Remember those Vaios we mentioned were coming? Well, here they are! You’ve got the L series (touchscreen all-in-one), X series (thin and surprisingly affordable), and the CW series (Blu-ray notebooks and apparently the home of Gossip Girl). Check out the specs below.
The X-series ultra-thin laptops are something we’ve been hearing about for a while. At 1.6lb and half an inch in thickness, they’re some of the sveltest out there, although the new Adamo has them beat by a bit. Unfortunately, they are rocking Atom processors, though they’re at least the new ones. Plus SSD, GPS, and a 3G connection from Verizon come standard. We’d have to see how that Atom performs, but $1300 is really not a bad asking price for such a sexy and capable little machine.
The L-series is meant as a media hub, and optionally will have a TV card, HDMI-in, and DVR capabilities. It’s got a 24-inch 1920×1080 screen and the design looks chunky and solid. The configurations start at $1300, but the specs are a joke if you want to do HD media on it. A Core2 Duo E5400? Come on. You’ll have to upgrade to the $1800 model if you want HDMI and a quad-core processor.
The less said about the CW series, the better. The specs are nothing to write home about, although the inclusion of Blu-ray (in the most expensive model only) is nice. The best thing about them is the price: $800 to start, $920 at maximum. Decent all-purpose machines, but they’re not particularly sleek or portable, nor will they excel at HD or gaming. Still, the price is right.
Sony is showing a good deal of value in these offerings; Vaio has traditionally been a rather expensive brand, but bringing it down essentially to ultrathin territory with this Atom-based X-series is probably a good move. People buying Vaio aren’t buying for the bits, but for the whole package. We’ll see how this touchscreen PC works out; that picture doesn’t really make it look comfortable and I think people will find desktop PCs aren’t the best thing to mix with touchscreens. Tablets, I tells ya! You can be sure that Sony will have a Vaio tablet by this time next year. In the mean time, these aren’t bad buys.
Read the full press releases here if you’re into that kind of thing.