- Blu-ray Compatible Drive
- Very Bright and Colorful Display
- Resolution Doesn't Support Full 1080p HD Content
- Lower Performance Dedicated Graphics
- Wider Than Most 17-inch Notebooks
- Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 Dual Core Mobile Processor
- 3GB PC2-5300 DDR2 Memory
- Two 200GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drives
- Blu-ray Reader and Dual Layer DVD Burner Combo Drive
- 17" WXGA+ (1440x900) Wide LCD Display with 1.3MP Webcam
- NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT Graphics with 256MB Memory
- v.92 56Kbps Modem, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/g/n Wireless
- Three USB 2.0, FireWire, HDMI, Type II PC Card, ExpressCard/54, 3-in-1 Card Reader
- 16.4" x 11.8" x 1.4" @ 8.3 lbs.
- Vista Home Premium, Works SE 9, VAIO Suite, Microsoft OneCare
7/22/08 - Because Sony was a major developer of the Blu-ray standard, they were one of the first companies to offer the drives in their portable computers. The AR series offered a mobile high definition media platform thanks to such a drive, but it lacked a really high resolution display to take full advantage of the 1080p features of Blu-ray. They had the chance to correct this with the AR830E but they did not.
Sony still has an extremely bright and colorful display that is great for watching movies on, it is just limited to the 1440x900 resolution that keeps it from being what it really could be. At least Sony included an HDMI input so it can be hooked up to an external monitor or HDTV.
The two big upgrades on the AR830E over the previous model are larger hard drives and a faster processor. They now include two 200GB drives over the previous 160GB models to provide 400GB of total storage space. This is above average, but still not as high as what some other companies are offering from two drive setups. The Core 2 Duo T8300 is a bit more of an advantage by providing it with a clock speed boost over the previous T8300. This still falls in the middle of the pack in terms of overall system performance.
Sony really needs to revamps the AR series chassis though. It is probably one of the widest designs on the market at 16.4 inches wide. That is one half to a full inch wider than many competing system. They do make up for this with a thinner overall profile, but width tends to give more issues with fitting a system in a laptop bag.
The Sony VAIO VGN-AR830E isn't a bad desktop replacement, it just could be much more than what it is. Sony should either drop the price some or add a bit more on the features.
