Sony Vaio Z series laptop review

Intel says the ‘ultrabook’ will redefine the future of computing. But if you want a taste of the future today, Sony’s latest Z series is as close as you’re going to get. At 16mm thin, this laptop offers seven hours of battery life and significantly more computing power than even the most hardcore user is typically going to need. It crams a top-of-the-range Intel i7 processor into its tiny body, and can offer up to 512gb of solid-state memory. That means almost instant start-up.

Other features include fingerprint recognition, ultrafast data transfer via ‘Light Peak’ and a special dock that adds a DVD drive and can run up to four monitors from the machine (because you can, rather than because you’d need to). If there are currently rivals to the Z series, then they’re the newly updated MacBook Air, also with an i7 processor, and the Samsung Series 9. The latter is not the super high-performance machine of the Z series, but it does (arguably) look even better than the carbon fibre of Sony. Bearing that in mind, the decision between Air and Z is down to cost and whether you want a Mac or not.

It is tight-fisted of Sony to charge an extra £15 for backlighting on the keyboard, and getting this to really perform means a lot of optional extras. But the Z series is as good portable PCs currently get.

Specifications:

Using VPCZ21V9E model:

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-2620M 2.70GHz (with Turbo Boost up to 3.40GHz)

Memory: 8GB DDR3 1333Mhz SDRAM

Drive: 256GB SSD Flash memory

Screen: 33.2cm (13.1”) 1600x900px with wide (16:9) aspect ratio

On-board graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 3000

Others: USB 3.0, HDMI out, inc 3D, touchpad with gesture support, 3G WWAN

Dimensions: approx. 210 x 16.65 x 330mm

Weight: approx. 1.18kg (with standard internal battery)

Price: from £1,434 (i5 processor)