The last Sony all-in-one we looked at, the VAIO VGC-JS1E, nodded its head in the direction of Apple when it came to styling. Not so its bigger - much bigger - brother, the VGC-RT2SY, which, it has to be said, doesn't have much in the way of styling at all.

However, instead of a pretty exterior you get a superb 25.5-inch screen, behind which sits a quad core processor and a decent list of features. If you have the space for it, it's an impressive all-in-one desktop.

Powered by an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 processor running at 2.66GHz and backed by 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory, the VGC-RT2SY has plenty of grunt to complete the everyday chores you might throw at it. Its PCMark05 score of 7,790 may not be that impressive by desktop standards, but this does make it far and away the fastest all-in-one PC we have seen to date.

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The 25.5-inch, WSXGA+, X-Black screen is, as you might imagine for something carrying a Sony badge, superb, with sharp, bright text and great colour depth. With a resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels it supports 1080p HD content, which is handy as there is a Blu-ray drive built into right-hand side of the screen bezel.

You also get dual TV tuners - one analogue and one digital - so you can record one channel while watching the other, and to store all the content you'll no doubt acquire there is a 1TB Seagate hard drive. But as the Blu-ray drive is also a multi-format disc burner, there is no excuse for not keeping the hard drive as free of clutter as possible. Built into the left-hand side of the bezel are a Memory Stick slot and an SD card reader and there's even an eSATA port to hook up an external hard drive.

The graphics are powered by an Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT card with 512MB of dedicated GDDR3 memory, which gives the VGC-RT2SY some degree of gaming performance. It's not powerful enough to play today's latest titles at the screen's native resolution, but reducing the in-game resolution and turning down (or off) some of the in-game details should result in reasonably playable frame rates.

There are two HDMI ports; one input to connect to another HDMI compatible device, such as a games console, while the HDMI out port allows you to connect to an external monitor or screen. There's a handy little button on the right-hand side of the screen bezel that allows you to switch between HDMI sources.

Bundled with the VGC-RT2SY are a wireless keyboard and mouse and a Windows Media Centre remote control. Unfortunately, although the keys are quite responsive, the narrow depth of the mini keyboard makes it uncomfortable to use after a certain period of time.

To connect your VGC-RT2SY to the outside world there is Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0.

Sony's VAIO VGC-RT2SY is an impressive all-in-one with a great screen and a decent enough PC built behind it, but it is pricey; you could buy a 25-inch monitor and a separate PC for a lot less. But if you want to impress the neighbours it's hard to beat.