Fire up Internet Explorer and you’ll find that Sony has set the home page to three different Sony sites, so the browser pops up three tabs, all designed to sell you something. You’ve spent £1,600 on the laptop so surely you deserve some slack from Sony’s marketing department or, possibly, a word of thanks.
battery test - constant use (in hours)
Longer bars are better
While we’re picking fault, the touchpad is tiny and as it has the same matt black finish as the chassis you’ll find your finger slipping off it time and again. The two mouse buttons are located on the front edge of the chassis and they also suffer somewhat from questionable positioning - although it is clear that Sony had very few options with such a tiny workspace.
3DMark06 benchmark test
Longer bars are better
There are a couple of especially neat touches, starting with the keyboard, which has the keys poking up through holes in the chassis. It looks superb and has a lovely feel. Just as importantly, the layout of the keys is close to ideal. The other feature that catches the eye is the fingerprint reader which is located between the mouse buttons. It is allied to an Infineon TPM 1.2 module so you can be confident that your data is protected no matter what fate may befall your TZ11.
PCMark05 benchmark tests
Longer bars are better
Verdict
There are times when we’re not the least bit fussed about returning a product after the loan expires, but we’re going to miss the TZ11 because it looks so damn great and its ultra portable size and weight is backed up by incredible battery life. We’d love to have a bit more performance, but as that inevitably hurts battery life, we’d leave the hardware alone and just rip out the Sony bloatware. The problem is the price. We can see why it costs so much, but even so you’d have to plan your justification for this purchase for quite some time.
Sony VGN-TZ11XN/B laptop
COMMENTS
what's new
Isn't this one fairly similar in size, specs (and price) to last year's TX3, now replaced by the TX5?
Herbert
Great for portability but frustatingly slow.
I got one recently. It is disappointingly slow but a great toy otherwise. Dr. Haq
Also worth considering, the Flybook V5 HSDPA
Cheaper, faster, tablet and laptop form factor, and built in HSDPA 3G comms. Just as cool and classy looking too...
Just got the model up
Don't know if it's any cheaper for you UK-fellows, but in Australia I ordered the Sony VGN-TZ90 from Japan. It's the model up; and the performance is notably better for simple processing tasks;
Main Changes:
- 2GB ram standard
- 32GB SSD HDD
- Wireless a/b/g/n
And with the extended battery (quoted 18hr, haven't had time to test that yet); it's quite an amazing thing to use. As for people above comparing to the TX- core 2 duo isn't a faster clock speed, but does result in faster performance for myself (running linux tho; kernel-level stuff on one core, user apps on the other...)
Also just got one
Very impressed with the look, feel and battery life. Didn't think there was much point going back to XP so I just removed most of the installed apps. Why they don't allow you to start off with just a clean install of Vista I don't know. Once most of these are stripped out performance is more impressive, with Vista welcoming you to sign in before it's time to take the teabag out.
Performance generally is not very impressive, but it was never going to be. I bought this specifically to take on travels with a digital camera - and with a 100gb HDD and built in SD reader it's perfect for that.
The fingerprint reader is also pretty neat, allowing you to log on/lock Windows with a swipe, and also to save website username/password combinations to replay later with another swipe. And I can't believe the review didn't mention the Webcam?! Possibly because it's so unobtrusive they may not have noticed it was there.
