Vaio VPC-Z Carbon Fiber

Can anyone post up pictures of a Z in Carbon Fiber? I ordered it (just got my Z yesterday) and am not sure that's what I got. Does it literally look like carbon fiber? Because, what I have looks like the regular flat black...

Never having seen what Sony deems "Carbon Fiber" I don't want to make any assumptions...

 

Google Image Result for http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/11412.jpg

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...lossy-carbon-prone-scratches.html#post6913392

 

That sort of clears that up...definitely a crock. They shouldn't be able to get away with that robbery! I was expecting CARBON FIBER!!

 

Did you order carbon FIBER or just carbon???? .....

 

From my purchase order:

Product: 9726297
Display: C50876001
Color: Premium Carbon Fiber


Having been around a lot of CF over the years, frankly I was surprised at the look of the "carbon fiber". As I bought from the outlet at reduced cost, I really didnt care though I'll admit I was disappointed and thought at first that perhaps it was a mistake in the product description. I certainly, in future, wouldn't pay extra for it if I were ordering one.

 

Slightly off topic. Is the carbon fiber chassis scratch resistant?

 

Slightly off topic too. For how much you bought it ?

 

I wouldn't call it scratch resistant. I keep mine in the cloth bag that it came with and inside another Sony carrying pouch...no scratches so far...

 

It's not scratch resistant. I keep mine in a Sony hard sleeve that is lined with padded cloth inside. Inside there is a Sony tag made of fabric with sharp corners. It scratched my case when I slide it in and out on the lid! I was so pissed! Now I've taped that tag down so it is smooth, but still very irritating.

Also irritating that the "carbon fiber lid" just looks like a metallic brushed metal lid in black color. It looks very similar to the standard black lid.

 

From a scratching perspective, it seems a little better than my Mac Pro, but its not impervious to scratches. CF isnt hard to damage, so I dont think this proves anything one way or another.

I paid $1659 for a new Z11 i5-540 CF with 1600x900, 192GB, 4x1GB ram (which I upped to 8GB for a whopping $64) with the full factory warranty from the US outlet store. Original list was $2259, so I'm pretty happy.

 

Just the lid though, and not the chassis, right? The scratches are probably on the paint on the lid.

 

Right that's on the lid. The chassis, in my experience so far, is very durable and scratch free.

 

The gloss laquer is not that scratch resistant - or is, if you want to put it another way, as scratch resistant as plastic is. I have older SZ's which I've lent to other people / dropped which have come back with scratches / gouges galore on the lid.

The important thing to bear in mind is that the Sony 'premium carbon' etc aren't changes in materials, it's just the paint job on the lid. They are ALL 'carbon fibre' but as I've said before, not the 'carbon fibre' you would think it is - the material with the weave pattern. That's thermoset, which has an almost reverse fibre / resin ratio (and is consequently stronger) to what Sony uses to mould the lid and body.

Sony's 'carbon fibre' was pioneered with some 90's Discmen, and involves plastic with a load of shredded-into-tiny-pieces (sometimes reclaimed - i.e. secondhand) carbon fibre dumped into it. When this mix solidifies after moulding, the fibres add strength to the resin. But since the fibres form a haphazard matrix, it's nowhere near as strong as the woven-look 'carbon fibre' you see in racing cars, helmets, etc - which are made by multiple layers in different directions of uniform-weave carbon fibre sheets, which are then compressed and the resin cured.

The advantage of Sony's way is that you still get a notable increase in durability of the material over regular ol' plastic (and it is a better material to use in this respect - i.e. superlightweight notebooks - than most light alloys for example), while it's still dead cheap to mass-produce because it can be injection moulded. Making a laptop case with the 'woven look' thermoset carbon would be much more labour intensive to make, and would result in prohibitive cost even with Chinese manufacture.

The 'premium carbon' means that they've just stuck a different finish over the same basic lid.

Someone should sticky an explanation to prevent the 'carbon fibre' question being asked all the time...

 

So Sony tricked us into believing that the chassis is made of premium carbon fiber but in fact it was just recycled material?

