Official Sony VPC-Z2 (VAIO Z 2011) Series Owners' Thread

The new Sony VAIO VPC-Z2 (VAIO Z Mid-2011 - 2nd Gen Intel Core i5/i7 CPU - SandyBridge) series has been announced. With some fellow members here already having just placed their orders for one, I thought we can start a dedicated thread for this brand new series.

Hopefully, you guys don't mind that I have the honor of creating this thread.

More info on this series from the Sony USA web site:

VAIO Z Series Laptops | Sony Store USA

Fellow member cherrybombaz has got a very helpful & useful post on Useful Guides/Resources. The link to that post is as follows:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/7921009-post2.html



If anyone wants me to add anything else to this opening post, please kindly send me a PM with the details & I'll be very happy & willing to do so. A big thanks in advance.

Congrats to all VAIO VPC-Z2 series notebook owners & enjoy your new purchase.

 

I will be one these once it comes up on sony usa

 

I'm thinking to get this configuration, what do you think? for 1970 EUR.

 

I will be buying one as soon as they are available in Hong Kong.

 

Will u sell ur Z138 then?

 

Just compared two configs on the German and Dutch Sony site.105,99 euro more expensive on the Dutch site

My order

Premium Carbon

Intel® CoreTM i7-2620M 2,70GHz
Legitieme Windows® 7 Home Premium
Engels (QWERTY international)
128 GB SATA Gen3 Flash SSD
8 GB 1333MHz DDR3-SDRAM
Geen Power Media Dock
33,2 cm LCD, 1600x900 + camera
Draadloos WAN
Beveiligingsfuncties
Standaardbatterij
Toetsenbord met backlight
Office 2010 Starter
Geen bescherming
Zonder Adobe® Creation
Zonder Adobe® Lightroom 3
Geen Imagination Studio Suite
Tevens meegeleverd
1 AC-adapter
Draadloos LAN (802.11a/b/g/n)
Bluetooth® 2.1
Intel® HD Graphics 3000

Dutch VPCZ21C5E 2.194,99 €
German VPCZ21C5E 2.089,00 €

It's more expensive for less then Kaltmond's config which is the same but includes a Full HD screen and the large battery.

 

http://www.jr.com/sony/pe/SON_VPCZ214GXB/ already accepting preorder.
May snatch a VPC-Z214GX/L

 

looks extremely sketchy. Its up on amazon too. I would wait until its on the actual sony site though.

 

Wow.. and thats without the PMD? Crazy high price.

 

Base configuration WITH PMD will be $1999 USD, according to beaups. Those prices are wrong. They are just placeholder pages.

 

Maybe those configs also include the PMD, even though it is not listed together? beaups said that all retail configs come with the PMD included. I mean those are retail configs, no?

 

Yep! I think were looking at 3k with PMD & 256 SSD. (Also with 1080p and 3rd gen SSD upgrades)

 

The model VPCZ21C5E was added to the European Sony Vaio support page. No downloads or manuals yet.

 

still nothing in canada i really hope the new z2 will be in canada soooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

 

OK I think I've settled on final specs for my Z2:

Premium carbon
standard i5 CPU
4GB RAM
128 SSD (3rd gen model)
900p display
No PMD
Backlit keyboard
Sheet battery
No WWAN

^ This is obviously a "budget" configuration; I want to keep it simple and relatively good value; I honestly don't need the PMD, 8GB memory or WWAN, and I want the lower end CPU specifically for battery life / noise / heat. And anything more than 128GB for storage is daylight robbery.

However just before I pull the trigger I'm going to wait for at least a few of ye to get your final production models so I can hear back for certain on:

• Battery life - honestly 7 to 8 hours with Wifi on? (may affect my decision to get the sheet battery)
• Are the speakers any good? This laptop would get a good amount of use for movies etc while travelling
• Fan noise - is the Z2 generally quiet for basic usage?
• SSD - can this be upgraded at a later time? (will require some brave NBR member to do a teardown!)
• Build quality - does it feel sturdy enough for a lot of travelling

Otherwise I'm quite looking forward to getting back to daily use of a machine with fingerprint reader, decent CPU, and a 13inch screen. But the X has spoiled me so it also has to be thin and light ;-) And this laptop will literally have to last me at least 5 years, much like my trusty VAIO SZ, so I have to be sure..

