Hey.
I'm Scott Stein, Senior Editor at CNET and laptops are in the funny places right now because there are newer IV Bridge Processors that are somewhere on the horizon.
Meanwhile, we're starting to see some laptops with bumped up specs from last year that are a little better than what you have before or maybe not that fantastically better.
A great example is the Sony Vio SA41 FX/BL that incredibly RK name boils down to the Sony Vio S as a 13-inch laptop that comes in 2 different flavors.
The SA is a more expensive variety that's geared to low more towards small business and the SB which is probably the one you wanna buy is not this one but starts at 799.
That's a pretty palatable area.
The problem with the SA is that for its feature set, while it is impressive is 1600 by 913 inches display that's higher resolution, a fingerprint reader in the middle.
It's also got auctional Blue Ray drive, a Blue Ray reader if you wanna pay up for that and SSD storage.
As a whole, the laptop is a bit expensive.
The starting price is 1,029.
It does have built in graphics, AMD graphics that are actually pretty good for gaming.
Those which is a really a gaming laptop.
And the size is in between here.
The 13-inch that is an optical drive is lighter than a Mac Book Pro.
It's about 3.5 pounds but it's not as thin or as light as an ultra book, although super thin, no optical drive laptops that you've seen all over the place costing also about $1,000 which brings up the question why would you want this over an ultra book?
Definitely, the graphics performance, laughing eyes features.
But the battery life, the built in battery lasts about 4 hours.
That's really not great now for laptops.
You can get a slice battery for this.
Now, we'll upgrade the battery life to double that roughly but it cost a $150 and it bulks up the thickness.
So what do you really wanna do?
I mean, I would prefer using integrated batteries and pang up for the battery life.
A Mac Book Air is I guess 7 hours of battery life and you know, when you have that out there, it's hard to deal with 4 hours internally.
Not only to make fun of this Vio laptop.
It is clean cut looking but it's kinda bit of a throwback.
The lines on this premier, really angular, almost feels like a laptop from a couple of years ago plus Sony loves these buttons.
There are a ton of dedicated buttons on the top of this laptop including this weirdo switch that says stamina speed.
You can flip it to speed or stamina.
I bet we both want stamina and speed, right?
But you can't pick both.
Really what this is is just the ability to turn dedicated graphics on and off, going from AMDs integrated Intel.
Of course, you have no idea what that means when you see stamina, speed, classic, weird switch that you wouldn't see a lot of other laptops that has that feature built it.
Otherwise, it's actually a pretty nice laptop.
Just a bit expensive and a better life to be better.
I'm Scott Stein and this is a look at the Sony Vio SA41 FX/BL.
Thank you very much
