New Vaio 13" Z-Series

consultech

I'm currently looking at the VPCZ11Z9E/B which should cost me about €1,800 haggled and ex-VAT from my source (quoted €2,600 OTC in Sony centre).

i7-620m (2.66GHz - Boosts to 3.33GHz)
L2 Cache - 4MB
6GB DDR3 RAM / Upgradable to 8GB
256GB Quad SSD HD
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M GPU + Intel® HD Graphics / GDDR3 1 GB

It's got a carbon fibre casing, and is crazy-light as a result. The guy in the Dundrum Sony store took a powered-off display model out for me yesterday, and I actually had to ask him was the battery in it (which it was).


My question is: Is it worth it? Is this another example of premium Vaio pricing, or does the fact that it kicks the sh1t out of most OTC laptops enough to justify the purchase?

Thanks

consultech

Has nobody any thoughts on the value or otherwise of this unit? It's essentially the market leader at the moment, I would've thought it would drum up a bit of interest...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnTWipoBAT4

Voodu Child

Its very powerful (for a 13"), and very expensive. Not much more to say to be honest.

One thing to be aware of is that the SSD hard-drive is quoted as being a RAID 0 array. Does it support TRIM? Something to investigate.

seraphimvc

If OP is simply looking for something stylish and shining ultraportable, than i think Z-series is defo your thing - although we all know the quality doesnt equal to the high street price.i believe you can just google for some review of it but just as a general comment: you pay for the artistic stylish design+Sony brand name but not the industrial technical laptop design - it will suffer the overheating once you use it for a period of time/heavy duty, the machine is fragile etc usual laptop problems.think one good thing is Sony has a 3 yrs international warranty for it tho.

to me as a long time thinkpad fan,x300 is actually my dream laptop ultraportable,functional and extreme durability -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hnOCUkbix0

Ghost Train

Did have an older model vaio z1 (pentium m), really nice looking, light for the time. Did seemed to have a design fault where the graphic chip would get too hot and eventually give lines on the screen. A bit like the problem dell had with its xps and other laptops with the nvidea 8400m video chip.

All I'd say is I'd probably go for a high end lenovo instead of a sony... or at least I'd check if there were any common faults with a sony or dell before I got one.

Always liked the toshiba portege series of laptops

consultech

They are the nicest-looking laptops on the market imo.

The overheating possibility is definitely something to consider, and as far as I know it supports TRIM. I saw various discussions about it on this forum.