Sony unveils first true Blu-ray ultraportable

Sony this morning made official the VAIO TT, a major update to the TZ that marks a number of firsts. The ultraportable notebook is the first to carry a Blu-ray drive and burns at 2X in addition to reading the HD movie format. It's also one of the lightest at just under 2.9 pounds, Sony adds. A carbon fiber case helps reach this target, as does an LED-backlit, 11.1-inch display that the company now says produces a 100 percent color gamut while reducing the display thickness.

The system is also fast enough to drive full 1080p video, Sony claims. The TT moves the line on to Intel's Centrino 2 platform and uses both newer ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duos as well as GMA 4500MHD video that offloads much of the video decoding work from the main processor. Although the screen itself is capped to 720p (1366x768), HDMI out gives the system the option of larger resolution on the right HDTVs.

Also new is internal RAID: even with the small size, the top-end TT190UBX model carries dual 128GB solid-state drives in a RAID stripe that dramatically improves boot times and most other loading times that are normally affected by historically slow rotating hard disks.

The TT starts off at $2,095 in a champagne gold or red color scheme with a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of memory, a 160GB conventional hard drive and a DVD burner. An all-black version with a trusted platform module for work security costs $2,145. Sony estimates that a Blu-ray notebook should cost $2,700, while a variant with both Blu-ray and a single 128GB solid-state drive is $2,750. The range-topping TT190UBX costs $4,345 with Blu-ray, the dual-SSD RAID array, a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM. Pre-orders start today but won't start shipping until approximately mid-October.

Filed under: computers, industry
Other story tags: Intel, sony, blu-ray, Core 2, Centrino 2, VAIO