After the success of the other MZ series Sharp decided to go colour like everyone else in the home micro world. They repackaged the MZ80A and added a colour modulator so they didn't have to provide an expensive colour monitor, you could just plug it into your TV once Mum had finished watching 'Crossroads'. There were composite and RGB ports too of course. The MZ700 series were sold as 3 different models, the MZ711 had the tape drive built-in while the MZ721 featured a built-in printer. The MZ731 had both printer and tape drive. The separate modules were available as add-ons so it was possible to buy the basic MZ711 and use your own cassette recorder then upgrade as necessary.

This machine was solely cassette based however, like the MZ80B it had no real power-up monitor in ROM so you could only load one of the many BASIC variants from tape. A plus was that it was fully compatible with the MZ80K and MZ80A. There was an MZ800 which did feature a floppy interface and drives but I'm not sure if it was sold in the UK.

Mine is an MZ711 but I also have a boxed printer module to make it an MZ731.