It’s arguably one of those features that helps muffle the pain of the Z13’s stratospheric cost. Flick the switch to Stamina, dim that glorious screen – more on which later – and we eked out 6hrs 10mins of light use battery life. Crank everything up to 11, though, and the Z13 drains its 5200mAh battery in just 1hr 12mins.
If the Z13 has a weakness, it certainly isn’t its display. All apart from the most expensive model – unless you choose to configure your own on Sony’s website – come with a 1,600 x 900 display that’s among the best we’ve seen on a laptop. The semi-gloss finish not only keeps reflections at bay, but it does so without adding any unpleasant graininess to the images it produces. And those images are stunning: incredible brightness is matched with excellent colour fidelity. And, should that not be enough, Sony also offers an upgrade to a 1080p display that covers a claimed 96% of the Adobe RGB colour space.
The final words of congratulations are best saved for the backlit keyboard, which is simply flawless. It doesn’t look it, but it’s every bit as large and spacious as the main area of a desktop keyboard, and the crisp action and wide spacing between keys keeps it usable however cramped your location. As for the trackpad, there are no misguided attempts to integrate the buttons into the touchpad itself here; instead, it partners two discrete buttons with a nice wide touch surface. It’s simple, and all the better for it.
Meanwhile, all the essentials and luxuries you’d expect from such an expensive laptop are here. Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet and Intel dual-band 802.11n chipsets are backed up by an unlocked Qualcomm WWAN modem. Three USB ports are squeezed alongside both VGA and HDMI ports, while SD and Memory Stick card readers are mounted on the laptop’s front edge. It’s also refreshing to find that Sony has made room for a DVD writer in the tiny chassis.
No matter how good the Z13 – and it’s staggeringly good – that’s the minimum we’d want from such an extortionate price. As if to add insult to injury, Sony piled on another £100 or so to the price of our review model, with only a slight bump in processor speed to show for it.
Let’s be frank. If you can afford the price of admission – which starts around £1,400 for the cheapest customisable model and soars over £3,000 for the full works – you won’t walk away disappointed. After all, you can count the number of ergonomically perfect, high-performance ultraportables on the market with a single finger. But for the rest of us, compromising on either performance or portability, or even buying two entirely different laptops, will save you a lot of cash.
Warranty | |
---|---|
Warranty | 2yr collect and return |
Physical specifications | |
Dimensions | 314 x 210 x 24mm (WDH) |
Weight | 1.400kg |
Travelling weight | 1.8kg |
Processor and memory | |
Processor | Intel Core i5-460M |
Motherboard chipset | Intel HM57 |
RAM capacity | 4.00GB |
Memory type | DDR3 |
SODIMM sockets free | 0 |
SODIMM sockets total | 2 |
Screen and video | |
Screen size | 13.1in |
Resolution screen horizontal | 1,600 |
Resolution screen vertical | 900 |
Resolution | 1600 x 900 |
Graphics chipset | Intel HD graphics / Nvidia GeForce G330M |
Graphics card RAM | 1.00GB |
VGA (D-SUB) outputs | 1 |
HDMI outputs | 1 |
S-Video outputs | 0 |
DVI-I outputs | 0 |
DVI-D outputs | 0 |
DisplayPort outputs | 0 |
Drives | |
Capacity | 64GB |
Hard disk usable capacity | 61GB |
Spindle speed | N/A |
Internal disk interface | SATA/300 |
Hard disk | Toshiba THNSC064GMMJ |
Optical disc technology | DVD writer |
Optical drive | Matshita DVD-RAM UJ892AS |
Battery capacity | 5,200mAh |
Replacement battery price inc VAT | £0 |
Networking | |
Wired adapter speed | 1,000Mbits/sec |
802.11a support | yes |
802.11b support | yes |
802.11g support | yes |
802.11 draft-n support | yes |
Integrated 3G adapter | yes |
Bluetooth support | yes |
Other Features | |
Wireless hardware on/off switch | yes |
Wireless key-combination switch | no |
Modem | no |
ExpressCard34 slots | 1 |
ExpressCard54 slots | 0 |
PC Card slots | 0 |
USB ports (downstream) | 3 |
FireWire ports | 0 |
PS/2 mouse port | no |
9-pin serial ports | 0 |
Parallel ports | 0 |
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports | 1 |
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports | 0 |
3.5mm audio jacks | 2 |
SD card reader | yes |
Memory Stick reader | yes |
MMC (multimedia card) reader | no |
Smart Media reader | no |
Compact Flash reader | no |
xD-card reader | no |
Pointing device type | Touchpad |
Audio chipset | Realtek HD Audio |
Speaker location | Above keyboard |
Hardware volume control? | no |
Integrated microphone? | yes |
Integrated webcam? | yes |
Camera megapixel rating | 0.3mp |
TPM | yes |
Fingerprint reader | yes |
Smartcard reader | no |
Carry case | no |
Battery and performance tests | |
Battery life, light use | 6hr 10min |
Battery life, heavy use | 1hr 12min |
Overall application benchmark score | 1.64 |
Office application benchmark score | 1.33 |
2D graphics application benchmark score | 1.76 |
Encoding application benchmark score | 1.53 |
Multitasking application benchmark score | 1.94 |
3D performance (crysis) low settings | 55fps |
3D performance setting | Low |
Operating system and software | |
Operating system | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit |
OS family | Windows 7 |
Recovery method | Recovery partition |
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