Official NEW SVZ Z series Owners Lounge

Despite the white and bright one looks cool, I suspect that the yellowish and dull one will be better for daily use. I'm not sure. I haven't bought it yet.

 

The Z keyboard is less bright and light doesn't "leak" around the keys so in a completely dark room, the keyboard is good. In lighter situations, it can be not bright enough. I think having light showing around the keys would make it easier to see them in the dark.

In the middle of the thread below, there are pictures of the Z keyboard compared to the Macbook Pro (Retina):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/app...tina-impressions-windows-guy.html#post8618211

 

Curious to hear your impressions compared to the MacBook Pro Retina that you returned.

Looks like mine is out for delivery today. In other news, I picked up a Samsung Series 9 13" for my wife yesterday. That machine is seriously gorgeous... I hope I'm not jealous

 

Mine just got delivered!

 

congrats, review/vids/photos asap please

I've ordered mine yesterday. Now the (hopefully not) long wait...

 

MobileTechReview put up this video comparing the MBP Retina and the Vaio Z3: Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display vs Sony VAIO Z 2012 Comparison Smackdown - YouTube
It's nice to see the Vaio Z performs better in Geekbench than the MBP Retina and the MBPR only gets a 12% higher PCMark Vantage score.

Nice! I've ordered mine yesterday, hopefully i'll get it soon.
Could you please upload some pictures of the Premium Black style (glossy premium carbon, as your signature says). I see pictures with the silver hinge and a more dark hinge online, i'd like to know whether the Premium Black model has the light or dark hinge.

 

What I also wanted to know: how much free space is there left on the drive with the standard install?

 

Why did he return the MacBook?

 

Glad you liked the video. There's a companion post on MTR with some written words too. Actually the Retina scored 2,000 points higher than the Zon PCMark Vantage, and that's due to the Mac's dedicated GPU. The Mac scored 19,000 vs 17,000 for the Sony Vaio Z.

 

Maven posted that it was due to heat issues (it can get up over 100 degrees in multiple areas under load).

I will check out that comparison between the Z and Retina!

My Z was delivered earlier, but I'll have to wait until tonight to crack it open.

 

Lisa,

I enjoy your work very much.

One of the best IMO!

Maven

 

​

Hinge is black

 

I put the wrong numbers in my calculator . I edited my post to show the correct value (12%).

I really liked the video's and posts on the MTR site regarding the new Vaio Z! It was my main source of information when looking into buying the new Z. I had not heard of MTR before, but found your review using google. It's actually the only Vaio Z (mid 2012) review available atm, so good job!

Thank you for pointing that out! I ordered the Premium Black color myself and prefer the black hinge so that's nice
The Dutch sony website was a bit unclear on the color, they also showed some Z2 pictures...

 

As suspected, the PMD I received reports as the 7670.

Confirmed...

Sony US is dumb.

 

I have the 512.gb version.

Reports 448 total and 403 free. There is a recovery partition not included in these totals.

 

100 degrees - celsius?? Wow!

How long did you have to wait for your Z?

 

I will post a video tonight and show you the blister from the MBPR . :/

 

Question for 1080p owners:

Are you guys able to run two Words documents side by side with 100% zoom?

I'm thinking return my Z when it arrives and getting the S15 for the extra screen space as the free extra battery offer on Sony UK site makes the S15 quad core/640m the same price as the quad core Z I ordered 2 weeks ago.

 

I ordered it 6/10 CTO with express shipping, which was $40. I'm moving at the end of the month, and I wanted to be sure to receive it before then. So I guess it took 7 business days. It shipped from Japan, so without express I would expect it to take an extra week or so.

 

I didn't pay for express and they shipped it express from Japan.

 

Typing this on my Z3. Mine is the US base config of i5/8GB RAM/128GB SSD, but I added the Premium Carbon finish. Initial impressions...

I'm just getting things set up, although I will have to do a fresh start. With a 128GB SSD, your C: drive shows up with 46.0GB Free out of 90.3GB available. That is just ridiculous.

I'm glad I went for the Premium Carbon finish. It looks oh so slick. It covers the sides and bottom as well with a very soft glossy feel. The cover is indeed a finger print magnet. The edge on the bottom of the display is black with the 15th Anniversary engraving.

WEI score: 6.5
Processor 7.1
Memory 7.5
Graphics 6.5
Gaming Graphics 6.5
Hard Drive: 7.9

Finally, the screen--amazing color. I have it next to my wife's Samsung Series 9 13" PLS screen, and the difference in color is just amazing. The Samsung screen blew away every single laptop at Best Buy and the colors on the Sony are far better. I will post a picture at some point. Viewing
angles are OK, certainly nowhere near as good as an IPS or PLS screen.

