Sony VAIO Z1 Review

The Sony VAIO Z1 is Sony’s entry into the thin and light style notebook market. Targeted at business users, Sony tags it as “The professional's thin & light”, the Z1 sports a 14.1” screen and a clean and sloping look. Sony and their VAIO line of notebooks never has a problem looking good, but as we know it's what's inside that counts so in this review we'll take a look at every aspect of the VAIO Z1.

Overview

The VAIO Z1 belongs in a class of notebooks called “thin and light”, this simply means it’s a notebook that’s easy to carry around in a case or under your arm if necessary. Thin and light notebooks are great for business travelers or students who want something they can carry around easily but still get good fast performance out of. Just a few examples of other brands thin and light notebooks are the IBM ThinkPad T41, Gateway 450, HP Compaq nc4000, and Fujitsu S7000. It’s a fairly crowded category with a lot of competition.

The VAIO Z1 can be purchased in retail stores or online via www.sonystyle.com. Many assume when buying online you can configure a notebook to your specifications, but that is not the case with the VAIO Z1. It actually comes in five different flavored configurations. The high-end configuration is dubbed the VAIO Z1WAMP3, this $3199.99 configuration comes with the following specs:

•Intel Pentium M 1.7GHz processor
•14.1” SXGA TFT display (1400 x 1050)
•Integrated DVD-RW Drive
•Double capacity battery
•Integrated 802.11 b/g Wireless
•Integrated Bluetooth
•1GB DDR SDRAM
•80GB 4200RPM Hard Drive

The current base configuration is called the VAIO Z1WA and costs $2199.99 with the following specs:

•Intel Pentium 1.7GHz processor
•14.1” SXGA TFT display (1400 x 1050)
•Integrated CD-RW/DVD-ROM
•Integrated 802.11 b/g Wireless
•512MB DDR SDRAM
•60GB Hard Drive

Unfortunately our review unit is the older VAIO Z1V and not Z1W so our test system has a 1.6GHz Pentium M processor and not the 1.7GHz you now get with purchase. Our review unit RAM is configured at 512MB and the hard drive is 60GB/4200RPM. Now you have an idea on price and the range of spec configurations for the Z1, let’s delve into a review.

In the Box

Upon purchasing the VAIO Z1 you’ll find that what’s in the box is pretty straight forward – it’s just the actual notebook, AC adapter, battery and then a few software discs such as the XP Home Edition OS licensed copy you get with the Z1. User guide and warranty of course come in the box, the one thing I was disappointed not to see was a system restore disk for the occasion in which you just want to wipe your notebook clean and have it setup how it is on day one when you receive it. If you want the system restore disc you have to order it from Sony for $25.

Design & Input/Output Ports

The fact that Sony makes us go to SonyStyle.com and not Sony.com obviously emphasizes a bit about what Sony is all about with its electronics products. Style and good looks is an important part of any product Sony puts out on the market. The Z1 notebook certainly does a few things to make itself standout in the style category through its unique styling features.
The best way to describe the look of the Z1 is “clean”. The Z1 sports a sloping look that makes you believe this would be an aerodynamic feature – unfortunately aerodynamics only helps physically moving objects go faster and not such inanimate objects as computers. All of the ports on the Z1 are either hidden behind doors or inset into a recessed area, further adding to the smooth and clean look. The case is a silver color and made of a hard plastic and not a metal composite such as a magnesium alloy.

left-side view of the VAIO Z1

Looking on the left-side of the notebook we see the PCMCIA slot that is well hidden, at a first glance you wouldn’t even see this small door there.. The PCMCIA Type II slot allows you to insert various expansion cards such as a GPS device, air card for cellular connectivity, storage cards and many other options. Within the inset area on the left-hand side of the Z1 you can see the ports for headphones, microphone, FireWire (also called IEEE 1394 or i.Link), MemoryStick Pro card reader and two USB 2.0 ports. The FireWire port can be used for fast transfer of data from such things as a digital video camcorder, the USB 2.0 ports are the most up to date version of USB and also allows for very fast data transfer and many accessory expansion options, USB is not just for mice any more. There are no legacy ports such as a parallel printer port or serial port, which some might care about.

