Sony bumps Vaio SZ and AR notebooks to Santa Rosa

by Nilay Patel, posted May 9th 2007 at 7:09PM

Looks like Sony's decided to go all the way with Santa Rosa -- not only did it introduce the new FZ today, it's also giving the AR and SZ lines the full Centrino Duo makeover, with Core 2 Duos ranging from 1.80 - 2GHz sitting on that oh-so-popular 800MHz frontside bus and 802.11n networking. The AR (pictured above) is the real bruiser here, with a 17.8-inch XBRITE screen powered by an NVIDIA GeForce 8400M, a built-in webcam, HDMI out, a recordable Blu-ray drive, and a digital TV tuner beakout box with a CableCARD slot. All that power doesn't come light, though -- the AR tips the scales at 8.4 pounds. Road warriors will be more interested in the 4.1-pound SZ, which drops the old-school EDGE modem of its predecessor for a Sprint EV-DO model but otherwise remains basically the same: 13.3-inch XBRITE screen with the ability to toggle between integrated Intel X3100 graphics and an NVIDIA GeForce 8400M chip to save battery life, built-in webcam, and a trick carbon fiber body on the Premium model. No word on pricing or availability, but these two rolled out at around $3000 each the last time around, so we're not expecting any mad rush here.

Filed under: Laptops

Tags: ar, centrino pro, CentrinoPro, hdmi, santa rosa, SantaRosa, sony, sz, vaio

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Highly Ranked

michael @ May 9th 2007 8:02PM

This is great news. Sony Vaio laptops are like one of the best laptops there are. Even slightly better than MBP (apple fanboys, shoot me). I hope they come out with these laptops soon. Now only if they could do something about distinguishing the differences between their laptop lines, like SZ and AR. If they could do something about that, they'll probaly be the best laptops you can buy on the market.

note: I'm not Sony fanboy either. I love my Xbox 360 way more than the PS3, and have a Samsung TV.

Low Ranked

nikster @ May 9th 2007 8:23PM

"apple fanboys, shoot me"

bang.

no way these are better than the MBP, at least not in the looks department. the first thing I noticed about this is how wide the bezel looks. on a 17" screen that means this laptop is huge whereas the 17" MBP is barely larger than its screen.

that said, Sony makes the finest-looking PC notebooks on the market

Neutral

John Doe @ May 9th 2007 8:20PM

Other then the fact that they are proprietary as hell, yes. Yes Sony laptops are nice. Thankfully we won't be seeing a new MS OS for some time. The reason I say this is Sony is HORRID about drivers.

Neutral

Muu @ May 10th 2007 9:23AM

Finally had the chance to see a SZ, they are indeed nice... but god that keyboard is awful. Do you actually get used to that thing or is it more of a "use your own external KB?"

BTW, what's with there being no performance benchmarks of the new mobile 8xxx Geforces... Seems that at this point no one with even the review PCs have bothered (allowed?) to do any 3D benchmarking. I honestly couldn't care if these new PCs can encode MP3s 10% faster (something I rarely do), rip DVDs quicker (ditto) or boot up Word 2 seconds faster.

Neutral

Zadillo @ May 10th 2007 10:14AM

You actually do eventually get used to the keyboard. I had the same initial reaction as well (i.e. the SZ keyboard is terrible). But I found that the more I used it (every time I went to the store I would spend some time typing on the SZ keyboard to try and get used to it), the more I became comfortable with it, and ultimately got to the point where I could type easily on it.

Highly Ranked

Zadillo @ May 10th 2007 10:16AM

Just as a question, where did Engadget get the information on the SZ update? The site linked to only includes information on the AR series update. But the page on that same site for the SZ still has the same old information.

This has become a matter of debate because Sony's various European sites are listing the SZ5 update as not including Santa Rosa at all and still using the old GMA950/GeForce 7400 graphics.

Neutral