to allow you to use the Sony at a distance of 2m or more. While there's no overcoming the fact that Windows isn't good at powering consumer products, the VGC-V2S makes a courageous effort.

Contact: Sony 08705 424 424
www.vaio.sony-europe.com

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