Last Updated
May 10, 2011

Editor's Rating

• High-quality HD display
• Blu-ray drive & TV tuner
• USB 3.0 & 2TB hard drive
• Strong performance

• Pricey

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The Sony VAIO VPC-L218FX is a 24-inch all-in-one desktop computer that has a nice display and lots of entertainment features, like Blu-ray and a TV tuner. While expensive, you do get a lot for the price you pay.

The design of the Sony VAIO VPC-L218FX is relatively modern and would easily fit onto any desk in a home or small business. In total, it measures 23.9 x 17.2 x 7.4-inches (whd) and weighs 25.6 pounds.

The 24-inch display has a native resolution of 1920 x 1080-pixels, which is full 1080p high-definition. It's also multitouch-capable and the display is very responsive to touch gestures. The display is also of very high-quality and is definitely well-suited for entertainment use and even some gaming. The screen is glossy, however, which does reflect a lot of ambient lighting.

One feature that is definitely worth mentioning is the touch-sensitive bezel that surrounds the display. The thick, black 1.5-inch bezel is touch-sensitive and depending upon where you touch it, it will launch applications and other functions. The bezel doesn't physically tell you what area does what, so you just sort of have to memorize it, which is rather annoying.

In terms of connectivity, the Sony VAIO VPC-L218FX offers a whole lot. On the side, there is a multiformat memory card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, a mini-FireWire 400 port and headphone/microphone jacks. The backside has three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI input & output ports, composite video input, coaxial input and gigabit ethernet. The inclusion of both HDMI input and output ports along with composite video input make this all-in-one desktop a computer/TV combo. The USB 3.0 ports that are built-in are also brand new and only a few select computers have them right now, so this is another perk.

The specifications of the Sony VAIO VPC-L218FX include an Intel Core i7-2630QM CPU (2.00GHz), 8GB of RAM, a 2TB hard drive, Blu-ray optical drive and an Nvidia GeForce GT 540M graphics card with 1GB of dedicated memory. There is also built-in 802.11b/g/n wireless connectivity. The CPU that Sony includes with this model supports Intel's Turbo Boost automatic overclocking, which increases the speed up to 2.9GHz if required.

The Nvidia GeForce graphics card has dedicated video memory, which means you can play pretty much all of today's 3D games, but you might have to dial down the graphics settings slightly. This computer's components allow you to use this computer for everyday computing tasks without any trouble, but also use it for more intensive tasks and entertainment use. The TV tuner and Blu-ray drive make this computer a winner for media use.

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