Gadgetory

hi I'm rich brown senior editor for CNET today we're gonna take a look at Sony's 2012 edition of a vol series all in one now suddenly is trying some interesting things with this PC but overall some of the highlights fall flat which makes it hard to justify paying more for those parts particularly when you don't have as much computing power as you might get from a similar all-in-one from another vendor so this is a 24 inch on one with a touchscreen a gesture control system in a built-in TV chip it comes with an Intel Ivy Bridge 3rd generation Core i5 mobile CPU as well as a blu-ray drive HDMI input and output and a whole bunch of other features that make it kind of an interesting system so starting with a good there are some things we like about this system it's like a lot of all-in-ones there's different ways you can send a signal to this display you can run it off the PC off the HDMI input off the TV tuner or off the composite video jacks now what's actually cool about the system is that Sony has a nice menu feature to let you control the display and the audio setup for each of those different modes so that means if you have a certain preference for how you want your PC to look you can change that when you get to the TV mode to make it look entirely different so Sony's tried to push the idea of using this as a home entertainment system even further by including a chip from its bravia tv line inside the display that powers the video the problem though is that that chip really doesn't benefit windows video more than you would get from say a standard graphics card but it doesn't do 3d acceleration and the chip is also supposed to have an impact when you connect a cable box to the HDMI input or if you connect the TV tuner but the problem is the video signal really doesn't look that much better compared to another on one with just a standard video processor in it that means you're not really getting much from the TV chip but you are losing 3d processing power so if you want to use this as a gaming system as well as a home video player it's really not the best option another feature that's disappointing is the gesture control system it simply doesn't work you can open up the software settings and play around the sensitivity it gives you a basic tutorial of what's supposed to happen but then when you actually try to use a gesture control in applications it really is not that responsive if it works at all now you don't really lose anything with this PC because it has gesture control it runs through the webcam so there's no extra hardware you need to purchase and it's kind of a nice idea we appreciate that something is experimenting but it's definitely frustrating that it doesn't work you see the right side here you got a nest card reader three USB three inputs that's a great feature firewire as well as a couple of audio jacks around here in the back you can see the various video inputs you have your HDMI in and out over here your composite video as well as your TV tuner over here this is actually another nice feature there's three USB ports that work when the system isn't even plugged in finally over here you can see the hard buttons that let you run the menu and here's the slot-loading blu-ray drive so overall sony is trying some interesting things with this system the problem is that because the TV chip doesn't provide a lot of value and the gesture control falls flat it doesn't really deliver on its promises between that and it's slow performance from a mobile chip and no dedicated graphics card it's really hard to like the system especially for its price time rich brown this is the 2012 edition of sony vaio l series home