 

1600 * 900 display can be just vaio display plus class. 1920 is surely premium class.

Difference between 2 is quite some.

I will choose premium display.

Even accept sacrifice for lowering resolution for comfort eye with 1920 13.3 inch.

 

LOL 900p display is also vaio premium display. besides better readability, the 900p display is also brigter.

 

Yeah.. i definitely agree with you..1080p on a 13.1 inch is an overkill.. however in my case, I have the 16.4 inch VAIO Display Premium on the F2290S, which can be configured 125% zoom. Gonna receive it this week

 

Well, I tried to become Vaio Z21 owner, but Sony europe would not sell one to me :-/ So, another time, in another country..

 

My SZ has a 1280 x 800 resolution which I thought suited the screen size well, so I'll be happy enough with 1600 x 900 (just enough extra vertical pixels). I've seen full HD displays on 15 inch laptops and that suited them fine, but I don't think I'd be happy with it on a 13 inch screen. My VAIO X with 1366 x 768 on an 11 inch screen is already doing me damage!

 

I can finally say I am one of these!

 

Just keep this thread open. Besides, that other thread is ridiculously long.

 

hey guys,

did anyone know that sony.com already have Z2 sleeve or cases?

 

just ordered one

I want to ask whether it is possible to install 2 Intel G2 X18 into the new Z2? similar to Z13?

 

congrats!

I actually got a i5-2520 with FHD and 128g ssd, any input on the ssds in the Z2? are they the same as ones in Z13?

thanks!

 

Ok I have just parted with my cash so I think I can be considered an owner:

Intel® Core TM i5-2410M 2.30GHz
Windows® 7 Home Premium
English (QWERTY)
Premium Carbon
128 GB SATA Gen3 Flash SSD
4 GB 1333MHz DDR3-SDRAM
No Power Media Dock
33.2 cm LCD, 1600x900 + webcam
No Wireless WAN
Long-Life Battery
Backlight keyboard

It's a basic enough model (just with the premium carbon finish); I don't need the PMD or WWAN, 4GB is fine (I've 2 to 4GB RAM in my other machines and my usual tasks don't require more than this), and the standard 900p screen is enough. But I did splash out on the gen 3 SSD, backlit keyboard and the sheet battery. I view the Z21 as a "super X", as opposed to a serious desktop replacement machine with every bell and whistle (and ODD and discrete graphics).

I'm in Ireland so estimated shipping is 1 to 2 weeks. I'm thinking at least 2 weeks however as they are currently dealing with the "just released" demand, and my bank transfer will take a day or two to go through anyway before they can start building.

I ordered by phone and email through the business sales department (ex VAT for the business) and got a good deal; it's never a bad idea to ask for a discount. My previous VAIO ownership didn't hurt either.

The rep I was dealing with said to hang on a few weeks for the leather cover accessory to be released, apparently should be about £35. That seems cheap, so I'm not sure we were both thinking about the same leather cover accessory.

 

^ congrats on your purchase

So you are supposed to get it within two weeks?

 

That's the official line as of this afternoon, rep said 2 weeks to be safe as they've genuinely had a lot of orders.

Although a lot of the US based customers over in the speculation thread have had their shipping dates pushed back till mid August, I'm wondering if this will be the same for me, or are European orders being fulfilled first? I'm due an email update Monday or Tuesday so I should have a better idea by then.

I'll just keep an eye out for a suitable carry case / slip cover in the meanwhile ;-)

 

^
In addition to US being pushed to August 17.
In Taiwan the date has been pushed from July 23rd to August 10th.
In Japan the date has been pushed back to August 15th.
In Hong Kong the teaser page they put up a few days ago have been pulled from their website. It will be available in HK mid August.

