Sony VAIO VGN-A217M Laptop Reviewed

By Ian Bell October 30, 2004

Quote from the review:

“Sony’s VAIO A series is the king of cool. Sitting in the middle of the company’s range of multimedia laptops, the VAIO VGN-A217M is a visually attractive system that will suit graphics professionals thanks to its two-tone grey magnesium-alloy enclosure and large 17in. widescreen display. Based on Intel’s Pentium M processor and both built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the VAIO VGN-A217M includes most features a causal multimedia user requires, but will also help to make a professional statement about yourself and your company. Unfortunately, the system is a little slow, its battery life is below par, and it comes with just 64MB of video RAM as standard. In addition, you’ll likely want to spend a little more to a get a higher resolution screen. If value and performance are critical, there are faster and better value systems. Having said that, Sony’s X-black display is in a league of its own.”

Read the full review

Publisher

I work with the best people in the world and get paid to play with gadgets. What's not to like?

Gaming

I replaced my gaming laptop with a Legion Go, and I’m not going back

Lenovo Legion Go standing up in case

My HP Omen 15 was one of the best investments I’ve made in my life, right next to my down-filled sleeping bag. That's not because I think it’s the best gaming laptop ever, but because it’s the only one I’ve ever owned. It was my PC gaming device of choice until I got a Lenovo Legion Go, my first portable gaming PC.

I bought my HP Omen 15 in 2020. It was one of the worst years in recent history for building your own PC due to COVID-induced shortages, and I was too depressed to learn anyway. I figured I’d go with a prebuilt gaming laptop because my 2013 Macbook Pro was having issues and I wanted to play PC games. I went searching on Black Friday and saw the HP Omen 15 on sale, but couldn’t get what I thought to be a good enough graphics card for $1,000. I found a similar model on eBay with a RTX 2060 and called it a day. It’s been with me since.

Computing

This was the most exciting gaming laptop I reviewed in 2023

The lid of the Lenovo Legion 9i.

I've never used a laptop quite like the Lenovo Legion 9i. It's the only laptop I've given a perfect score, which you can read about in my Lenovo Legion 9i review, and it puts many of the best gaming laptops to shame. It's out of reach for most people -- it's certainly too expensive for me -- but I didn't touch another laptop this year that excited me as much as the Legion 9i did.

Sure, it's a powerful laptop, but when you're spending $3,000 (or more) on a gaming laptop, you expect peak performance. The Legion 9i stands out so much because it refines this class of laptop. It takes all of the elements that make 16-inch desktop replacements impractical and turns them on their head. It's not a flawless laptop -- no laptop ever is -- but it's the closest I've seen this year.
Slimmed down

Computing

This was the weirdest, most exciting laptop I reviewed this year

HP Spectre Foldable PC in several modes.

Each year, one laptop out of the many I review jumps out at me the most. It can be a singular outstanding feature or a combination of little things that sets it apart. It's not necessarily the best laptop that I've reviewed, because maybe it has some attribute that limits its appeal to a select group of buyers. But it's a laptop that's different enough that I'm not quick to forget about it.

For 2023, that laptop was the HP Spectre Foldable PC. On paper, it's an unusual machine with a 17-inch foldable display and some interesting potential use cases. In practice, it's so well-designed that it works better than some other laptops that seek to offer as much flexibility.
Sometimes it's the little things