Sony VPCZ122GX/S VAIO Z Series Notebook PC

#1: Sony VPCZ122GX/S VAIO Z Series Notebook PC Reviews!

I bought this Sony Z12 (i5 520, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM) laptop here on Amazon.com via the seller called Vanns about a month ago now. So this review is past the so called "honeymoon period" but relatively early on in the product life still.

First I will say that overall I'm quite happy with the Sony Z12. It does have some faults but more or less hits the mark for a certain usage pattern - the "road warrior" who wants a super portable but full service laptop with high-res screen. I've used various laptops in this mode in the past, including the Sharp Actius, the Panasonic W5 series and Y5 series. That is the perspective from which I review this unit.

The Sony Z12 weighs exactly 3 lbs with standard battery, which is super for a 13" unit and that makes it great. Its easy for me to carry it all sorts of places with basically no burden. The screen is bright, the 1600 x 900 resolution gives you a lot to work with, although from time to time you'll need to CTRL + or - to scale fonts up now and then. I cant imagine needing the 1920 x 1080 version! I would say this is probably the 2nd or 3rd best screen I have seen on a laptop, exceeded only by the MacBook Pros (13 15 and 17 inch versions) which remain a cut above this laptop. But compared to most PC laptop this screen is way better in brightness, clarity, black levels and contrast.

This battery lasts me about 4 hours in "Stamina" graphics mode with Windows on "balanced" power setting,, while I am using wi-fi surfing the net, typing documents and screen brightness at 50& or 60% ish. If I dim screen more and use the most aggressive windows power savings I get about 5 hours. That's pretty good for a unit of this type. I had considered getting the extended battery, which would have taken total weight to 3.5 lbs,but so far it doesn't seem necessary.

The keyboard is excellent. I was not expecting it to be so comfortable but it is. Good size and spacing to the keys. Much better than other implementations of the "chicklet" keybaord that I have experienced eg in Acer 1810 and the Apple Macbooks. No surprise though as Sony was actually the originator of these type of keyboards.

The unit is very speedy after doing all the updates to Windows and the VAIO updates. And it boots up and shuts down really fast. But out of the box it was a paradox: operating very fast yet booting and closing really slow. All that changed when I did the Vaio updates. The one that seemed to make the difference there was the update to the BIOS. And that is with a factory install of Win 7 pro. I didn't reinstall the OS,although I deleted one or two of the junk programs pre-installed.

Another issue I ran into was that wi-fi was fine for first two weeks then one day I connected to a Zyxel 802.11 g router at home and the wi-fi suddenly started cutting out, requiring a reboot of the unit. I eventually installed an update to the wifi card from Intel's website and that did the trick.

I operate almost only in "stamina" graphics mode and in this mode the laptop is whisper quiet - and actually quite cool. Looks like they didn't skimp on the copper inside. I have played around with the laptop in "speed" mode and there it does get noticeably noisier - a level of noise that for me would be a little annoying. But for my usage the integrated graphics is more than good enough so I really have no need to go to the dedicated graphics card at all.

A small disappointment is the AC adapter, which is clearly not fully thought out as a companion to a ultraportable of this type. The adapter is actually quite light for a 90 Watt power unit, but is a little bulky and has no facility for winding up the wires. On this one Sony gave a bit of effort (I've seen much heavier 90Watt adapters e.g. on Dells and Lenovos) but Sony could have done better still for their flagship laptop. The AC adapter on my old Panasonic Y5 was smaller and lighter - and that was like 5 years ago.

The build quality on the laptop is pretty good from what I can see. I keep it in a Zero shock memory foam sleeve so that I have protection without compromising on the light weight. It's a 3lb laptop so of course there is some flex - unit of this type will get its durability in fact by having some flex rather than the rigidity that can be built into a 5 or 6 lb unit. But I can see that it is built well. And the palm rest seems like it wont scratch easily as some. At least so far that's what I've experienced.

Overall this has been a great purchase from my view. I don't think its a laptop for all people. But for a classic road warrior who typically buys ultraportables, I think this is a laptop I would recommend without hesitation.

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Sony VPCZ122GX/S VAIO Z Series Notebook PC Features

• Box Contents - Sony VPCZ122GX/S Notebook, Standard Capacity Lithium-Ion Battery, AC power adapter, Power Cord; Software Bundle - Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, Norton Internet Security 2010 30-Day Trial Offer, 1-Year Limited Warranty
• Intel Core i5-520M 2.40GHz Processor with Turbo(R) Boost Technology up to 2.93GHz
• 3MB L3 Cache
• 4GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM (2GB x 2, 8GB max.)
• 128GB SATA Solid state Drive (SSD)