Sony VAIO TZ Review Discussion

The Sony VAIO TZ is an 11.1" screen ultraportable notebook that uses an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. This notebook is currently only available in Japan but can be purchased through specialized importers in the U.S. It's expensive to buy, but might be worth it to some -- it was to this reviewer, read on to find out why!

Read the full content of this Article: Sony VAIO TZ Review

 

Nice review! Beautiful machine.

 

Awesome laptop!
I am a $ucker for tiny machines...only thing missing here is a discrete GFX card...

 

A good review, I've been waiting for one of the TZ. It sure is a stunner.

 

I'm not generally a Sony fan, but that is a sexy notebook .

 

won't be smart to buy a non-santa rosa laptop today...
or at least with an 'n' Wi-Fi.
also, 0.9 inch more (X61) and u get such a better proccesor...

con: wait another month or so...

asus or dell will probably release something soon...

 

How is a keyboard from a computer made for Japan different from one made for North America?

 

Sexy notebook. nice review.

Bruce Banner read the sony viao SZ (japanese version) review to find out about the keyboard differences.

 

Since battery life was more important to me than performance, I took this as a non issue, but yes, if you're after a bit more performance, wait for Intel to come out with an ULV for SR.

the TZ is available right now withe wireless N, but not at the time I made my purchase.

this is the japanese keyboard, not sure if you can tell the difference. there are extra keys on there not available on the english keyboard.

 

You also get FeliCa.

 

Nice review man!

Can you tell me why you didnt choose the [email protected] 160 GB HD?

32GB is just too little. And in my opinion an external HD to carry is more annoying that carrying an external optical drive, that you will not use so often.

 

Great review outrigger. One thing to remember is that Super PI is only single threaded so it will only use 1 CPU. Thats why you don't see much of difference between the tz and tx in super pi.

 

Awesome review, and that is a beautiful machine. It's right up there with the Dell XPS M1300 in my book - the Sony is perhaps a bit more elegant.

I think the SSD was a good option considering that you are running Vista and have the ULV processor, which, no offense, seems a bit weak. However I have never personally used one but judging from the performance of my single-core Pentium M 1.86GHz in Vista, 1.2GHz seems too slow. At any rate, I hope it works out for you.

$2,744 doesn't seem like a bad price at all considering the specifications and the fact that you had to have it imported. Hopefully this model will show up on Sony's US site.

 

Thanks!
1.2GHz was something I never would've considered before. Coming from mostly 2.0GHz laptops previously. Since I already have a pretty powerful desktop, portability and battery life took priority over raw power. I was really surprised at the speed of just a 1.2 cpu since I was used to using a T60p with a 2.0 cpu.

But of course, if performance takes precedence over portability but you still want decent battery life, I would go back to a Thinkpad anyday, one of the best out there imo.

 

I didn't choose the 2.5 HDD is because for the amount of programs I needed to install, 32GB is actually quite sufficient for me. This is an extension of my desktop so I don't have backup files on it or programs I wouldn't use on this laptop.

My previous one had 100GB and I only used about 30GB with a lot of junk I didn't even use. Plus I use the DVD drive all the time, hence it was a must for me. But it all comes down to what you use the most and what you're willing to sacrafice.

 

Oh yeah, it's an awesome little lappy.

 

That laptop looks amazing, I always liked the design of all Sony notebooks. Nice review too!

 

I own this exact same laptop (in fact, just wrote a review for another site), except I went with a 60GB 1.8" HD + DVD-R.

A few points: I don't know why the reviewer went with this laptop (he has his own reasons), but the reason I went with it is because it's significantly lighter and more "portable" than anything Asus/IBM offer (and believe me, I've looked).

The X61s is significantly heavier (close to 1.7kg, while this one is 1,070 grams with the tiniest battery), has less battery life (this laptop lasted me a solid 3 hours on the plane with the backlight turned down), and doesn't have a LED screen. Plus it has that godforsaken stupid nipplestick (though some people appear to like it, I find it entirely unusable). That, and it looks straight out of the 1970s by design. Asus makes some ultraportables too, but none of them have even any decent resemblance of battery life.

It's slightly unfortunate that it doesn't use Santa Rosa, but then again, it already has awesome battery life and LED backlight, and there's really not much else Santa Rosa can offer it that it doesn't have already. And the carbon fiber casing is really something.

Now I'm waiting for the SZ5 to come out... having played with the carbon fiber SZ4 (as written about in one of the recent reviews on this site), it's a beautiful machine, and I can't wait to see what the SZ5 should deliver sometime in July if rumours are to be believed.