 

I am really thinking about getting this machine. I currently have a 14.5" HP Envy, but it seems a bit too heavy for travelling and what the Z series offers now seems to be very adequate.

 

Unless you absolutely must have discrete GPU and optical disc drive, then the basic Z2 with no PMD, basic CPU and memory and SSD will do you great as a premium travel laptop. If you want to save a little bit you can consider a Macbook Air. If you want to save a little bit more you can consider a Samsung Series 9.

But then again you won't be getting the high specs, build quality or top-quality display of the Z2.... Seems like a no brainer in my book, if you can afford the price

EDIT: sony.co.uk website now lists CTO Z21 as delivered in 3 - 4 weeks, where previously it said 1 - 2 weeks. The delay is definitely confirmed across all stores now I think.

 

Sonystyle HK just put up the Z for sale 10 minutes ago.
I just ordered and payed for it.
Pickup is not on the 7th as they said before but on the 12th.
Comes with a free matching VAIO case/free Office Home and Business full version. (it was originally supposed to come with just a free bluetooth mouse...the BMS-10 I think)

Plus I think they changed the specs...now the bundled dock comes with a bluray writer instead of just a bluray reader.

That's just awesome for just 2700$ US

 

there's an option for both here in the US, so maybe they just weren't clear . In any case, nice price!

Since we got this thread... can we close the speculation thread? I didn't even know about this thread

Oh and SpeedwithJJ, you should grab some of Sony's press release photos for the first post here

 

Does anybody know if the SSDs are user-upgradeable? (i.e. standard 2.5" or mSATA, etc)

As much as it pains me to say this, 512GB is not enough for me.

 

NOT user upgradeable, not stadard

 

You can replace the optical drive with an SSD or HDD. You can get a Memory Stick Pro Duo (right now largest is 32GB). You can get an SDHC or even SDXC card (right now largest is 64GB). You can get either an Express Card SSD (right now largetst I've seen is 96GB) or get an Express Card to SDXC reader and stick another SD card in there (this method is cheaper than buying a 96GB Express Card SSD).

Just by going the SD/Memory Stick card route, you can raise capacity by 160GB. (32GB and 2X 64GB) That would cost roughly $300 to do.

 

You're thinking of the old Z. The Z21 does not have an optical drive (thus cannot swap for another SSD) and does not have Express Card slot.

There may be the possiblity to upgrade the SSD at a later date, but it will be trial and error with proprietary parts.

I've since moved away from cramming in as much storage as possible directly into my laptops; I now run small SSDs in all my laptops (for speed) and keep the disk-space-hungry data on a NAS, and some other stuff uploaded to Skydrive, Dropbox etc. I use USB disks as well. The Z21 has built-in USB3 so transfer speeds should be good with USB3 disk drives.

I would be interested in seeing how well the 64GB SD card option would work though; would transfer speeds be quite bad? worse than a HDD?

 

So the lightpeak port indeed doubles as a USB3 port? I heard, early on, that it didn't?

 

So the parts are proprietary but removable? Are you guys sure it's not one of those somewhat infrequently encountered, but still standard-adherent things like mSATA or uSATA? For example, the Macbook Air has a single uSATA port on the motherboard and OWC sells a 480GB upgrade module for it. Two of those (even though bank-breaking at $3400) would provide nearly a terabyte of storage, which would make me seriously consider retiring my Macbook Pro (with a factory-installed 512GB SSD and a 750GB HDD in place of the optical dirve) and come back to the PC world.

I love the promise of never-ending battery life with the Z (especially with the sheet battery installed) and I did love my Z from a couple of years ago, but 512GB of storage is pretty cramped, I need more room than that for VM images and media files.

Thanks for the tip regarding the media cards - I was actually doing that on a Vaio X that only had 128GB to begin with. While extra storage is always nice, SD cards are pretty slow when it comes to write speed. It may be OK for storing media files but I wouldn't use them for anything else.

 

Whoops sorry, didn't realize I was in the Z2 thread. (I open all the new threads I want to read in tabs on Chrome and Chrome annoying makes the tabs smaller and smaller to the point that I can't see the title of the thread with many tabs open).

