Sony VAIO Z review: Portability, meet Power

[siopao1984]

---

Sony VAIO Z review: Portability, meet Power by VR-Zone.com

Where Apple innovates, others follow, right? Well, apparently not for Sony, especially if the company's recent update to its VAIO Z line of ultra-thin and highly portable notebooks are of any indication. With frills such as an extremely thin body, high-performance hardware for its assembly and the inclusion of an external graphics solution for added firepower, it would seem that Sony has had Apple finally beaten at its own game. Or has it? VR-Zone investigates.

Introduction



As far as most people are concerned, Apple appears to be the only computer OEM that is capable of churning out notebooks that not only boast cutting edge and futuristic designs, but are also thin enough to be capable of being transported around in a typical manilla envelope. However, it would seem that the design crown is no longer Apple's to dominate, especially if the introduction of Sony's new VAIO Z ultra-thin notebook is of any indication. With access to Intel's i7 range of mobile processors, a 13-inch LED backlit display that is capable of 1080p resolutions, a docking station that doubles up as an external graphics solution, and copious amounts of RAM, Sony's intent is clear. The company is aiming to go head-to-head against Apple in the market for premium, ultra-portable notebooks, a segment which Apple has enjoyed undisputed success in for the longest time, with other OEMs mostly playing catch up to the Cuptertino giant.

That being said, good design and performance, while vital, cannot make up for a sloppy user experience, and suffice to say Sony will have its work cut out for it in order to ensure that its new VAIO Z is capable of delivering a decent experience that is worthy of its futuristic design. And that is what we are here to find out in today's review of the Japanese electronics giant's new (and oh-so-droolworthy) VAIO Z ultra-portable notebook.

[siopao1984]

A Closer Look

A Closer Look: Chassis

We are not going to beat around the bush; the new Sony VAIO Z ultra-thin notebook is both an engineering and design marvel, and this is readily apparent as soon as one lifts the notebook out of its box. Adorning the VAIO Z's front is the distinctive VAIO logo that is a mainstay of the Japanese electronics giant's notebook PCs, while the entire chassis is crafted out of tough carbon fibre, and not cheap plastic or heat-conducting metals. This immediately gives Sony's VAIO Z notebook a distinct and unique look and feel from the competition, and comes with the added benefit of being extremely smudge-resistant. Take a very good look at the image below: can you make out the ghosts of any smudges or fingerprints caused by our manhandling of the notebook? We sure could not.



Sony did not provide any dimensions for the new Sony VAIO Z on its product page, so we gave in to our curiosity and put the notebook up against a ruler to determine just how thick (or thin) it actually is. As it turns out, the VAIO Z's height measured in at no more than approximately 19mm, or slightly less than two centimetres.



While it is not the Macbook Air-thin dimensions which some people would have expected out of Sony's premium notebook (the current 2011-model Macbook Air's height tops out at 17mm), it is definitely close enough. After all, a mere height difference of two millimetres is not going to be noticeable in any way, and more importantly, the fact that Sony chose to build the frisbee-thin VAIO Z out of carbon fibre and not aluminium meant that the notebook cannot be too slim, if it is to have any structural integrity. As it stands, the ultraportable is already flexing a tad too much for comfort every time we held its screen or body by the corners.


That being said, it is clear that compromising on features just to achieve such a design is definitely not what Sony had in mind, and it shows. A quick look around the chassis reveals that the new VAIO Z notebook sports a variety of I/O and expansion ports one would expect to find on a full-fledged notebook. For starters, the company has somehow managed to squeeze in a VGA-port on the notebook's left. This is in stark contrast to the approach adopted by other OEMs, where the VGA-out port is usually dropped on ultra-portable notebooks to save space for the more important ports.



