Sony Vaio Z2: Everything is Peripheral
by Dustin Sklavos on February 13, 2012 12:55 AM ESTConclusion: So Close, Yet So Far
The Sony VAIO Z2 is a series of fantastic ideas undone by a few bad ones. On paper and with the price tag out of the equation, there are very few ultraportables on the market more compelling than what Sony hopes to offer the end consumer. A beautiful carbon fiber chassis, stellar quality 1080p screen, powerful Intel Core i7 dual-core processor, excellent battery life with or without the sheet battery, and an external dock that both expands the connectivity and utility of the notebook but also adds dedicated graphics for gaming performance. Who wouldn't be excited about this?
With so many things going for it, it's a shame that Sony missed the boat on the actual user experience. While having a good screen is a major part of the user experience and Sony does indeed win that battle in a landslide victory, the rest of it is a wash. Fan noise isn't just irritating, it's actually potentially painful. The keyboard ranks among the worst I've ever tested, actually provoking more ire than Acer's floating island keyboard. The touchpad was clearly designed with aesthetics first and functionality a distant second. The hinge design is bafflingly ill-conceived, and while the Z2 is certainly light it also lacks something in sturdiness.
That's before you even get into all the bloatware Sony has a tendency to pack on to their notebooks; at this point they're actually the biggest offender. Notebooks I've reviewed from other vendors are seldom as bogged down as the Sony systems I've seen have been (though granted, the SSDs in the Z2 help in this regard), and most of that bloat is just other Sony applications. All this, and the external dock's dedicated graphics are both crippled by lower PCIe bandwidth and at the mercy of Sony to keep drivers updated.
What Sony has here is the potential for a great notebook that seems to have been almost completely undone by one poor decision after another. If you can live with the rash of compromises you'll have to make, there's an awful lot to like about the VAIO Z2, but the concepts Sony is putting forth here are in desparate need of a revised design. All we can do is hope Sony takes the best ideas of the Z2 and rolls them into a Z3 that doesn't have the same glaring weaknesses.
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silverblue - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
I was playing on my 11 year old Dreamcast the other day. :) At my last job, we had three Vaio laptops and two of the screens started to develop dead lines of pixels (or whatever the technical classification is)... cheap panels, I guess.In response to rarson, Sony were notorious for developing many versions of their PS and PS2 hardware due to some fault or another. I don't remember Sega doing the same with the Saturn or Dreamcast; theirs were limited to cosmetic/cost saving changes.
Death666Angel - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
To be fair, the PSone and PS2 had about 3 times the product live of the Sega consoles. The Saturn was a still-born, because of management changes at the time (it was dropped quickly for the Dreamcast). And the Dreamcast couldn't compete well enough with the PS2 to live out to its old age. PS2 consoles on the other hand are still being produced as we speak.amdwilliam1985 - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
"The price of an HP laptop has nothing to do with the fact that Apple's products are overpriced. It just means that Apple ain't the only one."You paid what you get for.
I can easily buy an $500 HP/Dell laptop over MacBook Air, but we do I get in return for that $500?
1) A cheap plastic feel
2) A messed up oem os with tons of junk.
3) Awful battery life(most of the time).
4) A slow hard drive to boot up to.
5) A bad keyboard to type on.
6) A bad screen(quality) and resolution(720p most likely).
7) A touchpad that doesn't work well(compare to MBA).
I used to buy the cheapest(best bang for the buck, got 5 PC in the house). Now I look for quality over price.
jonyah - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
Sony gives you the option (when configuring on their site) to have no bloatware on the machine. I think that's an invalid argument against it.That said, I have the previous Z and don't see any reason to upgrade. I actually prefer my Z1 over the Z2. If it had no optical drive and supported dual external monitor, it would be nearly perfect.
JarredWalton - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
If you order direct from Sony, you sometimes pay a markup relative to what you'll pay if you buy through other channels. Right now at least that doesn't appear to be the case on the VPCZ22UGX/N ($2550 at Sony or other online resellers), but I certainly wouldn't expect Sony's built-to-order option to be the most economical. Anyway, it's good that you can get a laptop from Sony with a clean OS/software setup, but all the retail units are the standardized build.extide - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
But it appears you can only purchase it WITH the dock. Kind of lame IMHO, as I wouldn't ever use it. The rest of the laptop seems great and 1080p @ 13.3" is awesome!OCedHrt - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
You can buy without the dock.rm19 - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
I much prefer the old VAIO Z's compact all-in-one, "how did they hell did they do that?" format. It weighed less than a MacBook Air, had a Core i7, discrete graphics card, Blu Ray burner and 13.1" 1080p resolution. If they stuck with that formula and just updated to Sandy Bridge and a beefier GPU, I would have been all over it.Penti - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
Not business, not Gamer where is it aim at? Looks kinda nice, but it's expensive has a high-res screen, unneeded two drive RAID 0 SSDs, needs the dock to gain faster graphics. No DisplayPort to drive a high-res external screen (above 1920x1200).It feels left out and kinda dated. If it had like QM67 chipset and vPro for business, just one SSD, DisplayPort and maybe even an internal discrete graphics solution it would have been much better. Now it's just an expensive notebook with a high-res screen. Without a real Thunderbolt port. You can get more memory (RAM), you can get wireless 3G/4G broadband card as option, but you can't configure it with just one SSD. I would have preferred the relatively weak discrete graphics as an internal card/onboard instead of the second SSD. Sure it's two SSD SATA drives in sandwich but I would prefer something like a single 256GB Samsung 830 mSATA drive. Raid is a bad way to increase capacity here. Why have a couple of sandwiched SSDs, as well as Mini-PCIe WiFi/option for 3G card instead of SO-DIMM memory too? Looks like it has enough room inside to have made other choices like internal discrete graphics. Even MXM 3.0 Type A like a 6770M GPU is just 82 x 70 mm. On board it can even take up less space. Two half-height mini pci-e is 2 x (30x26.8 mm) to begin with. Some other choices could have been made I'm sure.
alex1945 - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
I have a Vaio Z2.Absolutely, I repeat, absolutely no fan noise.
The keyboard is good and the touchpad is nornal.
Mr Dustin you can buy the Vaio Z2 with "fresh start" ,without bloatware.
Not fair at all, Mr Dustin, sorry.
Regards,
Alex1945