Keyboard seems ok, better than the Sony SA and SE that I tried out at Fry's last month (SB models). More solid. It's still much smaller than I'm used to, with a shorter key travel, but I'm typing this out pretty easily. The keyboard lighting does have a kind of yellow, slightly green, tint. I think it looks nice; the color is not objectionable to me.

The track pad is so-so thus far. Definitely not as immediately friendly as the Samsung S9's large trackpad. I like having dedicated buttons at the bottom, but I'm less a fan of how these are part of the trackpad piece. There's less feedback than I'm used to. Anyways, we'll see how I acclimate to it.

Overall, I'm very impressed. I'll try to answer any questions people have.

 

Mine shipped on 6/19 from Japan, but it's hold in Narita Airport for unknown reason. Typhoon maybe?!

 

Thanks for your initial feedback. Do you have two monitors to test whether they can be directly connected to the laptop without the PMD?

 

Also would love to know this too.

Another question M4rauder... what are your impressions on battery life with your usage so far?

 

Heh, sorry--I don't have two monitors that I can test it easily.

I've had it on AC the whole night, so no battery life impressions yet. Keeping it on balanced power setting with brightness at 80%, it shows 4:54 remaining at 100% battery. I played with the screen brightness, and it's not as bright as the Samsung S9's screen at similar settings. It seems plenty bright at max level, but anything below 11/15 seems kind of dim to me.

 

Go into the color settings and bump down brightness 15%. Makes a world of difference.

 

Please get back to us how you get on with this, as I ordered the same 128GB hard drive. I'm hoping to get 90GB free space from the formatted 120GB if possible.

 

All you have to do is make the recovery media and restore it as one drive in the advanced options. Then just store the backup somewhere. I use USB sticks.

 

I'm planning on making a full image of the disk using something like Norton Ghost and then format the drive and install a clean Windows version (while i'm a student i got a free Win Prof. license anyway). Do you know if i will encounter any problems when formatting/installing because it's a RAID0 setup?

How do you make the recovery media? Using Norton Ghost or something like that, or does Sony include an option to make a recovery media? Where do you find the 'advanced options'?

Could you possibly make a screenshot of the disk management in windows, showing the default partitions and free space? Thanks in advance

 

No need for N. Ghost. All you have to do is hit the assist button above the F11 key, and click create recovery media. Then make a windows repair disc.

Once you have completed this, reboot with the repair disc and USB stick (If that's what you use for your recovery media) and follow the prompts. Click advanced restore and select to restore it as one drive. This will get rid of the recovery partition and get you your space back. You can even elect not to install the additional bloatware at this time.

Its quite simple.

 

Hello,

I heard somewhere that the RAM is soldered to the motherboard on this new vaio Z. Can anyone with the 4GB confirm that all the four GB are soldered to the motherboard allowing an easy update to 8 GB ?

Maybe SOny has choosen to solder 2 GB and another 2 Gb on the free socket, this would explain the larger cost when taking the 8GB option.

Thanks in advance

 

From what I read, the RAM is not soldered on. However, the RAM is a proprietary Sony product, it is expensive and difficult to come by. I'd suggest upgrade the RAM during purchase if you can.

My 4GB is configured 2X2GB, I'd have gone for 8GB, but Sony UK would not allow this until you upgrade to the 256GB SSD at £410 (fat chance).

 

That's actually pretty nice! The option to restore to one disk and even choose not to install the bloatware.

Once you restored as one drive, the recovery partition is gone. But this doesn't mean you can't use the repair disc anymore, right?

@88king: I got the same problem here in the Netherlands. I would've preferred 8GB of RAM, but the 256GB SSD is just to expensive so i've gone with 4GB now. Which will be enough for most tasks i think, my desktop has got 4GB and i never had problems with that.

 

M4rauder, could you post a cpu-z log file by any chance? I'd like to see the true specifications

CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting
About -> Save Report (.txt)

Thanks!

 

Just got an email for Sony inform me my Z has been built in Japan and on the way to their European warehouse. From there, it will be sorted and hand over the 3rd party courier for delivery to me.

Does anybody know how long it takes before the machine reaches their warehouse and we get a tracking number from the courier? Or how long the whole process takes for delivery to London UK?

 

Plus add another hundred on to that for the ram upgrade, over £500 all in!! I just got an 128gb sd card for a £100, sorted

 

Where did you found a 128GB sd card for £100, the lowest I found is around £140.

 

Ebay from Hong Kong though prob be a week or two for del to UK SanDisk Extreme SDXC 128GB Class 10 UHS-I U1 45MB/s SD XC Flash Memory Card | eBay

 

Mine was also shipped on 6/19 and stuck at the airport in Japan. Its killing me.

 

Cheers, I'm think getting a 64GB SanDisk Extreme Pro SD card since it can read/write up to 90MB/s and use it as My Document folder.

Can anyone please tell me if the 2012 Vaio Z can recognise two finger scroll and pinch/zoom? I played with a 2011 Z and 2012 S15 in the shop, the multi finger gesture works extremely well on the S15, but the 2011 Z don't recognise multi fingers gesture and edge scroll lags.