This brings another question. Which is better in the end in terms of strength and durability, carbon fiber casing or aluminum/magnesium alloy?

 

'Premium carbon fiber' is just a moniker as I said. The casing is carbon fiber reinforced injection moulded plastic, not sheet-based, woven carbon fiber which most average consumers will equate with 'carbon fiber'.

Almost *ANY* implementation of injection-moulded carbon fiber reinforced plastic will incorporate shredded recycled carbon fiber - which due to it's nature, doesn't really make sense to shred brand new fibres if reclaimed fibres are available. And in any case, it's not something worth worrying / getting angry over - it's as silly as getting angry that your messenger bag is made from a tough fibre made from recycled PET bottles.

Oh, in terms of how they're used these days, that crown is taken by what Sony uses in terms of the kind of impact that a notebook could be expected to encounter. Metal will crush while absorbing the energy, but in the case of a Macbook Air or Pro-like chassis, there's not enough metal to do what the Sony chassis will do, which is to absorb the impact and return the energy. Given a hard enough impact the chassis will crack, but it would have returned more energy and therefore stayed more intact than an alloy casing of similar proportions.

There is however an aesthetic aspect to this as well. The thing is, as Sony owners probably know, this type of 'carbon fiber' - since it is basically predominantly plastic - feels cheap in comparison to e.g. an aluminium machine. The material may be fairly optimal for the job, but if it feels cheap the consumer isn't going to be happy - especially on a >$2K machine. Which is why they experiment with textures and finishes, as well as add alloy into the mix (In the Z, it's not really a required engineering component, but it's there as tactile and visual 'It's metal!' enhancement in place of yet more plastic). But they are just that - textures and finishes.

 

+1 and thanks for the excellent explanation.

While I'm not personally all that upset by this, it does seem all too obvious that Sony's use of the term carbon fiber, particularly "premium carbon fiber", is a bit disingenuous given the reality of the process involved. It might not be strictly termed lying, but it feels perilously close. Certainly too close from a build trust with your customer base perspective.

 

It is rather weasely marketing. Especially as from a technical perspective it's correct: There are carbon fibres in there, and they apply what they term a premium finish. Ergo, Premium Carbon Fiber.



It's just that it isn't what the typical joe expects when he hears 'carbon fiber'.

I've posted this before, but this is Sony's interpretation of 'real carbon fiber'. A lacquered, multilayer-woven-carbon-fiber + resin structure.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/att...hat-do-you-guys-think-z11-redesign-cforly.jpg

The thing is, this was a headband - and a fairly simple flat design at that - on a $3,000 headphone. Making a complex case design in 'real carbon fibre' would tip the price of a notebook well over the $3K mark.

However, I think Sony could have thrown us a bone and put in a 'real carbon fibre' rectangular insert plate into the lid - which wouldn't be prohibitively expensive to make - if only for the lols / looks. At first, I thought that was what they were doing when they first came out with the 'carbon fiber' bodies with the Premium / Limited Edition Carbon Fiber lids. But then I paid closer attention to the lids and couldn't see any signs of layering beyond an applied texture. So no - it's always just been a different finish on a regular 'plastic with bits of carbon' lid.

 

@ Vogelbung: Great explanation, +1 for more engineering statements here in the forums.

I need to say tho the lids are not made with carbon fiber mats, they are really stiff. I disassembled my laptop once (including the lcd assembly) and compared to the actual lid weight and thickness of max. 1mm it was somewhat strong. Inside of the lid, you can see that the fibers are long and oriented horizontally just like the outside finish. So indeed the manufacturing process must be on the more complex side and not just regular cheap incection die moulding. I am quite confident that regular thermoset plastic strengthened by randomly oriented short fibers certainly will NOT provide this stiffness/weight/thinness ratio.

 

Look for evidence of 'flashes' on the side, especially on unfinished edges - you'll almost certainly find them. Sony's assembly process is good about hiding them on external parts on the 'carbon fiber' notebooks, but even then, sometimes on certain models you'll find cleaned-up 'flashes' on external edges of the lid. They are quite easy to miss as they're about 5mm wide at the most, and very low-profile.

'flash' = injection moulded.

