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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bjornb - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I've owned the Z2 for about 6 months now (so I am biased ;) ). I didnt realize the hinge design was a problem before reading this review :). I have never experienced any problems with the computer sliding about during use or finding the sweet spot for screen angle. The incline is not that dramatic.I agree that the keyboard is not perfect (it was better on the previous Z) with the shallow travel, but in my opinion it is not bad and it didnt take long to get used to.
Regarding graphics performance it is at least partially a driver problem. Sony is unfortunately poor at releasing updated drivers (I have sent a complaint/request about this to Sony Norway), but there are community drivers that work well. I'm using the AMD 11.12 drivers from here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/636724-univer...
It actually makes BF3 playable on the laptop. It is also possible to overclock the GPU and control the GPU fan using Sapphire Trixx (I understand that you dont review a unit with community drivers and overclocked GPU, but the information may be useful for other potential owners).
Regarding fan noise and temps it is noisy when playing games at full cpu load and using the Intel IGP, but I dont find it particularly noisier than other laptops at load I use (HP 8440p at work, Alienware m15x etc). During normal use (web browsing, watching HD videos etc) it is very quiet. One can also select thermal profiles in Vaio Control Center (silent/balanced/performance).
I did a quick test yesterday regarding CPU temp: Playing two h.264 HD videos simultaneously and used throttlestop to monitor and TS bench to genereate 4 threads of cpu load. The max temp I saw during the test for several minutes was 80 deg C (balanced thermal profile, and throttlestop reported the CPU speed as 3.2GHz for both cores).
Regarding SATA speeds the Z2 is supplied with SATA 6GBs drives in some markets and/or as a CTO option, more information:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/607410-sony-v...
jcmm33 - Saturday, March 31, 2012 - link
I like you have owned one of these since launch. I see a fair few comments about the keyboard but for me it doesn't take long for one to get used to it.With regard to fan noise i don't play games on the device so i never really hear it at all.
Trackpad could be better, but once again its not a nightmare.
The performance of the machine however is excellent. The boot time of approx 10 secs is awesome, display is excellent and its good to have network connectors on the device not just having to rely on wifi or buying a dongle (e.g. Macbook Air) to get a wired connection going.
DesktopMan - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
"The AMD Radeon HD 6650M inside the dock is limited to a PCI Express 2.1 x4 link instead of x8 or x16, and the performance hit is a noticeable one"Source on this statement? It's been shown many times that graphic cards really aren't very bandwidth starved at 4x 2.0 and above. Taking a quick look at the 5870 we see the following: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI...
thebeastie - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
Why do they continue to ran the SSDs in Raid 0 since you can't get TRIM?Are they just trying to suck in over paid clueless CIOs or something?
irev210 - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
They use garbage collection instead.Not really sure what's wrong with RAID-0 if you have proper garbage collection.
irev210 - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
According to Crystaldiskmark, the Sony Z I tested (64x2 in raid 0) showed over 850MB/sec read speeds, which clearly shows that the Z does run in 6Gbps mode (SATA-3).Sort of interesting that I email them this info and they don't even update/check.
Fran - Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - link
Dear friends, sell my Vaio Z21-2011 purchased in August-2011, if there is someone interested can visit the link indicated below;
http://www.ebay.es/itm/SONY-Vaio-Z21-Ultrabook-VPC...
Greetings!
Fran - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
Hi all! I lowered the price to -300 €.
http://www.ebay.es/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&a...
Regards.