All of these ports are so well hidden that if you look from the front of the notebook you could never see them. I like the fact that it’s very obvious what each port is for because Sony paints a friendly little icon next to the port and not just the typical tiny engraved icon that most manufacturers do. Also notice how strongly the green and red colors standout for the headphone/microphone ports.

Back of the VAIO Z1

Back of the VAIO Z1 with the hidden away ports in view

On the back of the notebook we appear to have nothing but the power input port. But you would be mistaken! Because behind a little flip door we actually have ports for VGA out and input for plugging your Ethernet LAN cord into.

On the right-hand side we have the power button that glows green to indicate when power for the notebook is on, we also have the modem port for the 56.6 modem onboard. The optical drive, which can either be a CDRW/DVD drive or DVDRW drive is on the front right-side, again it is well hidden and integrated into the notebook body.

Right-hand side of the Z1

One thing that Sony did that is certainly minimalist in design (which goes with the simple straight forward design approach of this notebook) is that they did not include a latch for the laptop lid. You simply rely on a stiff hinge to keep the lid closed, which certainly works. My big beef with this is that it’s hard and unobvious how to open the lid. I took an engineering usability and design course in college and had it drilled into my head that you must provide a “forcing function” for people to figure out how to open or close something. A forcing function is simply a design feature that makes it obvious what you should do to open something, a bar on a door and a “push” sign for instance. When I went to open the lid of the Z1 I was stumped; no latch, no button and no arrows. I started by prying at the lid and got scared I was going to break it – but that’s what you have to do to open it. So, chalk up the lid being too hard and inconvenient to open as a complaint, you’ll get used to this method eventually though.

The Sony VAIO Z1 with its back to the IBM ThinkPad T40.

Keyboard and Input buttons

The VAIO Z1 has a full 83-key QWERTY keyboard with 2mm stroke and 18.5mm pitch. There’s no cramping of the fingers needed to punch small buttons pushed into a small area as the keyboard is adequately spacious. However, Sony does cut back on keyboard size by taking off the PgUp, PgDwn, Home and End keys and making the user hit an “Fn” button plus an arrow button to accomplish this task. I’ll sulk over this; it seems to me Sony could have fit those extra buttons in if they took off the two shortcut button keys at the top of the keyboard. Overall the feel of the keyboard is okay. There’s not as much travel to the keys as I like to have, but the keyboard is firm and not mushy so a thumbs up to that.

VAIO Z1 keyboard

At the top of the keyboard is a slider button that allows you to turn Wireless on and off. There is also a P1 and P2 key that you can map to various functions. I have my P1 key set so it mutes the speakers when pushed and the P2 key boosts the screen to maximum brightness when pushed. Using the Sony Notebook Setup utility you can map these buttons to different things.

The VAIO Z1 also offers a touchpad and two mouse buttons for input. The buttons are stylish looking, but a little too small and stiff for my liking. They need to be made larger and the push should be smoother with more travel. The touchpad on this notebook is at best just okay. I had major problems with the Sony VAIO V505 touchpad, in which it was very jumpy at times and non-responsive at others. I get the same type of thing with the Z1 although not as extreme as I saw with the VAIO V505. The good news is that since the Z1 comes with built-in Bluetooth you can get a wireless Bluetooth mouse and all your problems are solved, mice “without tails” are a wonderful thing and well worth the investment.

Screen

The VAIO Z1 comes with a 14.1-inch SXGA display, a 1,400 x 1,050 native resolution. For my needs this is perfect. The fact the VAIO has a 14.1-inch screen allows the weight to be kept down to the 4.7lbs that it is. The fact that the screen is SXGA means you can fit a lot more on the screen. Having a couple of browser windows or Excel sheets open at the same time and fitting them both on the screen is totally doable. Some might complain text is too small, but I think that would be a minority. With some of the extremely hi-res screens on the notebook market right now, such as Dells UXGA, it really is a challenge to read text or deal with the small icons. SXGA is the middle of the road resolution between XGA and UXGA though and will be the optimal resolution for a majority of people.

