The Sony Vaio AW11Z/B is Sony's largest Vaio, and a very good-looking laptop indeed.
The Sony Vaio AW11Z/B's design is simple - black with a silver trim in this case, with only the usual PC-laptop flair of logos spoiling it a little.
Even the Sony Vaio AW11Z/B's hinge has been turned into an aesthetic element, being a barrel that runs the length of the laptop housing the power connector at one end and the power switch at the other.
This review reproduced courtesy of Digital Arts, inspiration for digital creatives
The curved design hides a lot of the Sony Vaio AW11Z/B 's bulk, like a large man in a well-cut suit. Like Acer's Acer Aspire 8930, the 18in Sony Vaio AW11Z/B is lighter than you expect - not weighing any more than some models with 17in screens.
We are a little disappointed by the Sony Vaio AW11Z/B's screen. It's a gloss screen, so it won't work well under studio lighting, and it's rather oversaturated before calibration - though not as much as Asus's overstimulating G71V.
In Photoshop, the Sony Vaio AW11Z/B's performance was poor, which we'd put down to Sony's use of slower, 800MHz DDR2 memory. Most similar models - except the cheapo Acer Aspire 8930 - use 1,066MHz or 1,333MHz DDR RAM. And despite the Vaio's relatively low cost, we expect more from a laptop for creative pros. This Vaio's After Effects and Cinebench scores were mediocre too, which is what'd we expect from a relatively slow dual-core chip.
While other laptops ship include accessories such as bags and mice, the Sony Vaio AW11Z/B has a remote control in the box. Despite Sony saying that the Vaio AW range targets photographers - with higher end models including a full version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom already installed - this shows who it really suits, which is undemanding home users.
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