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For English eyes only: Medion reportedly to release cheap Blu-ray laptop

Medion will reportedly release the Akoya P8610, an 18.4-inch laptop with Blu-ray drive.

Matt Elliott Senior Editor
Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.
Expertise Laptops | Desktops | All-in-one PCs | Streaming devices | Streaming platforms
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Matt Elliott
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The cheapest Blu-ray-equipped laptop we've reviewed to date is the Sony Vaio AW125, an 18.4-inch model that sells for $1,849. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, British outfit Medion will reportedly introduce a Blu-ray laptop, the Akoya P8610, for £800 next week. That's roughly $1,167--or nearly $700 cheaper than the Sony. The Medion laptop uses a lesser Core 2 Duo chip than the Sony--2.0GHz T5800 vs. 2.53GHz T9400--but otherwise the core specs are the same: 4GB of RAM, a 512MB GeForce 9600M GS graphics card, and a 320GB hard drive. Other features include HDMI and eSATA ports, and a TV tuner.

The Akoya P8610 falls short of a 1080p screen (which both the Vaio AW125 and Acer's 18-inch Aspire 8920 hit), serving up a 1,680x945 resolution. That's a movie- and HD-friendly 16:9 aspect ratio, however. And it features Dolby audio, which will output to 5.1 speakers or do some sort of voodoo virtual surround sound effect.

It's impossible to gauge build quality from a GIF, but all in all it looks like an impressive package for the price--should you reside somewhere in Europe. Given how much the price of Blu-ray players has dropped this year, I'm surprised we haven't seen any Blu-ray laptops creeping toward the $1,000 mark here.

Source | Via