Sony Vaio Z11 13in laptop
Anyone for two GPUs and a full-gamut RGB display?
Review Apple may have grabbed headlines for releasing its new MacBook Pro with two GPUs on board - one for casual, one for best - but Sony had already done so, with its Vaio Z11, launched in the summer and now available for review.
Sony's Vaio Z11:
As a recently launched laptop, it's no surprise that the Z11 is based on Intel's Centrino 2 platform, so it's offered with a range of 45nm Core 2 Duo processors. Our unit was fitted with the 2.4GHz P8600 - a lesser part with just 3MB of L2 cache - and 3GB of 1067MHz DDR 3 memory, but it's the chipset that most interests us.
It's a GM45 with Intel's GMA X4500 integrated graphics engine. Not that you'd know when you turn the laptop on, because it also has an Nvidia GeForce 94300M GS standalone GPU with 256MB of dedicated video memory.
The notion - as with most other dual-GPU laptops - is that you use the discrete GPU's horsepower when you need it and flip to the more basic integrated graphics core when you're running on batteries. Sony has made this easy with a slider switch mounted just above the keyboard and has Speed mode at one end and Stamina mode at the other.
The speed switch is built into the cylindrical back end of the Z11, a key part of the design Sony's applying to all its more serious laptops, including the Vaio TT ultra-portable we reviewed last week. Here, it's more obvious - the whole tube's a different colour from the rest of the machine, but at least the screen hinges are an inch in from the ends, a feel rather more resilient than the ones on the TT.
Nice looking lid - shame about the flimsiness
Alas, the display is just as thin - around 4mm thick - and just as flimsy. This time, the flexi-lid houses a 13.3in display with a 1600 x 900 resolution for a widescreen TV 16:9 aspect ratio. And bloody nice it looks too, partly because of the high resolution but mostly because of the "100 per cent colour fidelity" - it delivers the full RGB colour gamut as per the NTSC US TV standard.
COMMENTS
Keyboard
How much does that keyboard remind you of the ZX Spectrum? Slap a few weird symbols on them and three different shift modes and you would be right there.
As for the size - the larger the keyboard is, the easier it is to type on, so the fact that the MacBook Air is larger is surely a positive? Particularly since it does so while remaining lighter than this, and cheaper as well?
RE: Pedant
The trackpad scrolling areas are hardware related as the special areas of the pad have extra links and controls wired to them if you have a look at the underside. I would guess that is how you can scroll as you click on a selection similar to if the trackpad was a multitouch one, though that would be a very limited kind of multitouch!
Pedant
Surely the trackpad scrolling is software, not hardware.
And the scale on that graph sucks, give us some more detail!
Targeting Mac customers?
True, I was considering a Mac when I got the (very similar) SZ a year ago, but the sony won because it was far more powerful and had the 3d chip. It's targeting people who want a smalll, light, powerful, pretty laptop and don't care about MacOS.
A year ago apple weren't producing anything that small with a decent GFX chip. Now? Well I'd probably go for the cheaper macbook option, if I could overcome my revulsion at the keyboard. I'd say it's apple that have moved into Sony's territory here.
Also I got mine for 700 quid less than the UK list price because I bought it in the US. We are still being *hugely* ripped off here in the UK. From 1400 quid the reg article says. Sony.com has them starting at $1650.
That makes me sick.
@Thomas
Good point - hadn't thought of it that way. I've been looking at Lenovos recently and they definitely seem to like producing the same machine with both integrated and discrete GPU, and giving it the same model number but different suffix. Doesn't really fit in with Apple's minimalist line offerings I guess so they differentiate by including this as standard, and allows everyone to run with or without discrete GPU. I'd like to see what savings Apple gets for economy of scale in having so few variants of machine on offer...
@Alastair (and also the review): I'm surprised to hear that the thin screen flexes so much! What is it made of? I would have thought it'd be Carbon Fibre which shouldn't flex much at all. The TT gets the same comments as well about bendy screens, but I noticed that both the older SZ and TZ have rigid screens, so much so that I have a bad habit of picking up machines by the corner of the screen. My work HP doesn't like it much, with a big green stripe that occasionally appears...
AC as I'm meant to be ensuring a certain tax doober changes as it should do for our customers...
