Sony VAIO L21 review

Mike Jennings Read more February 23, 2011

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Of all the manufacturers to attempt touchscreen all-in-ones, few can match the consistent success enjoyed by Sony. We’ve been impressed by previous VAIO L Series offerings and  now it’s moving to the next level: the L21 is the first all-in-one we’ve seen with a Sandy Bridge processor.

The first thing you notice is the 24in Full HD touchscreen. It’s accurate and responsive, and the LED backlight provides vivid colours and razor-sharp detail without backlight bleed.

It also has some innovative control features. Tapping to the left and right of the central Sony logo below the screen switches between photos, songs or videos; trailing a finger up and down the right-hand bezel zooms in and out of pictures. A tap anywhere on the left hand side opens Microsoft’s onscreen keyboard, and prodding the bottom-left and top-right corners switches to the desktop and closes the current program.

That’s not the most interesting improvement, though. Sony’s real party piece is gesture control. Using the L21’s 1.3mp webcam, a horizontal wave of the hand navigates songs, photos or movies, while a downward gesture controls pause and play. You can see it in action in the video below.

It’s great fun – just ask the crowd that gathered in the office, demanding we test it with our heads and a plastic banana (both worked). But it’s also limited: the gestures don’t work outside of Sony’s VAIO software, and only the two mentioned gestures are available.

The touch controls are of much more use than the gestures, but the rest of Sony’s software is pretty slick. It’s no longer based on the XrossMediaBar that underpins the PlayStation 3. Instead, it uses tabs to manage music, movie and photo collections, with a Now Playing area that augments your selected media with suggestions pulled from both local and web-based content.

It’s one of the best all-in-one suites we’ve used, but it isn’t perfect. The lack of a TV tuner means there’s no integration with Windows Media Center, and it’s quite sluggish, too – perhaps the fault of the Nvidia GeForce GT 540M graphics chip, which was originally designed for laptops.

That chip clearly won’t match most desktop PCs, but compared to the world of all-in-one PCs it did okay in our gaming benchmarks. It averaged 33fps in our 1,600 x 900 Medium quality Crysis test, before failing to return playable frame rates in the High quality tests at any resolution. It’s usable then, but considering it’s a 24in screen with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, games won’t look particularly good at such low settings and resolutions.

The Sandy Bridge processor is also a mobile part, albeit a high-end 2.3GHz Core i5-2410M. Thus, its overall benchmark score of 1.72 would be great for a laptop but doesn’t stand out even for an all-in-one: Apple’s A-Listed 27in iMac (see p26) scored 1.89, while the Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z (web ID: 360205) managed 1.94.

The rest of the L21’s specification is geared towards entertainment. A Blu-ray drive is augmented by a pair of 5.5W speakers with enough volume to fill the largest of living rooms, along with a fair amount of bass. The mid-range is decent, and the bass doesn’t intrude on it too much.

Elsewhere, there’s 4GB of RAM, a 1TB hard disk and 802.11bgn Wi-Fi. The left side of the machine sports a pair of USB 3 ports alongside mini-FireWire and a card reader. There are three further USB 2 ports plus HDMI input and output sockets on the rear. The only real disappointment is that absent TV tuner, which would have added an extra dimension as a stylish living room PC.

It isn’t too expensive for a top-end VAIO, either. We’re used to seeing these PCs cost more than equivalents from other brands, but the L21 will cost a fairly reasonable £1,200 inc VAT. Although that’s close to Apple’s majestic 27in iMac – which undoubtedly has a better screen – this Sony is every bit as appealing to a different type of consumer. It’s a more specialised entertainment all-in-one, and if you don’t mind adding a USB TV tuner, the VAIO L21 ticks a lot of boxes.