The SZ2VP's 13.3-inch display is of a good standard. It uses a widescreen aspect ratio and runs at a native resolution of 1,280x800, so it's great for watching DVD movies and provides a good amount of desktop space to view and edit documents. It uses Sony's X-Black glossy screen coating 'technology', so it suffers from high reflectivity, which reduces its usability in direct sun or office light. X-Black does, however, give the display increased contrast and sharper, brighter colours.
Like many of Sony's high-end laptops the SZ2VP has plenty of disk storage space. There's a 120GB hard drive as standard, which is more space than is feasibly required by the average business user. The disk is protected by Sony's G-Sensor technology which parks the disk's drive heads if the laptop is dropped -- protecting the disk against damage. There's also an 8-speed DVD rewriter drive that's capable of writing to single layer (4.7GB) and dual-layer (8.5GB) discs.
Sony has opted to use an ultra-light drive, which is smaller than standard laptop optical drives, in order to help keep overall weight to a minimum. It's also chosen to use a significant amount of carbon fibre instead of magnesium alloy in the construction of the chassis. This material is light and strong, and can be found on Formula 1 racing cars.
Being a Centrino laptop, the SZ2VP has an 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi adaptor, but it only has two USB ports -- which is poor considering the similarly sized Dell XPS M1210 has four. There's a Memory Stick Pro port on the left side of the unit, and a port that houses a memory card adaptor supporting xD, SD and MMS cards.
Performance
We were unable to fully benchmark the SZ2VP's hybrid graphics capabilities as it was a pre-production sample, but it ran everyday tasks in a satisfactory manner, and wasn't noticeably faster or slower than laptops with a similar core specification. It's Intel T2600 processor is a fast, dual-core chip that has proved its worth in many high-end Centrino laptops, and Sony claims the system can achieve 5 hours of battery life in Stamina mode. No figures were offered for Speed mode. We'll update this preview with a full review including performance results when we get a final retail sample.
Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Kate Macefield
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User reviews2
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Johanna 8 February 2009
Good: The lightness and keypad
Bad: The fact that I was charged for a design fault
Comment: I bought this top of the range laptop because I believed in Sony. After 3 months, the on/off button disintegrated into my hand. On phoning Sony, I was told to send it back and then received a call saying it was caused by accidental damage. Nonsense, the laptop never left my house and I am an adult who merely switched it off and on. Talking to their call centre workers was like talking to a robot. The diagnosis was accidental damage so I had to pay £229.20 for the repair or else not get my laptop back. Outrageous. I am an adult and the button was faulty, but it was like talking to a brickwall. Not what one expects with such an expensive product. Rubbish - buyer beware
karolkalna 20 September 2008
Good: Shiny cover
Bad: Cheap componets
Comment: Sony uses cheap componets as any other, cheaper manufacturers so there is no point to pay for it unless you want to be James Bond. Motherboard on my Sony VAIO SZ3 had to be replaced after just 20 months (when out of warranty, obviously), cost £607.
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