I’m not going to beat around the bush; I adore this laptop. In fact even after my review period was over and Sony relieved me of the Z27 I asked for it back. This is a PC that I could use every day, on my desk, in lectures, the library, in coffee shops, to overthrow a medium sized government…

Firstly, it is just as easy to carry around as an A5 notepad. The Z27 weighs in at just 1.5kg’s. To put that figure into perspective, lets compare it to the king of the ultra-portable laptops – the mighty MacBook Air. The Vaio Z27 (at 1.54kg) is only 6% heavier than a MacBook Air (at 1.36kg) that being said it still weighs about the same as two loaves of bread which is really not much.

The Z27 actually impresses most where the MacBook fails. For instance the MacBook does not have a DVD/CD Rom drive, while the Z27 has a Blue-Ray DVD read/write drive. This not only trumps the Air but also the majority of computers currently on the market. This is because Blue-Ray drives are still very expensive and as a result have not made it into the mainstream yet. (Sony gets round this problem, as they own the rights to Blue-Ray.)

To complement the Blue-Ray drive the Z27 has a 1600×900 resolution screen capable of playing Blue-Ray disks in HD while almost filling the screen. While on the topic of the screen I must complement the guys at Sony, this is without a bout the finest laptop display I have come across. The colours are sharp and crisp without being overly intense; the displays quality is really noticed when watching moves in the dark (like on the plane) and working for long hours at a time. It does not strain your eyes yet it still manages to be utterly brilliant in its clarity, depth and range. Although one small quam is that the light sensor on my Vaio Z27 was not working properly so the screen did not automatically adjust its brightness. This got very annoying as it is something even the most basic laptops have got right.

The Vaio Z27 is to be blunt, more powerful than most small countries. Even considering its size its performance is easily comparable to the MacBook Pro rather than the Air. With performance in mind I cannot reasonably compare the MacBook Air and the Vaio Z27, quite honestly the Air is outclassed and outgunned.

Geek Speak Warning: The Z27 sports a 2.53 GHz Intel Centrino 2 GM45 Chipset, with an insane 6MB memory cache and a 1066MHz bus speed. Furthermore it come pre-installed with 4GB of 1066Mhz memory and is equipped with a 256MB dedicated NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS, GPU.
Translation: The Vaio Z27 is the fastest notebook of its size available, it runs Windows Vista smoother than a supermodels tan, can easily handle some serious graphics intensive software, such as Photoshop and all of the latest games, and the chipset – the computers brain – is designed to use minimal battery. The Z27 in the real world, in “Stamina” mode, can get about 4,5 hours out of one charge.

It is as if the engineers at Sony sat down and said “Right boys, lets see how fast we can make this thing!” Nothing, in terms of technology, has been overlooked. The hard drive for instance is running at 7200rpm rather than the much slower and more commonly used 5400rpm. This makes a huge difference to the performance of a computer as information can be accessed at a much faster rate to be processed.

From the perspective of portability the Z27 is almost the ideal notebook outdone only by the MacBook Air. The Air’s tapered edges make it seam much thinner than it actually is. The Z27 measures in at 210mm thick, while the thickest point in the Air is 194mm (the thinnest being 4mm) in the real world the Air is untouched from a portability perspective due to its highly intelligent design.

Now for the most important question, is the Sony Vaio Z27 cool?
Again lets compare it to the MacBook Air, as Apple is like an asymptote of cool. But to be honest the Vaio Z27 comes very close. It’s not as easily noticeable as the MacBook Air, but its still very suave. The MacBook Air is like Amy Winehouse, great talent but way to much angst. The Vaio Z27 is akin to Olga Kurylenko, its understated, quietly powerful but has an extreme sex appeal. [Editors Note: The reason that the Mac does not have sex appeal is that everybody knows that most (not all) Mac users do not have jobs and put those little Apple stickers on the back of their Corsa Lite’s and that is not sexy. The Sony on the other hand looks as if it doesn’t give a damn what you think about it and that, my friend, is sexy.]

So there we have it, the Vaio Z27 is an Olga Kurylenko while the MacBook Air is an Amy Winehouse and if I where to buy a celebrity it would sure as hell not be Amy Winehouse.

Brendon Ambrose

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