 

Hmm I received the Factory Dispatched email on the June 19th, not sure if this is what you meant by 'shipped'.

In the email, it sounded similar to yours where it is currently being sent to the European Warehouse as I live in London UK. But what's different is, I do not receive any tracking code or any current location so I have no idea where it is. I don't see it on my mailbox, nor in Sony account page.

Moreover, in my account page my order is not in the "Recently Dispatched Orders" list, instead it is in the "Completed Orders". Shouldn't it be in the "Recently Dispatched Orders" at this stage? There's that message in a light-green box to the right of my Order# saying "This order has been dispatched".I have looked in the Junk Mail and Trash, no email from Sony with the tracking code.

It is a CTO order too. I'm confused

 

I got a 2GB Western Digital my passport too for media stuff, keep the 128GB ssd clean! Got an email from Sony my dispatch time is now changed to the 24th to 28th off June, prob be July before it arrives in the UK

 

Mine was CTO (Ordered on 6/13 and shipped on 6/19).
I only got 3 e-mails from Sony. (order confirmation as soon as I ordered one. Order update saying "we are configuring the computer the way you want it." Then, shipping confirmation with a tracking.
On the sony account/status was "your order is being processed," "your Vaio is being built," "payment is being processed," "order completed" Sony says that payment will be charged at the time of shipping (basically creating Fedex waybill). So you can check whether your credit card was charged. Otherwise, your e-mail could mean that your order was dispatched to factory in order to build one. I believe that Dell may have a message like this saying that an order was sent to a factory.

 

The 2011 Z supports multi-finger gestures but you have to turn some of them on. On my Z2 I use two finger scrolling -- I turned off the one finger edge scrolling to free up some space on the small trackpad. There's also limited three finger support plus "tap zones" in each corner. It also has my favorite feature -- "inertia" that lets the cursor move from place to place on the screen using a flick of the finger rather than a 1 to 1 cursor/finger movement.

 

I just received my Z3 yesterday with i7 Ivy Bridge, 256 GB, premium carbon, engraving and battery slice. No one will be disappointed. The 1080p screen is stunning and adjusts automatically to your ambient light. The greenish backlight keys also automatically adjust which I like better than my HP ENVY17. I have big hands and the small touchpad size is no problem and very responsive and easily manages 2 finger scrolling gestures. I actually like the touchpad compared to the larger touchpads on the ENVY and Macbook. The keyboard is fine and I noticed no dropoff in my typing speed or accuracy. The Intel HD 4000 chip is a big improvement and I don't really see a need for the dock with discrete graphics. I was able to open several Office apps and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and everything was zipping along. The fan noise which was an issue with the Z2 seems not to be a problem in the Z3. I had all those apps opened and the fan was barely noticeable and the laptop did not heat up and was comfortable on the lap. The battery slice is nice since I need to work on projects during international travel flights. For those of you that have recently ordered, the 15th Anniversary meesage is on the notebook spine even with the premium carbon which I recommend. Personalized engraving is nice and is placed on the upper left hand border of screen frame and its free with a very professional appearance (I don't intend on reselling and will simply handoff to my children later). The extra glossy vaneer type finish looks great (when clean, but does attract finger smudges) but more importantly gives an extra layer of protection to the carbon surface. I really didn't notice too much LCD bend when I first opened the laptop and it feels pretty strong and securely manufactured. The headphones were nice addition and are not too bad. The notebook also comes with a large microfiber cloth to place between the screen and keyboard and includes a white cloth sleeve. I still plan on ordering a custom sleeve from Waterfield for better protection. One thing I noticed is that it is just a bit wider compared to other 13in ultrabooks and Macbook Air which makes it more difficult to get into a standard 13 inch notebook bag. I would advise being careful so you don't risk scratching the sides on the zipper when dealing with a tight squeeze. Regarding speakers, the sound isn't too bad, but there are defintely better speakers on our HP ENVYs and Macboooks. I ordered on 6/10, received shipping email on 6/17 and received in Seattle on 6/19.

 

Does restoring as one drive remove the 8GB hibernate partition? I think I'd rather have the space instead.

Also, I'm wondering about disabling my page file or reducing the size to grab even more space.

 

So if I understand correctly, this will get you a clean Windows Home Premium install with all (original Sony) drivers included. How much free space is available after this procedure?

 

The restore partition is 22gb. Then minus the apps out.

 

Can someone who has owned the Vaio Z 3rd-gen give me an analysis on how well it did on using Autodesk Maya? With and without dock? And how loud the fan noise was and how hot it was while running Maya? This help would be really appreciated; thinking about buying a Z but am not sure about how Maya performs.

 

Yea, we are in the same plane, and I am not sure if the plane leave Japan yet. The last stop back to Osake, Japan(Sennan)