Interested in buying Sony Vaio Z Series

Hi All,

I am interested in buying a Sony Vaio Z Series, have been interested ever since it was announced and after seeing it in person I am in love with it.

I already own a TZ11 and although it's brilliant because of how light it is and the fantastic battery duration, it does seem to lack in power and I would love to have a higher resolution screen i.e. 1600x900.

There are tons of threads on the Z Series and wondered if someone could summarise the pros/cons e.g. battery life, fan noise, heat, hard drive speed etc.

Many thanks,
Likey

 

Pros:

- switchable graphics... power saving with the Intel integrated and a bit more power with the nVidia 9300 (although neither will satisfy gamers, both are more powerful than the TZ's integrated gfx)
- powerful! Feels *much* faster than my desktop (circa 2004, AMD Athlon64 3000, 2GB RAM, etc)
- very light and durable
- better heat management (it throws out a lot of heat from the left vent, but doesn't get warm on the bottom like the TZ)
- hard drives are either 5400/7200rpm depending on model - both 'feel' much faster than 4200rpm drives as per the TZ
- option for dual SSD and/or Blu-ray (if you're feeling rich)
- 5-6 hrs battery life on power saving profiles with the standard 6 cell battery
- roughly 9 hrs (give or take) with the extended
- 16:9 screen aspect makes it great for watching movies or working on a standard airline tray/table

Cons:

- fan noise is audible with moderate load and relatively noisy at high load. Not loud enough to distract/bother me, but it does some people.
- 1600x900 resolution is fantastic for some (like me!) but too high pixel density for some people
- pretty expensive if you don't need the Pros above (it's a premium product and you pay for that, just like with the TZ really)
- potential issues with squeaky keys and double-typed characters. I have had some squeaks from my backspace key personally but no double-typing

That's a reasonable summary. I'm sure others will chime in!

 

Fortunately I got my TZ for £500 off my friend so I didn't have to pay nosebleed prices but the Z Series will definitely be a painful purchase.

Will definitely buy one when I win some more money via Poker, it's why I need the higher resolution. My previous laptop did 1920x1280 but it was way too heavy to carry around.

My friend said he'll be getting a Z Series so I might just wait until he gets one before I am tempted to get one, then I'll be able to tell if the fan is too loud or not, double-typing can't be nice.

Thanks again for the summary, no rush to get the Z Series but it's a 'must have' type of item!

 

Hmmm i dont have the squeaks problem with my keyboard.
But i fully support you if you're planning to get the Z.

Amongst all my laptops, this is
my very first Sony one and I'm VERY satisfied with it!

 

Sony Z591 recomended:
Better graphic card.
Higher resolution screen.
Blueray burner.

 

What causes squeaks problem on keyboard?

What is squeaks anyway?

 

like everytime you press, you can hear some sort of squeak sound im assuming.
I had that kind of problem on a cheap 15 bucks keyboard i bought.

But not in my Z
Mechanically speaking probably due to super tight assembly.
...................... and as I'm typing this, I think I can hear some squeak whenever I pressed the Backspace -_-

 

Its a hit and miss problem on the Z.. Most owners dont have any squeaky keys and only some have had the double typing thing..

Z is not perfect, but if compared to others, it has the lowest 'abnormalities' found since release (i mean these are minor issues anyway not like a GPU fried after a month, defective screen, bleeding pixels like 'cough' most other notebooks)

 

They keyboard are easily to remove. I did this to put in my new hard drive.

Maybe buy another keyboard and try.

My keyboard is fine so far. It is only 2 weeks old. Maybe the sound will be there after a few months?