Turning the VAIO Z over to the right reveals the remaining I/O ports present on the notebook; there is the 3.5mm audio-out jack, along with an Ethernet port to facilitate a network connection via a LAN cable. A HDMI-out port also resides here, a USB 2.0 port which can be used for charging various USB-connected devices when the system is powered off, as well as a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port which plays a critical role in the expandability of the VAIO Z's hardware capabilities (more on this later). The DC-in jack is also located here.



Apparently, Sony's obsession for clean design is not focused on only the VAIO Z's top, but also extends to areas of the notebook that are usually hidden from the public eye under regular usage, such as its underside. You will not find the usual messy array of screws and heat vents on the underside of a Sony VAIO Z, that much is certain. Also, you got to admit that the hexagon-shaped vents for the notebook's miniature cooling fans add a nice touch to the overall design of the notebook's underside.

[siopao1984]

Unlike how most ultra-thin notebooks feature built-in battery packs that are designed to be non user-replaceable, our review unit was bundled with a removable battery pack; this means that users can potentially replace the Sony VAIO Z's battery on their own without having to worry about being conned into paying 'battery replacement fees' like those Apple are charging for the Macbook Air.



Our review unit came bundled with a 4,000 mAh battery pack that has a rating of 45 watts per hour.



That being said, you may have noticed that this is one of those rare reviews where we did not provide a teardown of sorts to show you the hardware that was used in the assembly of the new Sony VAIO Z ultra-thin notebook. There is a very simple explanation for this; the VAIO Z, being the design and engineering marvel that it is, is definitely not meant to be user serviceable in any way; at least, not without access to a proper service manual from Sony.

In fact, we did attempt to disassemble the VAIO Z, but upon getting far enough to find out that the I/O ports were held by nothing more than thin, flexible cables and the chassis refusing to give any ground at a certain area around the power button, we opted to give up on disassembling the notebook to prevent causing any accidental (and irreversible) structural damage to it. Also, considering how none of the hardware is user-replaceable by any means (custom DIMMs and SSDs galore), it makes sense that Sony would want to restrict user access to the VAIO Z's innards.

Opening the notebook's lid reveals the keyboard and trackpad in their entirety, as shown below:



The first thing we noticed about the VAIO Z's trackpad was that it does not sit flush with the notebook's chassis. Regardless of how many times we attempted to correct the problem by pushing the trackpad's corners down to have it make contact with the adhesive layer that holds the device together, the surface will eventually just pop free after a while. This does not present any usability issues per se, but it does make for a minor cosmetic annoyance of sorts.



Another issue we experienced with the trackpad was that its left and right-click buttons are not located at the bottom corners of the device; rather, the click buttons are situated near the centre of the trackpad's button strip, or directly above the biometric sensor. This means that unsuspecting users who are not aware of the actual placement of the trackpad buttons will probably experience some initial discomfort of sorts when utilizing the trackpad, as pushing the button strip on any other area will result in users experiencing the need to exert a large amount of force to activate the click buttons situated beneath it.

Also present at the top of the VAIO Z's keyboard are three touch-sensitive buttons that provide additional functionality of sorts for users, although only two of them will probably be of use to the average user. Pressing the 'Web' sensor when the notebook has been shut down triggers the VAIO Instant Mode which allows users to boot into a stripped down Linux operating system to access the Internet without having to load Windows 7. When this sensor is activated on Windows 7, it calls up Internet Explorer instead.

[siopao1984]

The VAIO sensor, on the other hand, is probably the more important one which users will need to take note of, as it is this sensor which actives the VAIO Z's factory recovery sequence. In addition, we should also point out that the VAIO sensor can be activated even when the notebook has been shut down, so users might want to ensure that they do not trigger the function by accident.

Lastly, the keyboard used on the Sony VAIO Z will probably require some getting used to, as the actuation distance for each individual key is significantly lower than those found on most typical notebooks. If we had to describe how the typing experience on the VAIO Z feels, we'd say that tapping on the VAIO Z's keyboard feels similar to pressing on a thin piece of sponge on a hard table.



