Sony Vaio VGN-TZ18GN

Notebook Specifications

Reviews for the Sony Vaio VGN-TZ18GN

80% Sony VAIO VGN-TZ18GN (Centrino Duo)
Source: Hardware Zone
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. 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.
4 von 5, Preis/Leistung zufriedenstellend, Leistung zufriedenstellend
Single Review, online available, Long, Date: 08/08/2007
Rating: Total score: 80% price: 70% performance: 70%

Comment

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 is an integrated (onboard) graphic chip on Mobile Intel 945GM chipset. It is a faster clocked version of the GMA 900 and supports no hardware T&L (Transform & Lightning) accelleration (which is required for some games).

Only older games can be played fluently with these graphics chips (if they were not too demanding). Shared memory graphic cores in this category got the advantage of less heat production and longer battery runtimes. For office, internet, image processing, and video editing tasks these graphics chips are still useable without any restrictions.

Intel Core 2 Duo: This is the Core Duo and Core Solo successor with a longer pipeline and 5-20% more speed without more power consumption. As an addition to the Core Duo design there exists a fourth decoder, an amplified SSE-unit and an additional arithmetical logical unit (ALU).

The Core 2 Duo for laptops is identical to the desktop Core 2 Duo processors but the notebook-processors work with lower voltages (0.95 to 1188 Volt) and a lower Frontside bus clock (1066 vs 667 MHz). The performance of equally clocked notebooks is 20-25% lower than Desktop PCs because of the lower Frontside bus clock and the slower hard disks.

U7600:
>> Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Processsors.

11.1": This is a quite small display format for subnotebooks, which is not very common.
The advantage is, that the subnotebook can be small dimensioned and can be carried easily. Further the tiny display has the advantage, that it needs few current, which improves the battery runtime and in consequence the mobility. The disadvantage is that the reading of texts is very exhausting vor the eyes. High resolutions can hardly be used.
>> To find out how fine a display is, see our DPI List.

1.2 kg: This subnotebook is one of the most lightweight of all notebooks and can be carried very easily. There exist hardly any models in this extreme class of weight. 7-9 inch displays are normal for this class of weight.

Sony: Sony is a notebook manufacturer of medium size according international market shares. There exist a lot of reviews about Sony notebooks. The total ratings and price/value ratings are good above average.

Sony reviews

80%: This rating is not convincing. It must be considered, that there exist hardly any laptops, which receive a rating below 60%. This notebook is evaluated below average, this is not really a recommendation for purchase.

>> Further information can be found in our Notebook Purchase Guide.