But yeah, it **may** be possible in the future to get a larger capacity SSD in there when Sony releases one- maybe in a Z22 or Z23 down the road. The old Z1 could go up to 1TB of SSD but that's from a quad raid setup. This new one, due to thinness constraints, can only have a dual raid SSDs.

I wasn't sure whether you'd be storing files or actively using the extra space for apps etc., because the SD cards may be a viable option if you just need the former. The SDXC spec will eventually go to 2TB but again you're constrained by speed.

 

I will be using my 32GB Memory Stick and 64GB SDXC from my Z138GG with the new Z2 when I get it.

 

How was performance with your Z? For example, how long would it take to to copy a 4GB file from the main disc to the SDXC?

More questions: is the MS slot faster / slower than the SD slot? And what speed rating are the cards themselves?

Thanks for any feedback! I'm considering a 64GB Class 10 SDXC card for storing a few movies and things for when I'm travelling.

On another note, Sony emailed me Wednesday to let me know the shipping date for my Z21 is 1st - 6th August.. Hope there aren't any further delays!

 

^
I didn't really pay attention to speed since I only added those cards for storage and junk storage purposes (to use the SSD less)

Anyways, just tested it out for you, around 8 minutes for a 4GB file copy on th SDXC and a bit longer on the memory stick.

The cards I have are a SDXC Transcend Class 10 64GB and Sandisk memory stick duo pro 32GB (regular not high speed).

I can say for sure that full hd MKV files (even 15gb ones) run perfectly from both these cards.

Wow...you will get your Z2 so soon...I am jealous

 

Ah perfect, thanks for testing, that works out at about 8MB/sec write speed which is to be expected with a class 10 SD card. My NAS connection speed maxes out at about 10MB/sec so copying large MKVs and ISOs from NAS to SDXC will be only a little slower than usual. I'm even more glad I decided to just stick with 128GB for the Z's SSD! Funny enough the Transcend Class 10 64GB is the card I've been looking at, seems pretty good value on Amazon and eBay.

I'm hoping that the delivery estimates they've been giving me are accurate, I'm off work for a little while so it would be handy to get the laptop before I have to get back I've also been reading in the other thread that Sony apparently have a shortage of the WWAN modules, this may be causing the delays for some customers. Hopefully not for me; I didn't order the WWAN.

 

I believe the built in MS/SD slots are on a really slow Ricoh daughterboard. When I plug in my Sony card reader via USB, I get faster transfer speeds than the built in slots which is somewhat depressing. Sorry, I don't have hard numbers for you though.

 

This machine seems halfway ridiculous to me. Maybe someone else can explain the fascination.

I just don't see how carrying around what amounts to 2 netbook sized devices is better than carrying around one light laptop.

 

The point is that the user would not carry around the second device (needs to be plugged in to power when in use). It's basically a powerful computer that becomes more powerful when you go home and plug it in at your desk.

 

Yup it is a fully functioning USB3 port on the main machine, but Sony can't call it that since the USB Implementers Forum don't like combo-connectors (in this case, Sony added lightpeak to it).

Seems straghtforward to me; the vast majority of users would rarely need to be doing heavy video editing / bluray burning while you're out on the road, so these functions are left in the docking station at home / in the office. I suspect many many users, especially those ordering CTO, won't even need or want the dock. I've ordered CTO without the dock because I don't do any serious gaming (and I wouldn't do it on this laptop anyway) and I already have an external ODD for the rare occasions that I would actually use optical media. What we're left with is a thin and light laptop!

Anybody who buys the Z2 and spends their time hauling around the PMD everywhere they go has bought the wrong computer. Simple as that.

 

I agree to this to the point that I still wish Sony had given me the option of not buying the PMD altogether and saving what should be hundreds of $$$ at Sony pricing standards when I ordered mine.

Getting a PS3 for $99 with my order makes me feel a little better though.

 

i'm looking at this laptop but i just want the laptop, the PMD is useless to me, I'm sure without the PMD it would be close to a grand off the blu ray variant. still very sexy, and portable