Also bundled with our review unit is the other major attraction of Sony's new VAIO Z notebook, and it comes in the form of the Power Media Dock. Which, as most people will probably know by now, serves as an external optical drive that doubles up as an external graphics solution for the VAIO Z, thanks to the use of AMD's XGP or eXternal Graphics Platform. For the Sony VAIO Z's case, the graphics card bundled within the Power Media Dock is that of an AMD Mobility Radeon 6650M.



Here is a look at the optical disc drive component of the Power Media Dock. Apparently, Sony's insistence on elegance and style extends to the docking station as well, for the Power Media Dock makes use of a slot-loading optical disc drive to achieve its slim design.



Turning the Power Media Dock around to its rear reveals a variety of additional I/O ports to expand on the limited number of such ports that are on the VAIO Z. Notice that the ports on the Power Media Dock mirrors those that are available on the notebook itself, namely two USB ports, an Ethernet port, a HDMI port and a VGA port.



An additional USB port hidden under a latch on the right completes the package.

[siopao1984]

This is where things get interesting. Sony has claimed, and we have confirmed through our tests that the Power Media Dock for the Sony VAIO Z cannot be operated while the notebook is running off battery power. This is because the Power Media Dock needs to be connected to its own separate power brick, which in turn has to be attached to both the notebook's USB 3.0 port and the DC-in jack, the later of which is designed to accept energy flowing into the system, not out of it. This means that it is not possible for users to engage in some virtual carnage while on the move; however, we have to admit that Sony's choice makes perfect sense. After all, the Sony VAIO Z is designed for maximum portability, and lugging along a cumbersome docking station goes against the need it is intended to meet.



That being said, Sony has already claimed some time ago that the Power Media Dock makes use of optical cables (i.e. a variant of Intel's Thunderbolt Technology) for its data transfer needs to and from the docking station. Since we were not willing to split the cable with a knife to find out how its wiring looks like, we decided to 'recycle' an image from our coverage of the notebook's launch event for such a purpose. And just so we make it clear, the Power Media Dock is not compatible with other notebook except the new VAIO Z.

[siopao1984]

Performance and Benchmarks

As is the case with our reviews, here are some details about the hardware used in the assembly of Sony's VAIO Z notebook, as provided by software tools such as CPU-Z and GPU-Z.

CPU-Z



GPU-Z





If you take a closer look at the detailed specifications listed on the screenshot of GPU-Z, you would realize that there is more to the Power Media Dock that meets the eye. While most graphics cards, be it mobile or desktop grade, usually run off PCIe 2.0 x16, we realized that Sony's implementation of delivering data to and from the external AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6650M graphics card, while seemingly connected to a PCIe 2.0 x16 interface in the Power Media Dock, is actually transferring data at PCIe 2.0 x4 speeds. This tells us that Sony must be running PCIe 2.0 x4 over Light Peak in its implementation.


Even then, Sony's implementation appears to be somewhat flawed. Based on some information we have managed to gather from an analysis of the VAIO Z posted by another website*, it would seem that users are only capable of obtaining a maximum of 1.25GB/s of bandwidth from the VAIO Z and the Power Media Dock; this is significantly lesser than the 2GB/s which PCIe 2.0 x4 is supposed to deliver. This suggests that a significant chunk of bandwidth is probably lost to overheads (probably due to the graphics card, optical drive, a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port and a Gigabit Ethernet port sharing all the four lanes), and while it is still significantly more powerful than Intel's built-in GPU in the i7-2620M processor, the bottleneck imposed on the system by the crippled bandwidth is definitely going to rear its ugly head in graphics-intensive tasks and benchmarks. More on this later.

[siopao1984]

General Performance

For an ultra-portable notebook such as the Sony VAIO Z, it is only fair to claim that battery life is going to be a major consideration for potential customers, if only because of the growing need for a mobile professional to possess a portable computing device which is capable of delivering close to full day's worth of juice on a single charge. Unlike the previous review, we tried out a new method of gauging battery life by making use of a .BAT file to keep track of the amount of time that has elapsed while we ran various tasks on the machine at the same time.

