Sony Vaio AW: Introducing the 18.4-inch Blu-ray photo laptop

By Matthew Elliott on 11 September 2008, 11:09am

Sony is seriously bringing it today: it's announced an 18-inch laptop, the Vaio AW. It features an 18.4-inch display with Adobe RGB colour management, which means your digital photos will look the same onscreen as they will on paper.

The display does 1080p for full HD playback, and its 16:9 aspect ratio matches that of movies. The 18-inch Acer Aspire 8920 also features a 16:9 screen ratio; most wide-screen laptops roll with 16:10. Sony says the Vaio AW weighs a fairly hefty 3.9kg in new money.

Pricing starts at £1,500. For that amount, the Vaio AW packs a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo T9400 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 640GB hard drive, an Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics card and a Blu-ray drive. Bump the CPU up to a 2.8GHz T9600 and add the Adobe RGB colour-compatible display with a three-LED backlight and Vista Ultimate (instead of Home Premium), and your total is £2,499.

Other bonuses on both models include HDMI out and Dolby Home Theatre virtual surround sound, with 2.1 speakers. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is bundled in for all your image-management needs.

There are no options to customise either model, but you can pre-order them now from Sony's Web site, which says they should be shipped at the beginning of October. -Matthew Elliott