The VAIO Z1 screen is a nice sized 14.1" with decent brightness and crisp display

Overall the screen is decent in its brightness and quality. It is not as bright and sharp as other notebooks such as other VAIO models that use XBrite display technolog y(Sony VAIO TR or VAIO A series) or Fujitsu’s CrystalView technology used in the LifeBook N5000 or latest S6000 series. Dell screens are also brighter than what you get with the VAIO Z1. So basically the Z1 screen is in the middle of the pack for screen quality in regards to brightness and crispness of display. The screen provides nothing to write home about, but not much to complain about.

Sound

The VAIO Z1 sound card is integrated into the main motherboard, this is standard for notebooks where a dedicated sound card would be considered a luxury. Very rarely do I come across a notebook in which I think the sound is good. Last month I reviewed the Dell Inspiron 9100 and was floored by the fact it actually had really decent speakers with a built-in subwoofer. The VAIO Z1 is much more typical though; its sound is exactly on par with my IBM ThinkPad T40, meaning it is not all that great! Nobody really expects audio to be great on a laptop though, so I don’t count this as a detractor for a notebook purchase. The speakers are housed at the top of the keyboard just below the screen. If you want really good audio then use headphones or buy external speakers. Better yet, just lower your expectations for finding a thin and light notebook that has a good set of speakers – they’re simply not available.

Battery

When you purchase a thin and light notebook you definitely should expect decent battery life. After all, the purpose of a thin and light is to allow mobility and freedom from wires and power adapters for periods of time. The VAIO Z1 doesn’t disappoint with providing a decent battery life, I got about 233 minutes with Wi-Fi turned off (using the handy slider button on the keyboard) and using the Z1 lightly for such things as working on this review and editing other Excel and Word documents. However, you can only be so useful without a connection to the internet so in my next test with all the wireless radios turned on I got 219 minutes. This is decent battery life, but certainly not out of the ballpark. The Z1 has a 11.1 V 4,400 mAh battery. For championship battery performance in the thin and light category, look to the ThinkPad T40 series, I consistently get 4 – 4.5 hours of battery life with that laptop – the sacrifice is that the T40 is about 1lb heavier. The Z1 series does have the option of using a high capacity battery that claims 9 hours of battery life. This battery is actually standard with the high-end $3000 Z1WAMP3 and can be bought as an accessory if you want it with another configuration in which it is not included.

Processor Performance

If you buy a VAIO Z1 series these days the only option you have is to configure it with a Pentium M 1.7GHz processor based on the Banias Pentium M chipset and not the newest Pentium M Dothan. There are no immediate plans to put the Dothan processor in the Z1. However, just trust me in saying you’ll be happy enough with the Pentium M that’s provided. Even with a 1.6GHz Pentium M that came in the review unit Z1 I had this laptop just never choked on any of the business or development tool applications I threw at it. As a performance test I installed a SQL Server 200 database on the Z1 and loaded it with a few million records to test query performance in the database against what I knew my ThinkPad T40 could achieve. Handily enough, the T40 I use has a 1.6GHz Pentium M with 512MB RAM as does the Z1 review unit so I could compare apples to apples. What I found was that the Z1 actually performed slightly faster than the T40, only by about 2-seconds in returning a database query that takes 29-seconds on my ThinkPad and 27-seconds on the Z1, but all the same it shows the Z1 is on par or slightly better in performance than all other notebooks in its class.