[EDIT]: one thing to emphasize about this laptop: the 11.1" panel is 1366x768, which is 16:9 HD resolution, and is higher than 13-15" panels currently in production. Talk about pixel density!

Also, a correction to Outrigger's review: the max external resolution is not 1600x1200 - it will support 1920x1080 at least, probably 1920x1200 (I say this because I've connected it to a HDTV and it outputs 1920x1080 without an issue, so there's no reason it wouldn't support x1200 as well, since that's more standard). Just thought I'd point it out in case people consider using it for presentations or movie playback or something. It's also quite capable of playing 720p and 1080i HDTV material using VC-1 and WMV9 without much lag from HD/USB (and I'm sure it'd work even better off SSD ........ if you have the space for it )..

-pN

 

According to rumours (in fact, I think they were posted here in the news, heh) the TZ should be coming stateside sometime later this summer, perhaps as early as July. However, I don't expect them to offer the carbon fiber top that they do in Japan...

 

Thanks for the review Outrigger.

Could you by any chance post a link to the MI6 wallpaper you have?

 

Can you give us a link to your review?

thanks

 

There must be some kind of mistake with the access time, i've never seen results so low, and they're the same no matter where in the disk.

 

It's a solid state drive. One of the advantages is that there is no difference in where information is stored on the drive.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/storage/review/2007/06/14/Samsung-32GB-Solid-State-Drive/p5
is a review of the Samsung 32gb ssd (no idea what ssd would ship with the TZ) and you can clearly see the access times are constant across the disk and extremely fast.

 

Vaio TZ are available in Europe
2.000 -3.000 Euros

 

HOT DAMN! I had asked that question separately here in the forums (1920x1200 support) and got nothing but chastisement about why anyone would want to do that (no real answers).

It's definitely a buy for me now.

Thanks!

 

Oh ****, i didn't notice it was a SSD. It all makes sense now.

 

For those that are interested in the MI6 wallpaper displayed in the TZ

http://img247.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pclogofl8.jpg

 

Lovely machine. Companies like Sony, Fujitsu, Sharp and NEC are nuts for not bringing their premium models over here.

 

I'm shocked that sony isn't offering a Blu-Ray Drive on this thing. Since it has so many goodies that would just be icing on the cake! Great review man!

 

Who makes notebooks for sony nowadays? Or do they make notebooks themselves?

 

Sony is going to officially bring the TZ here, right now its only a question of when.

Why is that surprising? A blu-ray drivewould add weight and potentially thickness, which is antagonistic to the role of an ultraportable. The fact that it has an optical drive at all is pretty amazing (though not unexpected, given that Sony's last 4 series of TR/T/TX/TXN ultraportables have had them). Also, what purpose would Blu-ray serve on such a business oriented machine? I guess it would add cost as well, but thats not really a concern, considering Dynamism is charging 3300 for this baby


This is a really beautiful computer, the only complaint anyone can have about it is the price. I expect that will go down if you select a hard drive instead of an ssd, and also once Sony actually brings them to the US market.
Although, that keyboard is concerning. I thought the TX keyboard was small, but enough in a pinch, but with this one's separate/cut-off keys, aren't the keys smaller and thus harder to press? Its fine on the MacBook because thats got a full size keyboard, but for both this and the older X505, it seems like it could be a problem....Is the keyboard comfortable enough to type for an extended period on?

 

not sure about now, but I know that ASUS at one point made certain models of Sony notebooks. I don't know if Sony made this one but they did design it themselves.

 

I would say this is a "business" laptop for the style concious. If they included a blue ray drive, it would drive the price further up which would mean even fewer people would buy.

If you get the default config which is 100GB 4200rpm with a DVD drive, 1GB of RAM, you can actually get it for under $2000 which is pretty "cheap" compared to the current prices of TX models. Its the SSD thats making it very expensive.

As far as the keyboard goes, yes, its not full sized and it will take some time getting used to. I don't have large hands so it wasn't a problem for me to acclimate to it. But for those with sausage fingers, you might want to stick with a full size keyboard. I did not like the keyboard on the TX because I just didn't get any feedback, although the spacing was adequate for me. So far I have had no problems typing on this keyboard. Matter of fact, I typed this long review on it.

 

Hopefully nobody will hate me for linking to other sites. My review of the TZ90NS - though I really concentrated more on the portability and the features rather than raw benchmarks, as I've stated from the beginning that this is not a ultra-performance notebook. Anyway, take a look at the review for other thoughts on it (and lots of pictures).

No problem. I can't see why people would chastise you over this - hell, that would be my #1 question. I guess nobody has external LCDs yet Mind you - the quality of signal you would get at 1920x1200 over analog VGA is a separate story...

