Raw power – refined style. This is the tagline that Sony gives its FZ line of VAIO notebooks. Today we’ll be looking at the FZ21M, a 15.4” notebook with a Blu-ray drive that’s meant to be a mixture between a workstation and a portable entertainment centre. At a recommended retail price of £899 / €1.199, it’s well out of ’entry-level’ notebooks and in the thick of the mainstream. Can it strike that balance between work and entertainment and does it have what it takes to set itself apart from the competition?

FZ Line

Sony’s VAIO selection of notebooks ranges from small and ultraportable to mobile entertainment centers. Today we’re looking at a member of the FZ line, specifically the FZ21M, which Sony positions as a portable HD Video station – aside from being a normal mobile workstation, obviously. The VAIO VGN-FZ21M is a 15.4” widescreen laptop, which gives you enough space to work while still remaining portable. It uses a magnesium-alloy chassis that brings its weight to 2.8 kg, which is pretty much standard for its class.

Sporting an Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 at 2 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, a dedicated Nvidia Geforce 8400 GT graphics card, and Windows Vista Home Edition, it’s one of the better equipped laptops, but it also doesn’t feature anything truly extraordinary. What sets it apart from many other notebooks is its optical drive, which can read Blu-ray discs in addition to being a conventional CD/DVD burner. Since Sony is the driving force behind the Blu-ray disc, this is hardly a surprising choice.

VAIO notebooks have a reputation for good design, both where functionality is concerned and when it comes to looks. The FZ line is, indeed, pleasant to look at. On the outside, it sports a matt silver finish, while the inside is silver and black. The design isn’t as sleek as some others out there, but it is simple and elegant – classic, even. Sony chose to go with a glossy display on this model, which we will cover in more depth in a moment. Where functionality is concerned, the FZ21M does a lot of things right, but we did wonder about a few choices.