The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Was hoping myself for vaio to roll out more laptops to the US or updates to skylake but it seems nothing. There might be a few reasons for this.
The current vaio laptops don't use the 15W chips but instead use 28W and 47W, I am not including the Pro mark 2 model or the newly announced s11, which is on skylake, i3-6100U, i5-6200U, i7-6500U.
So vaio would opt for i5-6287U or i5-6267U, both at 28W and iris 550. Unfortunately the i7 version at 28W, the i7-6567U was announced back in Q3 2015, it is still not available and should be in the Q1 2016, but that can be anywhere up to March. As for the canvas Z, perhaps the i7-6700HQ could be used. Perhaps Vaio wishes to announce all their laptops at once, so they are waiting for all chips to be available before updating? All speculation on my part.
Another reason could be Vaio is waiting until end of fiscal year 2015 Q4, so end of march before announcing, so then they would have updated products in all of fiscal year 2016? Again all speculation. The final reason could be Vaio will not update their older laptops and just keep shipping what they have? There were rumours of toshiba, fujitsu and vaio merging or joining to form one large company to survive the pc market but vaio says no offers have come but they would be interested. Combining all 3 would not be enough though and doubt the company would survive. A better option would be to merge or join with Taiwanese PC makers to survive, so asus or acer as some have stated in various news articles. But I would doubt that would happen.
Currently waiting for new laptops to appear on the market, the new lenovo offerings look good, but lack usb type c so waiting for now. Intel did announce their compute stick with core m, which I wanted to grab for my tv.
Not sure if this will interest anyone but it seems more laptops have appeared on Vaio US' site.
Vaio Z flip - pre order from Feb 8th
Vaio Z (flip model with normal screen) - pre order mid march
Vaio S (looks to be a modified pro 13) - pre order early march
I checked the JP Vaio, both the Z flip and Z ship with either i7-6567U or i5-6267U, both are 28W with iris 550 graphics. No usb type C/thunderbolt on these models it seems.
Looking at the new S13, 3 versions, i3-6100U, i5-6200U, and i7-6500U, intel 520 graphics, only full hd screen. No type C usb here either.
I am guessing similar if not identical specs will be available for the US models, curious about the pricing. Doubt they will be cheap. Lack of usb type c is a shame, especially when the small JP S11 does feature a type C port. There is also a larger S15, seems to use some clamshell from the only sony days, it has the i7-6700HQ, i5-6300HQ or i3-6100H, all with intel 530 graphics, no dedicated card, shame especially for a larger 15 inch model.
I'd be tempted if they sold the models here in Europe, there is a eu.vaio.com domain registered, but leads nowhere. On the other hand, with no type C and basically using old designs from a few years back, not sure it would be worth the money.
Thanks for the info, ascariss!
The articles on the Japanese Engadget about the
new S and the
new Z are surprisingly understandable using Google Translate. The blank/non-engraved keyboard option for the Z is cool. The specs are also nice, but other than that I'm not so impressed by the updates.
I always liked the idea of the flip screen (even though I prefer non-touch laptops), but never liked its design. They could have come up with a better look for the non-flip Z; my VPC-Z2 from 2011 feels more elegant and exclusive compared to it.
As you say, the design of the current line-up is getting old (and for me it never really worked anyway).
Well considering Vaio corp has designs none of their laptops, even the canvas Z was/is a sony design, I would not expect anything new from them anytime soon. While I like that Sony used 28W CPUs in the Vaio Z flip/nonflip, for the top of the line model, 2399 US, I can get a dell xps 15 here with 4k screen and a dGPU, so no use in sticking to a brand when in reality it is not offering much value versus the competition
USB type C I believe only become native to the next intel Chipset which is Kabylake, otherwise manufacture has to integrate themselves. But look on the bright side, Skylake has a few cool add-ons from previous gen, DDR4 and PCIe 3.0
If someone know, I want to know how much difference are graphic performance between the 28W in z flip to the nvidia 940m in Asus ux303ub....
Yes kabylake will have native type C but the Vaio 11 in Japan is on skylake and vaio added a usb type C thunderbolt port on it, so I don't why they didn't add it to the other models. If not the Z line, at least the S13. As for performance, I feel you may have more throttling on the iris graphics, but I have no idea how well the cooling is on the new vaios.
Honestly, I hate to say it cause I love added features for extra value of a laptop. But I can definitely see Vaio is heading for some cost-cutting strategies. Basically they think people will buy base on the looks and design rather than extra and upgraded features. They think usb 3.0 is sufficient and they don't want to be adding manufacturing cost to integrate usb type C. Same with the dedicated graphics card. Why should we add it in if intel cpu provide sufficient level of graphics capabilities already? (for non-gamers) . We can see it in the Vaio Fit 15 mk2 on vaio jp site, they practically stripped out nvidia from it (where it used to have nvidia 735m. That is an 15" laptop, and they still did it.... Now the new S15 proves it even further.
So Jon is correct into jumping ship if he is looking into dGPU, as iris 550 of the 28w cpu is the best vaio will probably provide. (which is still way better and a decent upgrade to the 425m i currenty have)
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