Um, I'm shocked that you ask this question - have you actually _tried_ playing a BD-ROM movie? Have you any idea what kind of firepower you need to be able to get a proper framerate on it? This laptop would certainly need a CPU and a video card upgrade to play BD-ROM movies, or otherwise it would need a hardware decoder, another way of raising prices. That, and BD-ROM is way too expensive (and BD-R is even more so), so it's not like they could offer it as a viable storage option yet. And it would likely murder battery life if it were used to play movies. I think I can think of more reasons why they didn't rather than reasons for them to

 

A good non technical review!

 

Yup. I didn't feel like benchmarking it, since U7500 benchmarks are available, Intel 955GMS benchmarks are available, 4,200rpm hard disk benchmarks are available, and I didn't feel it would be pertinent. The surrounding aspects were more important to me. At least yours had an SSD drive, which was worth checking out

 

I own a tx currently, and I would have to say my biggest gripe is the fan. When I'm a silent place, I can hear that fan constantly turning off and on (you can't hear it at all in noisy areas) and it gets annoying. Sony's been promising the future versions would be fanless, is the tz finally fanless?

 

This one isn't fanless. The only way to hear the fan, though, is to put your ear right to the exhaust; I wasn't able to hear it otherwise. I suppose it depends how quiet your environment is, though.

 

And if you get the SSD version, the fan is at such a low rpm that you'd have to put your ear right up against the vent to hear, otherwise, its dead silent. This is sitting in a dead quiet room with no other noise. its as if its fanless.

 

While I was hoping for fanless, that is good news. It sounds like a far cry from what I deal with now. With that and if there truly will be wireless-N integrated, I might just have to pick a new one up when they come to the US.

 

Great review Outrigger! I just got my TZ90 yesterday, and I pretty much concur with everything in the review regarding pros and cons. As far as waiting for something better, it's a wait to infinity, because there's always something better in the wings about to be released. If you want a light, powerful (for a subnotebook) machine to carry around with you for web browsing, email, document, spreadsheet, movie and entertainment stuff (watched my first movie clip last night - the screen is beautiful), then right now this is it. And, as an added bonus, this machine definitely has the cool factor. Pull it out and peoples' eyes all move in its direction. Hey, if cool factor doesn't mean anything, why is everyone lining up in front of Apple and AT&T stores right now?

 

Outrigger,

Can do a full/fresh install with the upgrade of Vista in the TZ from pricejapan?

 

After owning the TZ some days - can you tell us something about the daily use? How is working on it?

I´m still concerned about the small size of the screen and keyboard.

 

not sure what you mean by that.

 

you need to go into a store and try the keyboard of the TX, if you have no problem typing on that, you probably would be ok with the TZ. I believe the screen is also similar as well, so if thats not a problem for you, then the screen of the TZ would be fine as well.

 

For doing a fresh install(as you did in the TZ) i need to purchuse the English version of Vista Home Premium right?
But there are two packages of Vista Premium. One full-that costs a lot more than the other-and the Upgrade.

In this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=135537 they say that you can do a full/fresh install with the upgrade.

 

Yes you can do an upgrade, although I'm not certain of the process from a japanese version to an english. I have the full version. One advantage is that if you ever want to do another fresh install or install it on another computer, you don't need to install another OS and THEN do the upgrade, a two step process. And personally, I think its better installing from scratch rather than installing on existing files, its "cleaner" that way. You can buy a full oem vista home for about $100.

 

Ok,thanks you were clear. I will go for the full version. Where can i buy a full oem vista for $100? I did some research but other they don't ship in Europe like newegg and other their prices are over too far from this.

 

If you want to compare the screen and keyboard with a 15" MacBook Pro, you will be disappointed. However, a MacBook Pro weighs 2.45 kilos, compared to 1.04 kilos for the TZ. So if having something very light and portable is your focus, then you will see the sacrifice in keyboard and screen size as acceptable. However, if you don't mind lugging around 2.5 kilos, buy a MacBook Pro (or equivalent PC). It depends on what your requirements are. I am a die-hard Apple fan, but I bought and sold a MacBook because it was too heavy. Having said all that, I find the screen on the TZ beautiful for on-the-road stuff, and the keyboard a bit on the small side, but acceptable. Wouldn't use it though as my main computer, which is an iMac.

 

Im still uncertain about buying 11,1" or 12,1" screens. I think, the 1" makes a noticable difference in "viewing and working experience". But the major reason for buying a new laptop is the size - I want to take it just everywhere. Have to figure that out somehow :>

The Toshiba R500 could be the best solution, but there is still no review of a non-preunit..