Sony Vaio VPCZ1190X CTO / VPCZ114GX/S / VPCzzX9e/B Review on its way!
Last Updated on Tuesday, 9 March 2010 05:27 Written by Naota Saturday, 27 February 2010 06:11
*Update* You may read my review of the Sony Vaio VPCZ1190X here.
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The Sony Vaio VPCZ1190X CTO , VPCZ114GX/S , and VPCzzX9e/B Review is on its way! I am almost done. I was lucky to get a hold of both versions of the laptop (core i5 and core i7) so it should be an interesting comparison. With benchmarks, graphs, review opinions, and everything. See it by the end of the week – latest (if all goes as planned!)
You can pre-order your copy of the new Sony Vaio Z-Series Laptop today at Amazon.com. They are my number one vendor choice because of their lenient return policy for certain items.
I look forward to your review! If you can, could you try to focus on the differences between the i5 and i7 in terms of battery life and heat production? Love your website!
Hi SurferJon. I am glad you are looking forward to it and thanks for the complement. Comments like this and requests really help me write these reviews and know what to focus on. I will make sure to include those comparisons for you.
Wow, you actually responded! Thank you! 🙂
If after writing the review I still have questions, can I ask them? :p
Also, how did you get the laptops so early? Did Sony send them to you?
Thank you again!
You are welcome to ask any questions that you have. Try to ask sooner than later, as I don’t always have the laptops after I review them.
We have several contacts that are able to let us access only a few laptops a little early. Typically we have to get our laptops at the same time as everyone else though. It is also important to note that Sony and other companies may release laptops earlier in other countries than they do here.
We actually will be working on partnering with these companies so that we can review more products, but that won’t happen until the site becomes more popular. (AKA after these companies realize that it will be worth their time.)
Cool site, and I’m glad to see that someone else has the new Z in hand. I’ve still got a few burning questions about the system that haven’t been addressed in any of the reviews so far. If you got some extra time and had a chance to address any or all of these unknowns in your review, it would be highly appreciated.
— Is it physically possible to put an Intel X25-M (or any other 2.5″ SSD or hard drive, for that matter) in the space where Sony installs their weirdo RAID SSD thing? A lot of folks are interested in the machine, but would rather order it without the Sony SSD if possible and just migrate over their Intel X25-M drives.
— Is the touchpad Synaptics, as has been rumored? Does it have any multitouch support out of the box, for things like 2-finger scrolling or pinch to zoom? If no, does the TwoFingerScroll utility (http://code.google.com/p/two-finger-scroll/) work with it?
Thanks for your time.
Sorry, a few more points:
1. Can you check to see if the battery drain issue is still present? On previous Z models, when the laptop is completely off for, say a couple hours, the battery will have lost some percentage. Many people on fan forums absolutely hate this, so if you brought it up it would show you are going completely in depth (especially since other sites never bring it up).
2. If you have a full HD model and the lower HD model, could you tell us what you think of the high screen resolution in terms of readability, with and without the DPI increase? Also, could you tell us if you notice a difference in the HD quality of playing two videos – as in, does the higher HD model look significantly better than the lower one?
Thank you again!!
Hey Naota. I’ve read your reviews on the Z890 and the SR590 and look forward to the new Z review, especially if you were able to get the one with the 1920 x 1080 screen. I’m very interested in what you think about it.
Kaliba – . I will try to see what I can do about the hard drive, as I am not at liberty to open this model up. If it is like any of the previous models (which is most likely is) it will be difficult to put in your own hard drives. Sony Z-Series hard drives are extremely fast. I should be able to give you your answer in the article though.
SurferJon and ehosey2 – Unfortunately I don’t have the 1920 x 1080 model. When I release the review, I won’t have the information about the HD screen. I can assure you that I will be able to add the information later when I get to experience it. But that will be sometime after my colleagues get the laptop.
I will however, make sure to address the mouse and battery drain in my article. If for some reason I forget to address those topics when I release my review, just leave another comment. As you can see, I do my best to actually read them. =)
Again, Ill update the article once I get to experience and conduct tests on the HD screen. At that point, I will also have the HD information if I don’t already.
Thanks.
is it possible to replace the optical drive and put in 2.5inch hdd yourself?So you could have quad SSD + 2.5inch ,that would rock!
So at this point…Does anyone know if the ssd’s sony include’s in this new Z series..is as fast as the intel x-25 or are they going the cheap route?
Thank you so much! BTW, when do you think is the earliest it will go up if you don’t mind me asking? Do you have them already?
Hi SurferJon. I cannot give you a definite date cause it has been a hectic lately but I am shooting for the end of the week. Although I have majority of my review done, I don’t like to release it until I have covered everything.
Rob. I can assure you the ssd’s are good. Sony used extremely fast Samsung ones for the Z890.
Leo – I will not be able to give you that information since I am not at liberty to take this laptop apart. Nice idea though.
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Hi again Naota. A big concern for many including myself is the SSD degradation causing a major performance hit. Are you able to manually cause the slow down of the SSD’s that would cause the user to have to perform a restore of the complete SSD with deletion and rebuilding of the raid arrays and using an image restore and what process you did to achieve restoration ? This is the thing mostly holding me back from getting the new Z. Thank you.
Hi
I hope you get some time to listen to the fan(s). Especially how they are controlled. I have a TX1 who’s fan is quite annoying. If it doesn’t do anything and I keep it in stamina mode, the fan goes on and off every 7 seconds or so.
Is it possible to slow the system down enough so the fan gets completely silent?
Is there a good correlation between work load and fan noise?
Thanks for the review, looking forward to it.
Magnus
Hi Magnus. I will mention the fan. Ehosey2 – have you heard customers mention this as an issue for the Sony Z Series SSD drives or are you worried about it for SSD drives in general?
Hi Naota. The questions about the new Quad SSD’s and their performance over time as it relates to degradation are very concerning and the speculation of more hands on maintenance to keep them at optimal speeds vs. having a basic hard drive. How are you testing the SSD’s, in a particular RAID configuration, JBOD, etc. and also the lack of TRIM support…is that going to be a problem ? These questions are for me beyond my normal scope of understanding but I’m quickly learning about SSD’s and since you are testing the new Z’s I was just wonder if any of these questions came to mind for you ? Thank you.
Hi ehosey2. I’ll be completely honest with you. My review most likely won’t go into the SSD issue as much as you will be looking for. I will mention degradation a little bit as well as some of the options for maintaining higher performance, etc. (since you asked me) but I have a hunch that you will be looking for more information than that. I would love to answer your question in more detail but I am unfortunately running out of time with the laptop.
If you are looking for more information on SSD degradation, AnandTech does a stunning job at addressing the many issues that follow SSD degradation, Trim support, etc. It really is a great read. Keep in mind that Samsung SSD drives were used in the previous Z Series models as well:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=22
I will be checking out the SSD situation today, but today is my last day with this laptop unfortunately. Thankfully I should have access to this laptop again in the future though, so I still do encourage questions.
Hi Naota. Okay then. I look forward to your review. Thank you.
It’s 3/9 now. XD
I am putting it up as we speak. It’ll take me about 10 minutes to upload the photos and write out the html. =)
I’m looking forward to it!
Where is the review 🙂