New Sony VAIO Z Series business laptops unveiled

Sony presented the new, ultra-thin and lightweight Sony VAIO Z Series at a launch event in central London yesterday, to which PC-Site went along to rinse the free coff… to have a look at the thing. The 13.1 inch laptop is trimmed for maximum portability and processing power and will go on sale at the end of this month.

The Sony VAIO Z is, first and foremost, a laptop for businesspeople – its design is incredibly slick, with a matt black finish only broken up by a slim silver strip along the back of the lid. At only 16.65mm, it is one of the thinnest laptops on the market, and it weighs only 1.2Kg, which might still be three times as much as a MacBook Air, but feels about as heavy in your hands as a 250-page paperback.

The Sony VAIO Z’s portability will be an important factor to businesspeople, as will the battery life. Here, Sony have come up with an (optional) extra battery, which comes in the form of a thin, dockable sheet and weighs an extra 700g. With this battery, the laptop is supposed to be able to run for up to 14 hours without charging (battery life without it is around 7 hours).

Specs-wise, Sony have definitely not held back: there’s a latest-generation Intel Core i7-2620M processor (2.70GHz)and a whopping 8Gb RAM. 256Gb memory for a 13.1 inch laptop isn’t too shabby either. The laptop comes with a Power Media Dock station, which includes an external graphics card (an AMD Radeon HD 6650) and a Blu-ray disc drive. This piece of kit is notably heavier and looks a bit like a bulky external hard drive, but the idea is that you only plug it in when the laptop is sitting on your desk and want to watch a film.

At the launch event, there was only an unfinished model available, so there wasn’t a lot of actual computing or browsing to be done, but the Sony VAIO Z seemed to us like a very portable and powerful work laptop. The touchpad is marked by a subtle grid and is extremely responsive, and there is a fingerprint scanner that allows the user to program the laptop to open certain applications with the touch of a finger – put the tumb on there, for example, and it might open up Excel.

That this slick notebook is aimed at businesspeople can also be seen from the price range – the “entry” model will cost around £2000, with the most expensive model (with add-ons including Full HD support) priced at £2700.

The Sony VAIO Z will be available from Sony Direct, John Lewis and selected Dixons stores from the end of July onwards. Check back for our upcoming PC-Site review.