Product Listing

Sony VAIO VGN-TZ18GN (Centrino Duo)

By Vincent Chang - 8 Aug 2007

Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

Can we put a price to style? That's the question that confronted us while gathering our thoughts about the new Sony VAIO TZ series. There is much to admire about the design of the Sony TZ series, from its simple, minimalist chassis, pared down to the essentials so as to maintain its ultra portable form factor, yet flexible and not at all fragile. The unique and seamless integration of the battery into the spine and hinge of the notebook such that it really feels like a book, in both its relative weight and size. Its understated elegance is appropriate for the genial facades of the business world, where impressions are everything and of course, the Sony VAIO brand has established itself as a premium, expensive one that speaks of the finer things in life.

If technological artifacts can be works of art, then we have no doubt that the Sony VAIO TZ team did its best to create one here. It's expensive, bloated with software and less than responsive at times but it truly looks stunning and as light as a feather compared to most notebooks.

At least that's on the overall build and design. The internals are not as serene. It's not exactly Sony's fault as much as the Microsoft Windows 'eco-system'. Thanks to the wide diversity of programs and applications available on the Windows platform, the pre-installed applications on the Sony TZ are as diverse and just as messy. There are video, image editing tools, content creation software, multimedia players and Sony does its best to handle all these programs, especially since few of these programs are actually produced by Sony. But the fact remains that this notebook is bloated with software. Much of that, like the security programs are a constant fact of life in the Windows world. Others like the countless Sony themed wallpapers and desktop themes we found are extra chaff on the already limited disk space of the solid state drive (SSD) on the TZ-18GN. Coupled with only 1GB of memory, the TZ-18GN can feel slow and laggy at times. Given that there's only a single memory slot, Sony should have bumped the notebook to 2GB of system memory by default to counter our performance concerns. Memory isn't exactly expensive and going by the price category of the notebook, it's easy to factor in the extra cost of the memory.

Even the supposedly fast random access capability of the SSD is hindered by the bloat and the less than responsive Windows Vista Business does not help. It does lead to faster start up time but with its free capacity reduced to around 6GB after all the pre-installed programs and the recovery option, we aren't sure if getting the SSD is the pragmatic choice. The marginal benefits that we are seeing from the SSD do not seem to match the corresponding loss in the disk space and more importantly, the cost. The VGN-TZ17GN, which uses a typical 100GB SATA hard drive, is S$800 cheaper than the VGN-TZ18GN and has more than thrice the capacity. In our opinion, that's not a tough decision.

For those who can afford it, the new Sony TZ series have both the pedigree and the style to impress your business partners and be the classy companion for the high flying executive. Seriously, this is one of the most well engineered notebooks we've come across and it really exudes oodles of class, style and quality. There is also substance beneath its style and its long battery life and ultra portable form factor are major advantages for the constant traveler. Performance arguably is at a lower priority here and for its niche, the Sony VAIO VGN-TZ18GN does reasonably well. Heat output could be a concern to those who intend to use this feather light notebook on your lap, but it's really subjective and we recommend you to have a feel in the showroom. The only real sticking point as with the high-end VAIO notebooks is as usual its S$4499 price tag, exaggerated by the SSD unit. At this price, many will no doubt be admiring this notebook at the showroom than in their homes, but be warned that you might be charmed into getting one as soon as you've experienced it first hand.

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