 

No, what you see isn't fibres but patterns in the plastic.
There's no alignment at all of the fibres.

And the premium carbon fibre lid finish is just a thin layer of light blue lacquer with glitter -- the horisontal stripes you see is just the brushing of the lid, and the reason why the glitter is only seen at certain angles is because it aligns with the brushing of the plastic lid underneath it.
(I've worn through the lacquer on my Z, so there's no doubts there.)

To call something carbon fibre, some countries' laws require that there is at least 50% carbon fibre. In those markets, Sony doesn't call it carbon fibre. Cause it's really just plastic with a small amount of graphite added, just like Lenovo, Dell and others use. Compared to the carbon fibre used for high performance, it's like calling a drink with 3% fruit extract "juice". I.e. something you can get away with only in countries without consumer protection.

The "premium" finish may look good, but it sure wasn't durable enough for me (mostly business use, frequent pulling in and out of case).

 

Interesting. Which markets? Would be interested to see what they call them there...

 

I remember seeing a youtube video where Sony was showcasing the Vaio Z and they had like giant sheets of aluminum and carbon fiber to show off the materials use to construct the notebook. Guess they are false adverstising.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctgz9KN-g1Q

 

They're still right because the top of the keyboard(the piece where the keys come through) is aluminum and the chassis (the bottom of the case) is real carbon fiber. how else do you think this baby weighs 3.1 lbs

 

Norway, for example, doesn't advertise it as a carbon fiber lid:
(Google Translation)
(Although if you drill down to the details, they say the colour is "premium carbon", and that the housing material has carbon fibre. Both of which are technically true.)

In addition to not advertising a premium carbon fibre lid, they also say "up to 96% Adobe RGB Colour", because it only reaches 96% at certain brightness levels, and only if you avoid the colours the 6-bit display can't display at all and has to dither to approximate.
Yay for consumer protection.

 

It's like the last page was never posted.

The contents of that spindle is chopped up and then dumped into plastic.

 

A pedantic point but thermoset carbon is the 'sheet/woven' stuff. It's set by heat (and under pressure). On the other hand, the stuff Sony uses is thermoplastic - i.e. it's shaped by heat, i.e. moulded. Thermoset plastic is in effect an oxymoron. The different process both go under in manufacturing is one of the key differences we're talking about.

What's produced under a thermoset process is what most people equate with 'carbon fiber'.
What's produced under a thermoplastic process is what Sony markets as 'carbon fiber'.

As arth pointed out, there's not enough 'carbon fiber' really in the Sony plastic to truly legitimately call it 'carbon fiber'. However, 'carbon fiber reinforced plastic' is a correct moniker, only CFRP is a term broadly applied to ranges from thermoplastic parts with only a smidgen of carbon fibres dumped inside, to thermoset parts intended to display the full strength of a carbon fiber matrix. So the marketing works in favour of Sony here.

 

^How do you know how much carbon fiber Sony uses? Specifically, how much is "not enough" and is that more or less carbon fiber than "a smidgen"?

 

That was a range indication, not a reference specifically to Sony.

Reading, how does that work?

And 'not enough' in that to legitimately call something X where the thing is a mix of X and Y, there must be more X than Y, or at least a substantial mix of both. Very fibre-dense short-fibre thermoplastic actually looks decidedly different to the parts that are on the Sony's, and in any case, given the moulding process and the dimensons of the parts involved, having lots of fibre in the mix isn't actually always desirable.

Let's just say that Sony knows what they're doing material-wise, but they are probing the boundaries of marketing decency by very explicitly drawing parallels between their carbon reinforced plastic parts with the popular consumer perception of carbon fibre.

 

^I read just fine, thanks...your "not enough" comment was describing sony's process specifically.

Ok, by your explanation they should use more carbon fiber than plastic in order to call it carbon fiber, right? I'll bite. What percentage of carbon fiber is Sony using in their mix? You seem to know that it's less than 50%, so what % is it?

 

Oh I now know where you're coming from. Would you care to explain what you mean by this, since it was posted some time before I did?

 

I was just teasing the OP...obviously there's lots of carbon in most things, carbon fiber is different