By John Lui
07/01/2003
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/notebooks/0,39050488,39011420p,00.htm

Editors' note: Editor's note: The Sony Vaio PCG-GRZ10 will go on sale from January 23 2003.

While a lot of people liked the massive, multimedia-rich Vaio PCG-GRX3P, it might have been just a little too massive for some. After all, it had a large 16.1-inch screen and hefty 3.6 kg weight. Sony's new Vaio PCG-GRZ10 keeps the horsepower of the GRX3P, but downscales the screen (among other parts) to shave off half a kilo and US$600 (S$1,000) from the price. It's still a notebook of some size and weight, but no more so than other desktop replacements. While the GRX3P remains the object of desire for design pros, the new GRZ10's power and lower price will find fans among office workers.

A Cut-Down Powerhouse
A desktop Pentium 4 clocked at a fast 2.4GHz powers this machine, unlike the pricier mobile model inside the GRX3P. This is among the features that helps bring down the cost of the machine. The use of a less well-endowed Intel mainboard chipset also helps, though it now limits maximum system memory to only 512MB. However, such a restriction is not likely to make a difference to the average user. Finally, the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics driver now carries 16MB rather than 32MB of memory.

The reduced power of the graphics chipset might not sit well with design pros, but it should be more than enough for corporate users who might want to play the occasional 3D game.

Despite the reduced video memory, the Radeon chip is more than capable of driving the 15-inch LCD of the GRZ10. The screen appears sharp and bright from a wide range of angles. It's set at 1024x768, however. Fonts and picture look large and crisp, but it would have been nicer to have had a denser 1280x1024 resolution, to make more effective use of the large panel.

Jogging Along
Overall, at 3.1 kg, 4.3 cm thick, 32 cm wide and 27 cm deep, it's not a machine that could be mistaken for an ultraportable. However, the DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive is inside a swappable bay, and so can be removed for travel. The bay also accepts a second battery, or a floppy drive. The Sony Memory Stick slot adds convenience for those using other Sony products, such as digital cameras and CLIE handhelds.

Other ports include i.LINK (Sony's name for IEEE1394, also known as FireWire) and three USB 1.1 ports. There are no digital audio inputs or outputs, but at least a composite AV out for TV viewing is included.

The Jog Control, the trademark item found in many Vaios, appears here as well. This one scroller takes over the job of many quick access buttons and wheels, so surface of the GRZ10 is clean of controls. The Jog Control simple to set it up, so that users can scroll to, say, the screen brightness control, volume or applications, and adjust settings with another roll of the dial.

One thing that we noted was the massive size of the power adapter; it's about 20 per cent larger and heavier than other desktop replacement power adapters.

Puzzling Performance
Our MobileMark 2002 tests showed puzzlingly slow performance, with the GRZ10 falling behind machines with much less powerful processors. This can be attributed to some kind of undocumented power-saving scheme that throttles back the performance during battery runs (MobileMark 2002 tests performance while the machine is on battery power). Unfortunately, we did not have time to run more tests.

In the battery life test, the recorded time of 152 minutes is not bad, and hits Sony's advertised time of 2 ½ hours battery life.

The Sony Vaio PCG-GRZ10 is a solid machine that offers good value and a good-looking 15-inch LCD. The scaled-down multimedia functions and lower price will entice office workers looking for processor power but not the AV frills.