The result was that the Sony VAIO Z managed to return an uptime of up to 157 minutes of continuous video playback (or 2 hours 37 minutes) of a 1080p video clip. When we repeated the test by having PC Mark Vantage loop the Productivity and Web Page Rendering tests to simulate a heavy productivity workload, the VAIO Z's battery was able to sustain the notebook for 94 minutes (or 1 hour 34 minutes) before cutting out. While it is definitely not really 'full-day computing' battery life, remember that more than two and a half hours of continuous video playback is lot, and the 94 minutes of uptime under a synthetic benchmarking tool could well translate to approximately three to five hours of total battery uptime under typical use with power saving features turned on.

We have raved about how Sony was able to squeeze in a whopping 1080p full high-definition (HD) resolution into a 13-inch display, but have you wondered how the panel actually performs? Well, we have taken the liberty of finding out, and the results are as follow:



For the most part, the VAIO Z's liquid crystal display is illuminated in a fairly consistent manner, although one can make out the signs of some significant bleeding at the panel's bottom. However, we would go as far as to say that this is largely a non-issue. if only because that area is typically obscured by the Windows task bar and the status panel of most maximized applications; this makes it unlikely to affect an average user who has no concept of backlight bleeding or uneven screen illumination.



We have no doubt in our minds that the external AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6650 graphics card provided by the Power Media Dock will be more than capable for HD video playback, so we decided to perform the video playback test with the i7-2620M's built-in GPU core instead. However, considering how Intel's onboard graphics solutions since the GMA950 has demonstrated that they have the capability to deal with HD video playback without significant performance issues, we were really not surprised to see the i7-2620M's onboard GPU handle our 1080p video playback test with minimal dropped frames or jitters.

[riaj]

nice, naa sad unta to backlight ang keyboard

[siopao1984]

Futuremark PCMark 7

For the most part, any notebook that features Intel's Sandy Bridge platform is usually more than up to the task for handling most of today's computing needs such as web surfing, HD movie playback, Flash acceleration and even the occasional light casual gaming. Therefore, we are not amazed to discover that Sony's new VAIO Z notebook returned a score of 4043 points upon running the full PCMark 7 test suite on it when disconnected from the Power Media Dock.



What did capture our interest, however, was the fact that repeating the benchmark with the Power Media Dock attached to the VAIO Z actually produced a score that was lower than the previous test. After some research, we concluded that such behaviour is perfectly normal and to be expected; this is because the data transfer speeds found in Intel's Quick Path Interconnect interface used in its processor is significantly faster than what Light Peak is technically capable of (25.6GBps vs 20Gbps).





Futuremark 3DMark 11

Remember how we spoke about Sony's implementation of Light Peak seemingly imposing a bottleneck of sorts on the VAIO Z notebook? Turns out that such suspicions were well-founded after all, if the scores returned for 3DMark 11 are of any indication. Despite being more powerful than the NVIDIA GT540M graphics card used in previous notebook reviews, the VAIO Z with its external AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6650M graphics card was only able to deliver scores that were slightly higher that those found in our previous notebook reviews.





*As claimed by Anandtech

[siopao1984]

Gaming Benchmarks

It is accepted that the 6650M graphics card is not exactly the best card out there for gaming, but we were curious about the effects the reduced bandwidth would have on some of the games in our labs. As such, we ran a few gaming benchmarks on the Sony VAIO Z to see what kind of results we would get, and the charts below tell the story:







As can be seen, the scores returned by the VAIO Z for gaming were definitely much lower than what the 6650M could be capable of if it had the benefit of having access to a proper PCIe 2.0 x16 interface. The most telling signs were that the DiRT 2 failed to attain the minimum acceptable speed of 30fps even with all the details knocked down to medium, and the resolution reduced to 720p.