Unboxed: Sony Vaio JS

Sony went all-in-one PC crazy today, launching three new lines of iMac botherers. The Vaio RT may have the hardcore specs (Intel Core 2 Quad prcoessor, 1TB hard-drive and 25in screen), closely followed by the LV (Blu-ray drive, 1920×1200 display, HDMI input), but it’s the Vaio JS that caught our magpie eye.

We gave you the spec lowdown earlier, but a face-to-face meeting revealed more secrets. The keyboard is indeed very iMac-like, and stashes away nicely under the screen. And while it lacks a Blu-ray drive, the price of £700 puts it a tempting £100 below Apple’s desktop. It’ll be available from mid-October.

We also found another interesting new product lurking in the background – Sony’s new HomeShare. Adopting the circular cake tin looks of the TP series (see below), it’s a home server in the vein of HP’s MediaSmart and Apple’s Time Capsule.

With 1TB of internal storage, it looks like a very handy back-up for your PS3, although it won’t be able to stream video at launch and there’s sadly no integration with Sony PlayTV yet. Still, it looks a doddle to use (you get an icon in the PS3’s XMB) and it’ll cost £500 when it launches next month.

Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home