Video Graphics Card

There’s a big but to all this performance talk with the Z1 though. The graphics card that comes with the Z1 is an outdated ATI mobility Radeon 7500 with 16MB of DDR SDRAM. If you’re not going to be playing games that require textures and Z buffers, using CAD design programs or PhotoShop then this graphics card will suit you just fine. You’ll still be able to watch DVDs and use all your other typical software programs that will run the same whether you have the latest and greatest video card or not. However, if you intend to use graphic intensive programs the Z1 will choke. 3-D graphics on the Z1 can at best be called acceptable. The Radeon 7500 is of course up to date enough to provide dual display that supports output to a monitor with the VAIO Z1 native resolution of 1400 x 1050 pixels.
While I’m on the topic of graphics and display I’ll mention that there’s no TV out ports on this machine, I never ever use such a feature anyway, but some will care about this.

Hard Drive

There’s not much to be said here, the 60GB drive on the Z1 I’m reviewing is more than enough for a road warrior that might be using this laptop. Buy an 80GB hard drive if you want more. The hard drive speed is 4,200 RPM which is fairly standard, but certainly not as fast as the 7,200 RPM that can be had.

Wireless
I’m amazed anyone would buy a laptop without built-in wireless these days. Sony seems to agree. You have no choice but to buy the Z1 with a built-in Intel 802.11 b/g card which means we can bonify the Z1 as a true Centrino laptop. I experienced no problems using the VAIO Z1 with a Netgear 802.11b wireless router at distances of up to 100-ft in an apartment.

Support

Sony isn't all that generous in the service-and-support department. However, the service and warranty agreement is on par with what other laptop makers offer. The company includes a standard one-year parts-and-labor warranty with return-to-depot service (Sony pays for shipping). But rather than toll-free, 24/7 phone support for the life of the system, Sony includes only a year's worth of free phone help. After the warranty ends, calls to support are $19.95 per incident. You can upgrade your warranty to three years for another $200 if you don’t want to fall into a situation in which you’re paying $19.95 to dial a phone number.

Sony’s support Web site has improved quite a bit of late. It features online tutorials and an intuitive knowledge base that's kind of like the Ask Jeeve’s search engine. No customer forums or online chat with service reps like Dell has though.

Software

Sony offers an okay software package, although I prefer to just format the hard drive of a new notebook and install things my way from scratch most people won’t want to do this. I was a little annoyed to find Sony offered no drivers for those that want to install Windows 2000 on the laptop. So you have to stick with Windows XP as the OS on this notebook. Here’s a rundown of what you’ll get software wise already installed on the VAIO Z1: Windows XP Home Edition operating system, Microsoft Works (for working with word processing and spreadsheet documents), Sony PictureGear Studio and Network Smart Capture (digital photo), DVgate Plus (digital video), SonicStage (digital music), InterVideo WinDVD, Screenblast ACITD and SoundForge, and RealPlayer One. So you get a lot of multimedia applications included, but no killer applications or Microsoft Office suite.

Conclusion

The VAIO Z1 ends up being a very stylish, comfortably thin and light notebook with very good processor performance via its 1.7GHz Pentium M chip. Configuring it with an 80GB Hard Drive, 1 GB of RAM and a DVD burner makes it a highly desirable, and expensive mobile machine. The graphics card is a hinderance to any graphics intensive applications, but if you’re a user that does not use such applications then it just wouldn’t matter.

Pros

•Good built-in wi-fi + Bluetooth
•Stylish clean look, cool sloping design with ports well hidden
•Thin and light at 4.7lbs and simple to carry around
•Snappy 1.7GHz Pentium M processor
•Good 14.1” SXGA screen allowing for two windows to be open at one time for viewing

Cons

•Laptop is somewhat pricey, my friends at Sony will hate me but I recommend looking at retail stored (on and offline) other than SonyStyle.com to find the best prices.
•Keyboard is just okay and the touchpad does not react well at times and overreacts to movement at others – get a wireless mouse.
•Lid opening mechanism of having no latch is kind of annoying for ease of opening purposes.
•Can’t upgrade the optical drive – what you buy (either the DVDRW or CDRW with DVD) is what you’re stuck with

Pricing and Availability

View up to date latest pricing for the VAIO Z1 Series by clicking this link.

