Look better to whom and in what way? That's certainly not an objective statement. It's not the conclusion of the reviewer, either.
From Phil Askey's review of the Nikon Coolpix 5700 at www.dpreview.com (written prior to the release of the F717):
"The Coolpix 5700 exhibits identical resolution to the Coolpix 5000. This places it just above the Minolta DiMAGE 7i but below the Olympus E-20 and Sony DSC-F707 (still resolution King of the 5 megapixel market sector)."
You also missed the Sony DSC-F717 review where Phil stated that the F717 had "better dynamic range," "more accurate color balance," "the least diagonal-stepping" and "the best resolution" compared to the Minolta DiMAGE 7Hi and Nikon Coolpix 5700 cameras. "Unsurprisingly the DSC-F717 delivers the exact same resolution as its older sibling the DSC-F707. A year on it's still enough to crown the DSC-F717 king of resolution at the five megapixel level."
He concludes: "Sony could be accused of going down the easy 'product refresh' route, and indeed to a large degree the DSC-F717 is a 'refresh' of the DSC-F707. That said, the DSC-F707 was such a good camera that the new DSC-F717 was bound to be good. Even a year on from my DSC-F707 review I find myself unable to name a new five megapixel prosumer digital camera which takes better pictures than the DSC-F717, and that is saying a lot."
Anyway, further debate here probably strays from the purpose of this particular thread. This thread is simply about a hot deal on a kick-ass Sony camera.