Tip Jar and Word From the Author

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Thank You! Thank You!

 

Great review, but to me it looks a little funny with that slant look.

Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com

 

I've heard that because of Processor Throttling by Sony, the performance of this laptop drops significantly when running on batteries in the mobile mode. Did you come across anything like this?

 

I have the current Sony VAIO Z1 WAMP1 with an upgrade to 1gb RAM purchased serparately.

In regarded to the question pertaining to throttling, Sony has been known to do this on various products in order to sustain battery life (take a look at the Clie TH-55) for example.

When you pull the plug out and go specifically on battery, Windows reports the maximum 1.7ghz AND the current speed which usually drops down to 799mhz on the mid range application intensity, and 595 on low end application intensity.

Now this is all assuming you are using the default profiles setup on this particular machine. If you simply "right click" on the throttle meter, you can set the machine to "maximum perfomance" which invariably shuts off power management and keeps your machine flying at a constant 1.7ghz till your battery runs out.

You also have the ability to create custom profiles of various settings accordingto what you are doing when you running only on battery.

In any case, I've had no problems with perfomance on this machine. I'm a graphic designer and regularly edit 50 -100mb files using photoshop 7 while developing web sites with Flash MX 2004 professional.

My only gripe with this machine is Sony of North America's excellent track record of providing some of the most horrible customer service on the face of this planet. I hope I never run into a hardware problem with this machine.

I'd strongly recommend a Z1 WAMP1 - WAMP3. Spend the extra few dollars and get the best you can afford. This machine seriously doesn't dissapoint. In fact, I've had quite a few Powerbook G4 users constanly looking at the laptop when I take my work to the local starbucks here in NYC.



[ ]

TrinityR3
Sony Vaio Z1 WAMP1

 

This is the notebook I was seriously considering. While the review was great, I'm glad that I didn't go with the Sony, but rather with the eMachines 6809 instead. I got a far better notebook with extras that Sony didn't include and at a weight that's really not that bad, and, I saved $1000 (after rebates) over the Z1:

Mobile AMD Athlon 64 3200
512MB RAM
80GB HD
DVD+RW Optical
6-in-1 Flash drive
ATI Radeon 9600 w/ 64MB RAM
802.11g WiFi
etc, etc.

I was also looking at the HP3000 series, but the trade-offs were the same.

Tony

 

My question is -

You talk about the non upgradability of the optical drive. I would like to know if the graphics card is easily upgradable (the only thing putting me off this laptop) and also the RAM.. (how many slots also and what capacity is used as standard?)

I am competent at upgrading desktops but this will be my 1st laptop so I have no idea about how easy it is to DIY upgrade graphics and ram on a Z1.

Cheers

 

is the graphics card easy to upgrade DIY style?

Its the only thing that puts me off this machine.

Also, what capacity slots has the laptop got and what is its usage on a 512 setup as standard.

 

From my understanding, there is no "official" way of upgrading this laptops video (as with 99%) of laptops with the exception of the Alienware Area 51M Gaming laptop. However, there are a few "bold" pioneers out there who have upgraded their VAIO laptops with "Better" (not best) video cards (usually of the ATI caliber) with the same form factor and all. But don't hold your breathe...

If you're looking to do gaming, buy a desktop or the 12lbs Dell XPS Tabletop. If you're looking to do 3d animation, go for a full blown desktop. For everything else (including video editing, sound editing, code development, image editing, and other graphics based apps, this thin and light VAIO is a "vaio-ble" option.

Now I'm going to slap myself silly for making that comment.

TrinityR3
Sony Vaio Z1 WAMP1

 

Had this machine since 2003, never let me down once. Awesome, then came along the T61...

 

Err... lets please not post in old reviews. If you have a question or a comment please post it in a new thread in the appropriate forum. In this case that is Sony. Thank You! -Niki